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And in about one hour, I would be doing my own walk of shame. Head down, hope I don’t see anyone I know, rush home and stay there all weekend. And hope and pray that by Monday, the swelling has gone down!

When I got home later in the day, my husband, who has now become used to the bruising, redness, and peeling, took one look at me and winced, “Why do you keep doing that stuff to your face???!!!”

“Because in two weeks, it’s going to look great! Now, close all the drapes, my skin can’t be in sunlight!”

Oh, the things we do to stay young!

If you were to look at my social media algorithm, you will not see recipes or inspirational quotes. Rather, it will be all the latest anti-aging treatments and before, after and in-betweens videos of people my age enduring all the treatments.

Thankfully, my partner in crime in all things I do to stay young is Becky. Often, we will do a treatment together. And by together, I mean, I make her go first.

“Do it! It says on Tik-Tok that it will only hurt for fifteen minutes and then you will look 25 again!” And so being the good friend that she is, she is always willing to go first.

And once I know Becky didn’t die from the treatment or her face wasn’t paralyzed, I will go next.

Then together we will go home to our respective husbands and both of them will roll their eyes, cringe and complain about the money we spent, to which I always blurt out, “Becky did it too!”

We then spend the remainder of the weekend, in dark rooms, with ice-packs on our faces, popping Tylenol like candy, googling the potential horrific side-effects of whatever treatment we did and sharing them with each other. By Sunday, we will send selfies to each other just to make sure our swelling is comparable to the others and promise to never do this again!

Then come Monday, we head back to work, head held back high at this point, (with lots of concealer in the right spots of course), and together await all the youthful benefits coming our way soon.

When we were younger, Becky and I were the type of girls who would climb on the top of our parent’s roof, slathered in baby oil, holding a piece of cardboard with tinfoil next to our faces so we could tan faster and darker. We were relentless and intense!

Forty years later, it’s just a different type of intensity.

So intense, that a week after this treatment, I sent Becky a video of a woman literally crying as her face was being lasered — but she kept on doing it, through the tears and pain — and a month later she looked amazing.

“We need to do this!”

“I’m in. We might need to get a hotel room though. Brody and Jay won’t be able to handle it!”