It's my birthday and I'll blog if I want to...

Forgive me if I've written this blog before...it seems like I have but I cannot find it in the archives...could be that I am getting old. And on that note!!!

August is birthday month! August 13th kicks off birthday week! The weekend before or after the birthday is birthday weekend! August 20th is THE DAY! The rest of August is still birthday month! Yay!! Anyone who has been friends with me for any length of time knows that I announce on August 1st we have entered birthday month and will get reminders all through out the month as to where we stand right now. For anyone who is new they get a little confused or bemused by this proclamation. The first thought is how spoiled I must be to expect birthday treatment all month. Then how lucky I must be to actually get it!

But I am here to let you all in on a little secret...the reason why I get the birthday treatment I want all month is because it's really pretty easy to deliver. All I want for my birthday is a birthday wish. Just tell me happy birthday and I am happy. Tell me I look young and I am happier. Tell me I look young and thin and I am ecstatic! That's it. Pretty simple really. Now, I won't turn down a piece of cake, or a birthday drink or a card, but I don't need them.

Usually on the birthday weekend, what ever day we choose to celebrate the day, this year it will be Saturday because my birthday happens to fall on Saturday, the boys and I eat out someplace cool and go to a movie. Or two. Or one memorable year, three. I love going to the movies. I am not sure if we will do a movie this year. I need to see what is out there that I want to see, maybe "Crazy, Stupid Love" maybe I will be ornery and make C watch the new rom-com with Anne Hathaway that the couple meet every year on the same day and it follows them through a few decades....not because I especially want to see it but because it's my birthday so I can be ornery and get away with it.

And that for me is the beauty of birthday month, week, weekend, day. I get to use it as an excuse for being goofy. For deciding I want pie for dinner. For getting to see three movies in a day. I don't need anything else. Except a birthday wish. And the whole young and thin part is always good. Don't forget that.

So how did birthday month come to pass? It has been an evolution. I didn't have my first actual birthday party just for me until I was 19, and then it was really just an excuse for Brent's Navy buddies and my work buddies to get together and drink like we did most every weekend anyway. (Non-alcoholic beverages, of course, anything else would have been illegal!). Anyway...when I was very little we spent every August in Iowa so my birthday was marked during a Sunday dinner with the whole family while we were back there. Pretty much meant I got a cake to add to the meal. Which when you are three is pretty much all you need. When you are 9 or 10 it starts to bug you a little.

Still just happy to have a cake at 3.

Then after my grandfather died and we stopped going back to Iowa every August my birthday got lumped into the "August Celebration" group. When you have a big family you don't tend to celebrate each event separately, you group them. For August that meant my birthday, Aunt Lucille's birthday, Todd's birthday and John's birthday. There was a family dinner. Creamed tacos, homemade ice cream and German Chocolate Cake, cards were passed around wishes were given and that was that. Again, as an adult it's not so terrible. As a preteen it was the pits. All I wanted was a day that was mine. I shared a room with my sister, my clothes were hand me downs, even my birthday was a group event.

There were a few birthdays that stuck out. When I turned 13 my sister talked my parents in to letting me come visit her in Dallas where she was living at the time. This was the trip I learned about the "Magic Birthday" this was the birthday where you turned the same age as the date of your birthday. My sister's roommate and best friend Denise Kitch and I shared a name and a birthday. And this was her Magic Birthday year. She had gone home to Albuquerque to celebrate and had had a big party and now back in Dallas we had another party at she and Susan's apartment. Not one but two parties? Sign me up!

My sixteenth birthday was one for the books as well. I got to live my own John Hughes movie moment...not the one sitting on a table with Jake Ryan over a birthday cake...but the part where no one in your family remembers it's your sixteenth birthday. Remember the whole family celebration thing? Well it was the week before so as far as everyone was concerned my birthday was done. And to top things off it was the first day of school Junior year. Matt Barnes, who I shared a birthday with, and I decided that spending our 16th birthday in school just wasn't okay so we took off after lunch and spent the rest of the day goofing off.

Matt and I spent our 18th birthday together as well. Though that was a funnier story. I was working at Schlotzsky's at the time and Matt stopped by on our birthday to see me. When he found out that Brent and I didn't have anything big planned he made me promise to come to he and Matt Bishop's house for his party. So after work ends Brent and I head over to the Matts place and there is a BIG party in full effect. There is a cake and very nicely done it has Happy Birthday Matt! on it and then under it obviously added later was and Denise. It was super sweet. Now we are walking around the party talking to people and realizing that there are only a handful of people that we know, most of them are new friends of Barnes and Bishop. I happened to walk in to the kitchen and over hear this conversation..."I cannot believe that Matt would be so awful to add another man's name to his cake like that!" "I know...who even is this Dennis person? Doesn't he think it would hurt Matt's feelings?" (the trick when friends with a couple who share the same name is understanding which Matt is which, which is why my friends and I usually called them Barnes and Bishop but these two knew which Matt was which so were just using Matt) So anyway...I got to step in..."umm, Hi...it's not Dennis, it's actually Denise. Matt and I have been friends for a long time and we happen to share a birthday. He and Bishop thought it would be fun to have me over for our 18th birthday so here I am" After they realized I wasn't some horrible man stealer in there trying to break up the Matts they were very pleased to have me at the party.

My Magic Birthday we spent in Idaho Falls. Brent actually had the day off so that was a treat. He bought me 20 rose and we got dressed up and went out to dinner. I can't remember where, there weren't a lot of very fancy choices in Idaho Falls, but I do remember it was a lovely evening.

Twenty on the 20th!

For my 21st birthday we had to go to three different places to buy alcohol before I could get anyone to card me. And then I had to act really nervous at the register to prompt the cashier to ask!

Then C came along and I stopped celebrating at all. I sort of felt like birthdays were done for me now. Now it was time to celebrate his birthdays and I never had really gotten in the habit of what to do to celebrate anyway. So that is where the whole, "just tell me happy birthday" came from. But people don't really want to just do that for you if they are used to big celebrations. So birthday weekend started. Dinner out, a movie, something fun that you picked. And that was good. I have also had some fun surprises from friends and work colleagues.

My boss at Garcia Automotive, the great soulless one, and I shared a birthday and her husband was one to make a big deal out of it every year. When he found out that I don't celebrate he was shocked...but then he discovered that I loved the cherry cheese strudel from Zinn's bakery and so every year he would bring one in to the office for me. I think I appreciated that more than his wife appreciated what ever expensive piece of jewelry she got that year.

At L/N Jen's first day was the birthday celebration for me and our bookkeeper. We started with mimosas at 9 and never stopped drinking. One of my first conversations with Jen I was distracted my newly polished toenails and had to admit to her that I was more than a little drunk and would be spending the day that way. She laughed and I think it set our friendship off on a good note!

The year I wasn't eating milk products my friend (and at the time client) Scott and his office assistant threw me a non-dairy sundae party. They had gone out and bought almond ice cream and soy ice cream and non-dairy whipped cream and toppings and we ate so much I thought we were going to explode!

My 40th birthday Brent posted on his wall, on my wall, as his status, to all of my e-mail addresses and as a text message "Happy Birthday, you look much too young to be 40" As all of the notifications kept rolling in I had to laugh! This was exactly what I had told him I wanted for my 40th birthday, for people to tell me I looked much too young to be 40!

My birthday has evolved through the years for sure. I love birthday month and I have always hated to see it draw to a close, but now even more so. See, my birthday marks the end of August, and the end of August means C is headed back to school. Though it won't be as hard this year as it was last year, it will still be tough. Birthdays mark the passing years, the way things change, and nothing makes you notice the changes more than your kids growing up. I know eventually I will celebrate my birthday without him home at all. sigh.....

But for now, it's birthday week, in birthday month, close to birthday weekend and my actual birthday...so everyone all together...."Happy Birthday you look so young and thin!"

Rest in Peace....

In the Harry Potter books J.K. Rowling created Deathday Parties. It is a day for the characters in her books that are ghosts to celebrate their deaths. Rancid food, other ghosts, stories about how you died sort of like a birthday party just more depressing. Usually these are attended only by other ghosts. The living tend to find them a bit gloomy and well, smelly. Or at least she thought she created Deathday Parties. In fact Elvis fans have been throwing a Deathday Party every year for the past 34. They actually celebrate all week culminating in a candlelight vigil on the 16th. I don't think they have rotten peanut butter and banana sandwiches though.

When I was in my early teens I have a strong memory of coming home from camp one summer. We had been away all week and as we were unloading the bus in the church parking lot Caryn got the news that her hamster had died while we were away. She turned around locked eyes with Todd and spat..."Nothing good happens on August 16th. My hamster died, Elvis died and you were born!" I laughed and I have never forgotten his birth-date or her venom!

My mother is a crier. You could always guarantee she would cry when she would pick you up at the airport, or drop you off. When there was something that made her sad or made her happy. At funerals, at weddings, at baby showers. She just is a crier. I am the same way. A Kleenex commercial can just wreck me. But there were two times in my childhood when I remember my mother crying and it wasn't just an, "oh there she goes again," moment but a true, "oh no!" moment. One was when my Aunt Dorothy called to say Grandpa was dying. Mom curled up in Dad's lap and just cried. I can still see them in my head. The chair Dad was sitting in, how small my mother looked in his lap, one of my father's hands patting her back the other shooing us kids out of the room. The other time I remember my mother crying like that was when Elvis died.

When I was 5 the Aloha from Hawaii concert was broadcast. I can remember watching it with my brother and sister and my mother. And my mother singing along to every song. Years later when I visited Graceland I stopped in front of the display that showcases the American Eagle jumpsuit he wore during that special and was transported back to sitting on my knees in front of the television watching him sing and dance and how happy it made my mother to watch. I think Dad was at work, or just not interested. He was not, as one of my friend's father was, jealous of Elvis or of the fact that my mother loved him, but he wasn't as crazy about him as she was either. I think he was just amused by it all.

When I was teenager I remember asking my mother why she had loved Elvis so much and I remember her saying that he was just a beautiful man to look at, but he also seemed like someone that needed taken care of. And of course she just loved his music. Now as a teenager the images I remember most of Elvis were the later years, the bloated Elvis. The drug addled shell of what he used to be. I also remembered Saturdays spent watching all of the Elvis movies that seemed to be on constant replay when I was little. Not genius work, but a lot of fun when you are a preteen and not yet jaded by how cool you think you are. He seemed like a giant goofball in those flicks. Not like someone that you would maintain a lifelong crush on.

But because my mother loved Elvis I knew all of his songs. And because my mother loved Elvis I loved Elvis as well. And when I got a little older and started reading more about him and seeing other pictures of him I got it. He was a beautiful man. And he did project an air of vulnerability about him. And when you read about the things they used to do in Memphis, racing go-carts down the street in front of Graceland, going in and buying new cars for everyone just because it sounded like fun, and yes even the drug issues later I think you get a picture of a man who really did have a childlike aspect to him and I think those of us who aren't usually attracted to the "bad boys" still have a soft spot for the ones that need us. And Elvis projected that feeling of needing someone.

Well that, and he was beautiful to look at.

So more time went by and I became a bigger Elvis fan as I got older. As I mentioned, I have been to Graceland. I loved it. The boys humored me and all of my oohing and aahing but Brent admitted that being in Graceland, seeing all of the memorabilia, the fans, that that was the first time he realized how big Elvis really was in his prime. He was a superstar like we don't really make now days. It was just different. He was new, he was interesting, he lived a large life and he made a splash.

For those of you that are friends with me on Facebook you know I kicked off Elvis week this year by posting a favorite song and I had planned on posting something every day. Laying in bed on day 3 of Elvis week before going to sleep I started to think about things I might post for the rest of the week. And I thought about my mother and her love for Elvis. And then the date struck me. August 16th. It will be the two month anniversary of my dad's death as well. I started to cry and lost any chance at real sleep for that night. My mother might have loved Elvis but she LOVED my father. And I guess that's why he was never jealous over her crush on The King. He knew that he had come first (they were married in 1952, Elvis' first hit was in 1956) and that he continued to come first in my mother's heart.

Well that and my father was a beautiful man to look at.

  Dad and Mom 1952

Rest in peace to the love of my mother's life. Oh and to you too, Elvis.

Memories...misty watercolor memories...

Recently I was added to a group on Facebook called..."Remember in Albuquerque when..." it's basically a big nostalgia group. Albuquerque is a fairly good sized city but it still has a small town feel. Basically everyone is in your business and there isn't a lot to do... The group went from 30 people last Friday, to 300 people on Saturday, to 3000 on Sunday and now 15,104. Amazing growth. And of course a lot of repeated posts.

Anyway...as people are posting what they remember about growing up in Albuquerque a few things started to strike me. First off we New Mexicans are all about the food! Fully 75% of the posts the first few days were about restaurants! And the same restaurants kept getting mentioned over and over. The standard New Mexican food ones you would expect and then things like Heidi Pies and Furr's Cafeteria, the nickel square scoop ice cream at Thrifty's. There was a lot of, "oh my gosh!" from me. Things I hadn't thought of in years.

Then there were the places we all seemed to go to. Skating at Skate Ranch, Iceland Bowl or Rainbow Gardens; dancing at Club Rio, The Ritz or Denim and Diamonds; throwing coins in the fountains at Winrock (a mall that no longer has fountains); hanging out at The Rock House or Hidden Park. And as I read all of these posts, a lot of them by people my age, I started to realize something. These are the people in the background of my life and I am the person in the back ground of theirs.

You know those people, the ones eating at the table next to you in the restaurant. You don't know them, but there they are. The group celebrating a birthday party while you are out skating with your friends. That kid you met that one time at a party in high school but since you didn't go to the same school you never saw them again...those people.

And I want to write something deep here about how we are all living our lives in our own bubble but all of those bubbles are floating along together and you never know when they are going to float past each other again...but I've really got nothing...

Nothing except a mad craving for blue corn enchiladas from Baca's and a slice of mile high strawberry pie from Heidi's Pies that is....

I'd like to see them in concert....

Last night we went to see George Thorogood and The Destroyers in concert. We set up our blanket on the zoo lawn in the same place we set up to watch Big Bad Voodoo Daddy just a few days before. Nice spot, in the shade, side view of the stage just missed the lower right corner, but still good view. On the path so it's easy to get in and out for food, drinks, bathroom...ready to go! The thing with the zoo concerts is that it's open seating so you get there early. The lawn opens at 5, the show doesn't start until 7, but it's okay, the weather is lovely the people watching is usually entertaining. The time passes quickly.

And let me tell you, the people watching last night was on a completely different plane than the two concerts we saw earlier this year! The people coming to see George were a little different...okay a lot different...than those that went to go see Marc Cohn and Mary Chapin Carpenter and a lot different than the group we had been with to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. One of the first things we noticed was that there were a lot fewer kids there. The second thing we noticed was the line to the beer and wine tent was much longer! Then of course we got to watch the effect of those longer lines! There was the friendly drunk who would pop his teeth in and out of his head and who had "made friends" with a gentlemen and his girlfriend earlier in the evening and kept finding them no matter how sneaky they tried to be. It got so the girlfriend looked a little worried everytime she walked by the beer tent...never knew when he was going to pop out at her!

There was the couple next to us that came to the concert already a little toasty, added a bottle of wine and few beers to that as well as what ever it was in her dropper bottle in her purse. When Brent noticed the Poison tattoo on her arm and realized she must be about our age we both had a moment of thanks for living a relatively clean life. She looked at least 15 years older than us. There was security wandering around with their measuring sticks. You can bring sand chairs but they can only be 30 inches high. They are big on not obstructing the view of the people behind you. Two gentlemen sitting to our left had to take their too high chairs back to the high chair area.

Then The Stone Foxes from San Francisco took the stage. I know their name because they announced it before every song they did. Ah, the life of an opening act, they weren't bad at all but the biggest applause they got was when they left the stage and announced that George would be out soon. You always sort of wonder if they are thrilled just to be on the road playing or if it gets to be too discouraging to know you aren't who anyone is there to see. But like I said, they weren't bad. Young from what I could see so just starting out.

Then the main event! Yay! George Thorogood and the Destroyers took the stage....or at least I think they took the stage. I cannot guarantee they took the stage as this was now my view...

All of the fuss over chair backs that were too high and they let people stand in the walkway so the entire back half of the lawn where we were had no site-line to the stage. When I stood up I could see the very tops of the band's heads and parts of the video screens. Being taller than me when C stood up he could see most of everything. But of course if we were standing then the people up above us on the hill who did still have a partial view of the stage would have no view at all. So it was either sit and see nothing or stand and block someone else. Very very frustrating.

GT sounded good, but not a lot different than he does on CD so without the connection of being able to watch him the energy you normally get from a live show just wasn't there. Between not being able to see, Brent having to work early this morning and deciding that leaving at the same time as a bunch of our drunkest friends wasn't really a great idea we ended up leaving during the second act, which we never do. I would imagine he probably played for another 20 minutes that we missed, but we made it home safely and due to a funny incident on the max (I'll write about it later) much of the frustration drained away. As we were leaving I told Brent I would really like to SEE GT in concert someday.

Which reminded me of another band I would love to see in concert some day.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes played in Portland a few years ago. I've been a MFGG for a long time and was really excited about the show. It was St. Patrick's day and I went to the concert with a few girls from work. The four of us went out for drinks before the show and took a cab to the venue. One of the four of us had a few more drinks pre-function than the rest of us, then had a few more drinks at the venue, then had a few more just to top those off...then it got bad. She disappeared to the bathroom about 10 minutes in to the show and didn't come back... I got worried and went looking for her...and spent the rest of the evening holding her hair back while she vomited in to the sink.

Now, I am a sympathy vomiter so generally I am not the one to hang out with someone who is sick. I also was not close to the woman who was sick. And by not close I would say, she hated me and I wasn't a huge fan of hers. But (remember the whole blog series on this time period) I couldn't let who she was change who I was. And I am not the sort of person who can leave someone while they are sick and not try to help out. That and the fact that she liked to play "true confessions" while she was drunk and kept trying to confess to wrongdoings that she needed to not say a word about. So every time she would start to cry and say..."If you guys only knew what I did..." I would hush her and tell her she just needed to be quiet.

How did I know she needed to be quiet? Because I knew what she wanted to confess. The email issue I told you all about a long time ago where emails would get caught in the Spam filter. I knew way too much about her from those added to giving her a ride home the week before from a work function where she had...surprise surprise...had too much to drink and she had played "true confessions" that night as well. After hearing her start on the first night I knew where she was going and told her point blank, "You need to keep your mouth shut and not say another word." She did that night but was ready to open up again a few days later. Some people just shouldn't drink.

So anyway, the three of us who weren't drunk off our asses still got to spend a majority of the concert tending to someone who was. I stayed with her the whole time while my two friends offered to sit with her and let me out to see the concert. Not being willing to risk her talking about things that would damage her reputation and muck things up at work I would decline. At one stretch she was laying on the bathroom counter, I was holding her hair, Jenny was patting her forehead with a damp cloth and Marie was rubbing her back...the door opened and you could hear the opening blasts of "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" and I turned to my two friends and said..."It sure would be fun to see them in concert someday." It became a joke among the three of us for a long long time.

So now I've added another band to that list...I wonder if they would ever do a concert together? And if I could get good seats? And make sure the people I went with stayed sober....

Maybe I should just stick to listening to them on my iPod...

You're so vain....

This is my vanity blog. I don't mean the whole having a blog thing, though that's pretty much a vanity project as well, I mean this blog is about vanity. Specifically my own. So though the nature of blogging is that this is always all about me, this one is even more all about me than usual. Just thought I would warn you heading in.

I am pretty average looking. In fact I am so average looking that when people meet me they generally tell my how much I look like someone else. Their best friend from 3rd grade or their cousin or their best friend from 3rd grade's cousin. Sort of the girl next door face. Growing up my sister made sure to let me know, repeatedly, that she was the pretty one in our family. The blond with the blue green eyes. I had dirt brown hair and shit brown eyes. If we were out together and a boy took a double take look she would say, "yeah, I look good today."

My best friend through middle school and high school was extremely pretty. And we were labeled the pretty one and the smart one. Which wasn't fair to either one of us really. She wasn't dumb and I wasn't ugly, when you are a teenage girl being called the smart one you pretty much assume that you aren't pretty and if you are the pretty one then you must not be smart.

I did have a few things going for me. One I had nice boobs and I got them early enough that I learned the power in a good set of boobs much earlier than most girls. If you ever doubt the power that a cleavage shot has over a straight man, pay attention to your facebook feed and see how many grown up adult males fall for the scams over and over and over just because they use the promise of being able to see a woman's breasts if they click the link. Powerless.

Another thing I had was a good sense of humor. I would use humor about my looks (either going extremely positive or extremely negative) to keep focus off of what I really felt about how I looked. There aren't a lot of people who realized how self conscious I was. Those of you who read this blog do.

But my best feature through high school was my skin. I didn't break out. Never had an issue until I got pregnant with C. Then my whole body went crazy, developed new allergies, changed shoe sizes, grew another inch in height and broke out. But the skin cleared up again when he was a few months old and I went back to clear if pale skin.

Then in my mid 30s my skin freaked out. Completely and totally freaked out. And I freaked out right along with it. I went from feeling like a fairly average looking person to feeling like a complete freak. I would leave the house thinking I looked okay, that everything was under control and covered and either someone would make a comment or I would catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and see nothing but the break out for the rest of the day. Any picture of myself from that time period through today that is the first thing I check. How does my skin look? And because my self image, the one that was formed when I was a teenager is not of someone with bad skin there are still times when a photo or a comment would take me by surprise.

At the beginning I tried everything. I tried every skin care regime that was out there, I tried dietary changes, Milk causes breakouts? Okay, dairy free for over a year! Visceral manipulation will ease the stress on my liver and clear the toxins from my body? Okay, go ahead an massage my internal organs! If I could find a positive review I tried it. My doctor recommended tea tree oil. I used that. Online forums said Pro-Active was the way to go, I tried that. And almost everything worked, for a little while...then like the Borg of acne my skin would adapt and over come. And it did over come. It over came so much of my life and my self thought that I should be a little ashamed. And I sort of am. But I am more vain.

See this picture?

I can tell you a lot about that day. It was KUPL's big summer concert. I was helping run the KFC VIP tent and we were all having a ball. I got to hear a ton of fabulous music that day. I got to meet Wynonna Judd and she was just as sweet as could be. It was a really fun day. But there are two things from that day that mar it for me and they are both about my skin.

The first is I was standing talking to two women who had won tickets to be in the KFC VIP tent for the event. They were sharing what a wonderful time they were having and how special we had all made them feel. This is the sort of thing you live for as a marketer. You know that they will tell everyone they know how great it was and that was the whole point. But then one of the women said to me, "I can help you with your face." Excuse me? You know it's polite to ignore my face right? So in the space of 5 minutes I went from on top of the world to feeling like the world was staring at my face. She was a massage therapist who specialized in visceral manipulation. I told her that sounded interesting, she asked "may I?" and I said sure...then she stuck her hand in my side under my rib cage and lowered my liver. Yep, you read that right. Visceral manipulation. Moving your viscera (internal organs) around. BUT...then she pulled out a mirror and handed it to me and I watched the red from my face fade. The lesions were still there but the red was fading. Amazing.

The next part is that picture. When I got that picture back from the radio station you would think all of my memories of how great that day was would come flooding back right? But instead all I could see was how bad I looked. For a very long time I wouldn't even show anyone the picture. Then I realized that nobody was looking at me, they all wanted to see Wynonna. But one thing I did when that picture came back was call the massage therapist and schedule a series of appointments for the next 6 months. Move all of my organs around...just clear up my face!

Now many of you are wondering why I did all of this other stuff but never went to a dermatologist. Good question. There are a few reasons. One is that I really thought I could fix it myself. Enough research, enough trying of different things and I could control it. If I went to the dermatologist I was admitting it was a really big problem and I didn't want to do that.

Also, you know those parents that insist on a prescription when they take their kid to the doctor? I am the antithesis of that parent. If C was prescribed anything when he was younger I questioned the doctor 6 ways to Sunday to make sure he really had to have it. I don't medicate myself unless I am not able to function. Fevers burn up what is causing you to be sick, don't take a pill. Painkillers should only be used if you can't function without them, otherwise they are just masking what is wrong so you can't monitor it. And I don't react well to most drugs. They make me off my game. So I don't take them. All of my experiences with dermatologists through friends going was you were going to get a pill and your skin was going to get worse before it got better. I fought it tooth and nail.

So what led me there this time? Parenting. C's has struggled with acne for the past few years and this summer I realized it was getting worse and as much as I was willing to struggle for the answer for myself for my kid I want it fixed. I don't want him to start to define himself by his skin or scars. Even though he doesn't seem to be any where near as vain as I am, I didn't want to risk it. So I made an appointment for him and one for myself.

Turns out there was nothing I could do on my own. It's hormonal. Which makes sense since the only other time I broke out was while I was pregnant. Hit my mid 30s and the hormone balance in my body shifted and with it my skin shifted as well. So no matter what I tried on my own I couldn't have fixed it. With C we are trying a combination of things to get him past the hump of time he will have issues. Also hormonal, just a different set of hormones and his are on the ramp up stage while mine are in the ramp down.

And yes, we are on prescriptions and creams and the warning is that it will get worse before it gets better. So I guess the point of this blog is to come clean and put a new face forward. (sorry couldn't resist) But more importantly I just felt like I needed to talk about it. So you all got to read about it. I am hopeful it works and we both are clear and fabulous by Christmas time. Best. Gift. Ever.