Dear Kid,

I admit it. I have bad habits.

I don’t always get 8 hours of sleep. I don’t floss my teeth every day (job security for my dentist). I watch too much bad TV. I rarely say no to chocolate. And I generally don’t take my makeup off at night.

I am not recommending any of these habits. They’re my bad habits, and if you choose to borrow them you do so at your own risk.

Not taking off makeup isn’t really smart. Makeup can clog pores and lead to acne and all sorts of other rotten stuff. Except it doesn’t on my face. There’s no secret except not wearing too much makeup and good genetics. (Thanks mom!)

I generally take off my makeup from yesterday in the morning. Only I didn’t today.

But I have a really good excuse: I was studying chemistry.

More specifically, I was reading a blog about chemistry (sounds more believable already, doesn’t it?).

I hereby pronounce myself the newest fan of Yvette d’Entremont at scibabe.com and here’s the article I was reading.

The thing is, Yvette is not a fan of people who make things up and claim they are talking science.

I’m pretty sure she’ll be ok with my nonsense since when I make things up I say so (which is most of the time) and when I make things up and don’t say so I generally attribute them to Mrs. Joe Neanderthal and if you can’t figure out that I don’t have a direct research line to Mrs. Joe then you have bigger problems than worrying about whether she invented grilled cheese or not.

Anyhoo, Yvette the Science Babe was debunking some of the things (and by “some of the things” I mean every dang word) written by Vani Hari, AKA the Food Babe, who is to science as I am to morning exercise—we’ve heard of each other, but have absolutely no plans to hang out.

Apparently, Hari is marching against any and all chemicals in food. Which is weird since (as I understand it) all food is chemical. Yvette wondered if anyone had told Hari about dihydrogen monoxide. (See, I told you there was chemistry involved.)

In case it is too early for your brain cells to be awake, I will spare you the embarrassment of asking: dihydrogen monoxide is water. H2O. The good stuff.

It was a long article and consequently I had no time to remove yesterday’s makeup with dihydrogen monoxide or makeup remover. So I had to commit yet another sin and slather on today’s layers over yesterday’s. It’s terrible, but I like to think of it as building up an archeological dig for later makeup removal. The experts tell you to layer fragrance, so I say why not borrow from the experts?

The truth is, I’ll have dark circles under my eyes all day. But since I plan to go around saying dihydrogen monoxide as many times as possible, I’m hoping people attribute it to my brilliance (she must have been up working all night) rather than to my bad habits.

Love, Mom