So leprosy week has seemed to come to an end, more or less. No, I did not actually have leprosy, I just looked like it. Due to a lovely combo of pre-period severe acne coupled with a cold sore outbreak, I had (count 'em) 4 massive red, splotchy zit sites on my face and a lovely raw lower lip that went through various stages of scabbing. Oh, and half a dozen angry little red zit sites on my right lower neck, just to round it out.

It was highly attractive and led to me wishing I could lock myself in a bell tower for the duration. But there was homework to oversee, kids to pick up from school and feed, and a husband who only vaguely knows where the washing machine resides, so the bell tower idea was out.

I have managed to keep my face-to-face interactions with the rest of humanity to a minimum except for last Friday when I was forced to show my nasty face at the public library or forgo our weekend movies. I hadn't been in there in months and months, since hubby usually pops in to pick up/drop off stuff on his way home from work, but naturally it just didn't work that way last week. Because I looked like a dermatology experiment gone horribly wrong, of course.

There at the desk is one of the cheerful-nice librarians, who knows us all well. She commented how she hadn't seen me in soooo long while doing her best  not to stare at my eroding lower lip or my volcanic acne that even Cover Girl and Loreal could not so much as diminish. I muttered and avoided eye contact and wished the ground would swallow me whole. She did lighten the mood, however, when she laid out two of our reading choices side by side with a big flourish.

"I just had to chuckle when I see that this (points to Joe McKinney's 'Flesh Eaters' with the graphically decaying zombie on the front- come to think of it, I think I bore an uncanny resemblance to it at the time) goes home with this (points to cheery, sunny, Laura Ingalls Wilder's 'Little House in the Big Woods').

Bonus points to her for holding back on suggesting I also borrow 'So You've Got Flesh Eating Bacteria...Now What?' or 'When Your Face Is One Massive Infection- for Dummies'.

Now it's a week later, my zits have calmed down to a dull roar and my lip just looks a little irritated. I'm not a super-vain woman. I've even been known to run out of the house without brushing my hair because there just wasn't time to do so, but it was bad. Really bad. I thought that acne was for teenagers and as I generally only break out in cold sores a time or two a year in times of extreme stress, I don't know what the hell that was all about. I'm neither a teen nor under extreme stress and while I will get a few smaller pimples before my period, that was, like, 4 years of pre-period acne all lumped together. Is it too much to hope that I get a free pass on that for the next 6 months? Probably.

All I know is that if the 'Perfect Storm' of skin/visible health issues on my face could not converge all together at the same time ever again, I'd be okay with that. May next month be better, or movies at the library be damned, I'm hunkering down 'til it clears. Local public, you're welcome.