Every February I turn a year older and in celebration, I get a facial. Yesterday was the big day. I scheduled the treatment a month ago and have been looking forward to it like a kid on Christmas morning that has already peeked and knows she is getting tickets to see White Snake, front row, center stage, with back stage passes. That was your Christmas wish too. No?

I dreamt of the peaceful spa music that transports me to a place so relaxing I struggle to stay awake and enjoy the facial. I longed for the foot and hand massage she gives while a calming cucumber mask blankets my face with softness.  And. OMG. The way my skin looks when I leave.

Yesterday morning I walked into the spa. My forehead relaxed, my shoulders dropped below my ears and I sunk into the chair to await my treatment.  Minutes later I was awakened by my facialist, we will call her Sara, who was wiping the slobber off the side of my mouth and saying, “Mrs. Mullen. I am ready.”

Come again. Mrs. Mullen? What happened to Stefanie? Dude. Is my mother-in-law here? She has NEVER called me that.

I decided to let it go because, like I already told you, she had a cucumber mask waiting for me. I followed her into the treatment room. She left me to get undressed, wrap up in the little Velcro towel thingy and climb into the bed of heaven. 

Lying in the barely lit room with the beautiful spa music playing softly in the background, my toes were curling with excitement. Sara returned, sat down behind me and started rubbing the soap on her hands just above my face in preparation for the first step. Here. We. Go.

I sank further into the bed, couldn’t help but smile and then for some reason that if I live to be 110 I will never understand. I decided to open my eyes and look up at her hands. At that exact moment a large droplet of soap came careening down towards my eye with missle-like speed. I tried to close it, but wasn’t fast enough. My family's eyes are cursed. You have got to be kidding me.

She dove for a towel and started swabbing out my eye, which just made it worse because her hands were covered in soap and the towel was wet causing more soap to seep in.  Desperate to not ruin the moment, I was still lying on my back, focusing on my breathing and trying to will the soap out of my eyes. Finally, after she had rubbed the top layer of skin off of my eyelid, all the soap had been removed from my eye and I was left with just a faint burning sensation.

She continued to wash my face by massaging it with soap and all the muscles slipped back into relaxation and within minutes I had all but forgotten that just moments ago I was ready to rip my eyeball out and throw it at her.

She finished up, put cucumber smelling swabs over my eyes and turned on the power light and mirror to figure out exactly what type of facial she was going to do.  Which will it be this time, I wondered? Natural Beauty, Eternal Beauty, Hydrating Beauty? Don’t those sound relaxing and youthful?

She gave my face a good once over and said, “I think this time we are going to need (NEED?) to do the Rejuvenation treatment.” The what? That sounds. I don’t know.  Old. Not pretty and young skinned. Like old skin needing rejuvenated.

I asked in a hopeful voice, “Oh. Have we ever done that one before?”

“No,” she said, “this one is like a facelift without the surgery.”

Oh. Well. Why don’t you just pour soap in my other eye too?

So I, Mrs. Mullen, laid there while she prepared my facelift in a bottle and tried to get back into some sort of relaxing state because what I really wanted to do was pop that soap dropping, insulting FACIALIST (and I use that term loosely) in the mouth.

She went back to applying creams and massaging and I had forgotten that I was an old, red-eyed, hag and slipped into a dream of lying on the beach all alone with a bottle of wine, a book and George Clooney next to me playing the guitar. It was all perfect until George decided he needed a break. Annoying. This is my dream Clooney. Stay focused.

Slowly the real world came back into focus and I realized there was no George playing a guitar. The music in the room had stopped.  “Oh,” she says while hammering on the top of her boom box (does the term boom box make me look old), “it looks like my music player just stopped and I can’t get it to turn back on.”

You have got to be kidding me. RIGHT NOW. I am Mrs. Mullen with a burning right eye, who is old and now has no relaxing music for my facial. And then. This.

“I could sing for you, if you would like.”

Dear God. What in the wide world of spa treatments is going on here? HELLS to the no I don’t want you to sing to me. Wait. Do you know any White Snake? Oh forget it.

ONCE AGAIN, I tried to get back into a relaxed state, but with no music to transport me to the beach, a burning right eye and the knowledge that I am O-L-D it was far more difficult. I tried listening to the fountain outside the door, but that made me have to pee, so I just laid there and hoped for the best.

The final process was the foot and hand massage with a nice cooling mask and I was determined to make the most of it.  She started mixing, I started relaxing and then I smelled a weird odor. Um. Excuse me. That isn’t cucumber.

“Is that," sniff, sniff, "CINNAMON I smell,” I asked.

“Uh. Huh. It helps lift your skin,” she replied.

Dude I am SO going to lift you. Just as I was thinking, won’t cinnamon sting my face, she applied the cinnamon and lighter fluid infused mask.

“This will burn for a few minutes,” she said as I watched flames shoot off of my cheeks. I wanted to shove my head in an ice bucket. My toes were curling and my entire body was stiff and if that damn thing hadn’t hardened so fast around my lips, I would have told her a few things about her facial. 

By the time she removed the mask, I was so relieved I forgot to be angry. She applied the final creams, told me she was finished, THANK THE GOOD LORD, and left the room.  I got dressed, turned the lights up a bit and looked at my face in the mirror. SWEET JESUS. I looked like I had put my face in a bucket of acid. Small children will run from me, pit bulls will cower and my own children won’t even recognize me.

Defeated, I wiped a tear out of my right eye, put on my sunglasses and walked to my car wincing from the sunlight like a vampire awake in the day and all I could think was. A face lift would have been less painful.