Creases

Though I'm semi-furiously packing and cleaning (only two days left in this apartment) it's easy to get distracted by nonsense like old business cards, books you forgot you had, deciding whether or not to keep or chuck the plastic bags with a half cup of barley or lentils remaining, and then at some point I just stop being productive altogether. Even with a looming deadline, I spent my Saturday night watching the second half of the first season of Mad Men and finding and moving all of the Project Me-ish entries that somehow got sucked into Goodies First back where they belong even though no one on earth cares how I've organized my thoughts about Jeopardy or pashminas from 2006. There's no better time-waster, frankly.

One of the misplaced entries included a photo from when I turned 35. I looked good, though I doubt I thought so at the time. I was going to Aquavit for dinner. I still have the Target dress I was wearing, even though it was too big for bunch of years. It fits again now. The very obvious takeaway is that whatever moment you're in is the best even though you can only see it later. Though I may think I look like shit today, by my standards at 49 I will have been amazing on September 28, 2014.

Er, or not. Despite a brief blast of fall, the summer weather is still hanging on and that means mosquitoes. They've kept me up two nights this week with their buzzing and biting. Pulling the sheets up around my chin so that my only exposed flesh is my face just means that my cheeks, chin and forehead become their playground. What you're missing on Facebook is me deliriously posting photos at 2:30am of the mosquito I finally smashed, spraying my own blood onto my walls that now need to be cleaned (I need that deposit back). I'm not convinced that I don't have West Nile.

This is what a 42-year-old tired, makeup-less face looks like minutes after waking up to the aftermath of a mosquito attack. There's nothing overtly different, granted. What you might not be able to detect at first glance are the benefits of being bitten by bugs all night. Normally, I have a few middle-aged sheet creases that hold on for close to an hour but my face was swollen just enough to smooth them out. Most importantly, my least favorite facial feature, the under eye darkness/hollows (I just bought a new concealer last week, Tarte's Maracuja Creaseless, out of desperation because it's supposedly like spackle) were eliminated on the left side of my face where I'd been bitten at the intersection of under eye and cheekbone. The two sides are very different, no?

There's got to be something to this. Like small doses of viruses creating vaccines or discovering penicillin in mold, mosquito venom clearly holds the key to youthful skin. I simply need to train the insects to land only on select planes of my skin.  Don't steal my million dollar idea, please.

Three hours and a little makeup later, and the sting is still doing its job.