Both times that I have been With Child, I have gotten anonymous emails and comments that let me know that I'M NOT FOOLING ANYONE WHY AM I NOT ADMITTING THAT THOSE ARE EXTENSIONS YOU'RE SUCH A LIARRRRRR.

(I've never had extensions before. I just had really good hair when I was pregnant. I am so sad that this appears to be a pregnancy-specific situation.)

(Oh wait - I sort of had extensions. Not real ones; clip-in ones that I used to wear when I went to places like bars circa 2009, and that frequently ended up in my purse by the end of the evening, perhaps most notably on the night when Kendrick and I first kissed and he started to run his hands through my hair and I was all Ummmmm ONE SECOND PLEASE, and ran to the bathroom, whereupon I unclipped my fake hair and stuffed it into my bag.)

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Yesterday was one of those mornings: I couldn’t find the lunchboxes, and made “the wrong kind of breakfast,” and everyone refused to put on their shoes until the eight millionth time I “asked” (screamed at) them to, and I definitely did not brush my hair or put on makeup and mayyyyybe left the house in the same sweatpants and sweatshirt that I’d worn to sleep in the night before because I was already super late for an appointment and making a cup of coffee was vastly more important than being clean and/or presentable, so that was that.

Anyway, I arrived at my dermatologist appointment (ON TIME, thanks to a straight stream of green traffic lights, woooo), and sat down on the examining table. When she walked in, she did a literal double-take at me. And do you know what she said???

At the end of May, I turned 36 years old. I suppose you could still say I’m in my “mid-30s,” but 40 (40!) is so close I can almost touch it, and I have a feeling I’m going to blink and it’ll have arrived, complete with all the wonderful and terrible things that come with for-real middle age (wisdom, wrinkles, and so on).

I’m not a big believer in resolutions because to me resolutions are basically just ways to siphon guilt directly into your brain, but on my birthday, I decided I wanted to make some changes to how I treat myself (which is historically not especially well, as both my best friend and my therapist could tell you; they certainly tell me all the time). Even I can resolve to do something small - anything - to care for myself every day. A few minutes of meditation. A playdate with my children where no phones are invited along. The permission to take a few minutes each morning and night to care for my skin. Vitamins.

My skin has been a trouble area for me for the past couple of years; I’ve written about this extensively. I’ve tried various strategies to handle the one-two punch of having some parts of my face be broken-out and red, while others are Sahara-level dry, and what I’m finding is that for me, there is no one-size-fits-all solution: the only constant is that I have to pay attention to what’s going on with my skin; how it feels today.