25 September 2006 Monday

Eyes

When your eyes look like you feel, or worse

If you’ve been up really late, watching too much television/computer screen, or crying buckets, you’re left with unhappy-looking evidence on your face, generally in form of puffy/squinty/bruised eyes.
And then everyone asks you why and it’s rarely a cheerful/useful exchange, so usually preferably avoided, neh?

To alleviate the physical/aesthetic symptoms, the first and main thing to do is the cover the area around your eyes (specifically right beneath — the “bag” area) with vaseline or some other intensive cream lotion.. put all around your eyes except right on your eyelids cuz those are particularly senstivie.. and be careful about application because depending on what product you’re using, your eyes might not appreciate it being near them. A thick lotion with much vitamin E, or a non-menthol (or whatever they put in some of these lip balms) chapstick should also do this job well.
Ideally, put this on before you sleep so that it can seep in overnight and your symptoms will be minimized/unnoticeable by morning. Otherwise, put it on after you realize you have the symptoms.

Other less-often-employed-by-myself methods, but should also do quite well, are holding your face over hot steaming water (this should be calming also … don’t burn yourself or you’ll totally ruin the calming effect), and putting warm-almost-hot tea bags (probably don’t want them to be all drippy, and don’t want them scalding over your eyes. This should also be calming. Warm things are calming. Drink hot tea or something non-caffeine (unless you’re a regular coffee drinker, in which case.. too bad, but feel free to go with that), and let the steam curl around your face as you drink it.

Comfort foods at this point are generally pretty sensible to me. Ice cream does this job well.. so do chocolate chip cookies, blocks of dark chocolate, or maybe a bowl of good fruits or cheeseburger with mushrooms or something.

Good music is nice. Try not to aggravate eyes by expending them further on computer/tv screens.