Lazy Germophobe

I always internally scoffed at skin “serums” and the suckers who paid a premium for them. You can buy a face cream for $8, but call it a serum and it goes for $24—for a fraction of the amount. (And that’s the cheap drug store serum.) What a racket! Who would fall for this scam? Haha! Then I read about hyaluronic acid. Google it if you’re unfamiliar—there are too many articles to link. This sounded quite legitimate to me. This substance naturally found in the skin attracts and retains water, making it an excellent moisturizer. Like everything else in the body, we lose it as we age. But it’s OK, because you can buy a serum with hyaluronic acid in it! The reviews are amazing! So I did it. I bought Neutrogena Hydro Boost because it was only $20, I could get it at Rite Aid, and it’s “#1 dermatologist recommended.” It smells and feels wonderful. It’s lovely to use. The thing is, I still look 49. See, I made a strategic error: As previously noted, I do not possess ...

On an early episode of the TV show The West Wing, Josh steps in to do a press conference after White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg has emergency root canal and can’t speak properly (in one of Allison Janney’s more hilarious performances). Josh starts by asking a reporter if he really wants his one permitted question to be “that stupid,” and it goes downhill from there. If you’ve got three minutes, it’s worth a look . I keep trying to start this blog and asking myself, do I really want my first post to be that stupid? I’m struggling to choose a topic. I’d like it to be neither boring nor controversial. I asked my eleven-year-old, and he thinks that as a stay-at-home/work-at-home mom, I should start with parenting; parenting wasn’t even on my list of twenty-six possible article topics! I mean, does parenting really need its own category? It’s as inextricably linked with my identity as it is entwined with several of my brainstormed blog ideas—rural life, getting older, cook...