The good news is that I likely don’t have vitiligo or hypopigmentation. Hooray! The bad news, however, is that when someone tells you to use hydrocortisone cream sparingly, you better fucking listen.

I’ve been using a prescribed steroid cream to combat my zombie face, which is considerably better these days. Unfortunately, I got used to slathering the cream on at the first sign of dry skin to avoid an outbreak of full-fledged zombism, and this reckless abuse of prescription drugs has left me with three noticeably lighter patches of skin on my face – one on each side of my chin, and between my eyes.

When I first saw the white patches, I didn’t think much of it. It was only when I realized they weren’t going away (and that there was more than one, all in areas that were the most undead of them all) that I started to panic and immediately jump to conclusions mostly involving leprosy and syphilis. After I calmed down and stopped trolling Web MD, I thought a little harder and realized the likely culprit was my gleeful overindulgence of steroid cream, a theory confirmed by additional internetting. I’m now slightly whiter in some places than I was a while ago, and it will be very interesting to see what Cuba’s sun will do to me – will my skin tone even out, or will I turn additional colours? Exciting!

I had a very productive weekend, becoming a honky aside. On Saturday I was up ridiculously early for an extremely fruitful jaunt to America – with Shan, Miranda and Heather, I stocked up on Trader Joe’s, travel items and gifts for Cubans, and all the dresses in the world (including an honest-to-Stan prom dress with so much tulle I couldn’t possibly pass it up). I had to repack for our trip when we got home, but as we were home by 5pm I had the whole evening to pack and repack to my heart’s content. I am now really, really ready for our trip. Let’s go!

On Sunday, my house will filled with estrogen as we crafted the afternoon away. I made more stock for Got Craft and finalized my awesome display – all I have left to do is make some signage and I’m all set. People often laugh at my anal retentive tendencies and gun-jumping ways, but I’m calm and have ample time to tackle whatever challenges the week may throw me because I don’t have to scramble to prep for next Sunday’s Epic Adventure. Yay!

I really wish I didn’t have this massive boner of a headache, though.

printer pinata!