I wish I was the kind of person who woke up an hour before the rest of the household to make coffee and lunches and whatnot, and be all showered and human by the time my kids emerged from their rooms. Maybe I will be one day, but not today. Today, I am all about The Night-Before Hack, because it is during those hours after dinner and before bedtime that virtually everything gets done.

Want to know the real way I “get everything done” at night? I do it all at the same time. All of it. (OK, perhaps talking on the phone while reading a book, brushing my teeth and watering the plants is a tiny exaggeration - but only a tiny one.) But that’s not especially helpful advice - so here are some more specific ways I make things happen at night so that they don’t have to happen in the morning.

Summertime Splash (FYI if you're a Gray Malin fan: pre-orders for Escape just opened)

Over the past year, I've turned into an obsessive sunscreen-er...on my face. I'm extremely hit and miss with my body for completely obnoxious reasons, like not wanting to gunk up my necklace (and being too lazy to take the damn thing off and put it back on again post-sunscreen). Not wanting to get the tinted sunscreen that I use on my face on the edges of my shirt (and being too lazy to use different products on my face and on my body). Et cetera.

Then, as you may recall from yesterday's post, I went to see a skin specialist because I was 99.9% certain that my feet were going to fall off, and discovered that the tiny red bumps on my chest that I had assumed were bug bites of some sort (ohpleasegodnotfleas) were actually just...sun damage. Which shouldn't have surprised me, given that I've spent the past few months sort of actively ignoring the fact that my chest is starting to look, very simply...old. And wrinkly. And sort of rough in that way that people's skin looks when they've spent a few years or decades baking in UV light. This is also unsurprising, of course, because the chest is the part of the body (along with the hands) that usually ages the fastest on people, because it gets tons of sun exposure, and is rarely protected. I know all of this, and still did my best ostrich impression and pretended that the skin on my sternum would somehow, miraculously, inexplicably be...fine. Forever Young, and such.

I have been compensated by QVC for my participation. All opinions expressed are my own.

Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Elemis skincare products. I had, however, heard of their spas - they’re all over the world (London, Miami, Bangkok, etc), on luxury cruise lines and in fancy hotels and such, and they all sound lovely, but you know which ones sound loveliest? The ones that apparently exist in British Airways terminals - complimentary for first-class travelers, naturally. (My feeling is if you’re flying first-class you don’t really need a spa treatment quiiiiiite quite as much as, say, the 6’8” guy sitting in the aisle seat in the very back row next to the toilet, but just saying: it sounds like a nice way to travel.)

Anyway. I’m unlikely to make it to one of those spas anytime soon, but a couple of weeks ago Elemis’ 24/7 Super Skin 3-Piece Collection arrived on my doorstep as part of my collaboration with QVC, and they are (allllmost) as luxurious. The set contains Pro- Collagen Cleansing Balm (which smells incredible, btw) for cleansing morning at night, Pro-Collagen Marine Cream for AM hydration, and their brand-new Peptide4 Night Recovery Cream-Oil to use in the evenings.