Anyone Have Some Preparation H* I Can Borrow?

My concealer is working overtime these days.

Oh, who am I kidding. Concealer can’t help at all. It can’t possibly do battle with the kind of bags I have under my eyes. I’m just gonna straight up pull my face mask to my hairline and call it a day.

A routine of excessively late nights and wee early hours are definitely taking a toll. Well, they’re not MY late nights. I’m up because my kid’s up. Between hanging with friends and high school basketball, in which varsity games begin at an hour that makes anyone over age 40 cringe (that would be 7 p.m., mere seconds away from the time I naturally conk out on the couch and get this, they start that late even when they play teams in Phoenix ON A SCHOOL NIGHT) my beauty sleep is suffering. I can’t doze deep and long enough for shuteye to do any bodily and eye-baggily rejuvenation until after he’s home.

When No. 3 goes out and asks what time he should be home, I always waffle a little bit because my head says “8:45!” but my mind knows that midnight is more reasonable for teens who don’t even make their plans until 8:40 p.m. and then actually leave the house an hour later. Siiiiiiiiigh. What’s a mom to do? Aside from the obvious (schedule an appointment for some filler and a glycolic peel and perhaps a vial and a half of botox).

I don’t ever remember my parents waiting up for me when I was in high school. Of course, they ran a much tighter ship and forced me to be home much closer to their bedtime. True story: When I graduated from high school, I planned to go to a party in the neighborhood — .8 of a mile (yes, not even a whole mile) away and it was chaperoned by parents to boot — and my dad, despite my protests, said I had to be home at 10 p.m. I decided that was unreasonable and instead sashayed through the door at 10:10. Ha!

Of course, the joke was on me because the lights were out and they were already in bed by the time I got home and didn’t know about my active rebellion.

I mean, I want him to have fun, but I would also like to not have ulcers from worrying and not have the eye bags of a 98-year-old man who slept 27 minutes a night for most of his life.

I supposed I should be happy about the newfangled technology that exists to allow me to follow his whereabouts when he’s out, but that’s not always foolproof. Like the night of the aforementioned Tuesday game in Phoenix. The Find My Friends app had him in Gilbert well after 10 p.m. when we knew the teams should have been on the road. Come to find out, No. 3’s phone battery was almost dead so he shut it off. It might seem extreme, but I’m considering having a tracking device implanted in him. In fact, I’m going to start looking into that right after I’m done with my other internet research project —  investigating the effectiveness of hemorrhoid cream as an under eye treatment.  

*What?! Did you know that the active ingredient in Preparation H — phenylephrine — is also a decongestant? AND it can treat glaucoma? The more you know… WHOA! And, I just found a Preparation H TV commercial from the ’80s featuring a very fluffy Bryan Cranston. The internet is an amazing place.