the second part

I have these bags under my eyes that I inherited from my father, who inherited them from my grandmother. They're these swollen semicircles demarcated by a thin, sunken border, inexplicably bluish green. Hideous, right?

And they've gotten worse as I've gotten older. Now I'm really thankful that I wear glasses, because the right shape frame goes a long way toward hiding the mess and makes me look pretty normal again.

One night not long ago, I had a dream that I was complaining about them to Alex in a very agitated state--like, Oh my god, these things on my face, is the world coming to an end, or what?--which is pretty much what happens during my waking hours and is disappointingly more realistic than dreamlike. Dreamlike would be, I was complaining about the bags under my eyes and at the same time, the trees started dancing around me, and a giant turd floated through the sky, and then we were sitting in the living room, but it wasn't really our living room....Are you asleep yet?

So in the dream, Alex looked at me kindly and said, "Those? Don't worry about those. They're known and loved." Which was pretty awesome. Go, Alex! And if that isn't a tag line, I don't know what is.

Still, saying "known and loved" would have sounded like I was full of myself and might have turned away the millions of readers who would otherwise enjoy this blog on a daily basis. So I modified it a little and came up with a charmingly self-deprecating tag line. It just draws you in, doesn't it?