Chick Wit: Saving face, trying not to look like a dog

I had never used any moisturizer on my face at night, but when I went to visit daughter Francesca in New York, both she and her roommate smeared cream all over their faces before they went to bed.

And their combined ages are still less than mine.

So I thought, I should do this. I should take a lesson from the kids. Maybe if I used a moisturizer at night, my face wouldn't look like a road map of wrinkles, with I-95 running parallel to the New Jersey Turnpike on my forehead. So I went home, dug some cream out of the closet, spackled my cheeks, and went to bed. Which is just when Little Tony the puppy trotted over to my pillow and sat on my face.

Whoever said you should use a night cream didn't have a dog who sleeps on their face.

To interrupt the story, I never had a dog sleep anywhere near my head, much less on my face. All my dogs always sleep at the foot of the bed, and it works out just fine. My feet are always warm, and I doze off listening to the rhythm of their contented snoring.

It's like Ambien, only with fur.

But Little Tony, the new black-and-tan Cavalier puppy, sleeps on my pillow, with his head resting on my cheek or my neck. I know it sounds weird, but it's cute, cozy, and fun. I highly recommend it if your social life is at an all-time low, too.

In any event, I forgot about this habit of Little Tony's as I put on the night cream, so when he plopped his puppy tushie on my cheek, it took me a second or two to understand the implications. And by the time I detached his butt from my face, stray black hairs clung to my cheek like a beard.

Not a good look for a single gal.

Of course, I didn't give up, as I need both smooth skin and warm puppy, so since then I've gone to bed with the night cream and Little Tony, craning my neck to keep his fur off my face, or my face off his fur, generally twisting and turning most of the night until we both fall into an exhausted, albeit glossy, sleep.

The plot thickened when Little Tony had the first of what would be three operations. As you may remember, the poor little guy had a mother who accidentally bit off his foreskin while she was trying to bite off his umbilical cord, which qualifies her as worst mom since Medea.

In any event, he needed an operation to reconstruct his foreskin, but it came out too big. So he had a second operation, but it came out too small. He just had his third operation, and this time it's just right.

It's like Goldilocks, only with, well, you get it.

Why this matters is that after each of these operations, he had to wear one of those plastic Elizabethan collars for dogs, shaped like a cone. He wears it for two weeks after every operation, and with three operations, he has spent six weeks of his young life in the plastic collar, or, as I call it, the Tony Coney.

So you know where this is going.

If you thought it was crazy to have dog face stuck to your night cream when you sleep, try wrapping that puppy in a plastic cone, slapping it on top of your face cream, and trying to catch 40 winks.

It's fun.

The only experience I've had like this happened ages ago, when I was in sixth grade, trying to clear up a case of adolescent acne by using Cuticura ointment. Please tell me I'm not the only person in the world who remembers old-school Cuticura. I went online before I wrote this and am astounded that the product still exists, though I'm sure it's improved.

It would have to be.

Back then, it was a round orange tin full of smelly, gooey, black-green gunk. Somebody told my mother it was good for pimples, but they must have been criminally insane. In retrospect, it was good for greasing axles. Yet I smeared it faithfully on my skin every night, reeking like a motor pool, and every morning my skin looked worse.

In any event, I digress. My fancy night cream is better than Cuticura, even though I get the occasional dog-hair sideburn. Two weeks later, I am happy but sleepless, and there's not a wrinkle on Little Tony.

So maybe it works.