Can't Read My Mocha-Face: The Facial You Can Eat!

I've always had a thing for mornings.  I have fond childhood memories of my mom sneaking up her fingers in a spidery tickle-attack to wake me up on Halloween, and even dearer to my heart was the morning each year in the dead of winter (often while it was still dark in our southcentral Alaskan town) in which I eagerly popped out of bed like a weasel in an arcade, determined to finally unveil the Christmas presents I had drooled over and unwrapped over and over in my mind since The Beach Boys' Christmas cassette went into full rotation on the family stereo.  But even those ostensibly mundane Sundays, with their all-too-familiar wake-up call of laundry machines and my father clapping nervously to Bears games, hold a sacred spot in my heart.

It stands to reason that I've developed my love of mornings even more since my college days, when "mornings" meant checking facebook and getting ready to start the new day, full of only possibility and optimism, and not the 5:45 bitter awakening for another drowsy drudge through AP U.S. History I had become accustomed to in adolescence.

Ah, yes, mornings.

These days, in my freshly post-college life, most mornings bring some of the three best parts of the day: a hearty bowl of yogurt, a bold cup of coffee, and working up the energy for my daily work-out with the latest episode of Degrassi: The Next Generation's "Showdown," its brilliantly developed summertime telenovela-style marathon.

But lately, as I've been slowly beating back a mean head cold, I've noticed that the damn virus renders more than just your morning game face less than stellar - it can do some nasty things to your actual face, too.  In the most shamefully first-world way possible, I had been suffering from stubbornly dry patches along with deep, painful cysts.  The typical skin-care regime wasn't cutting it, so I pulled out the big guns and hosted my own personal afternoon slumber party: FACIAL TIME.

Lips are devil red, skin's the flavor mocha...

Emboldened just enough by the strong smell of ground coffee, I whipped together a concoction of: 

2 tbsp ground coffee

2 tbsp cocoa powder

4 tbsp milk and 

a heaping spoonful of brown sugar to make the medicine go down.  

I gingerly patted a conservative dose on my right cheek, and once a whiff of the miracle potion hit me, I lept right in.  I bathed in the glory of smelling like a hard-working hipster girl barista without the inconvenience of relying on tips to pay the electricity bill.  Mmmmmmmm.  Facemocha.

It's advised you don't associate with Ted Danson in any way while in the process of enjoying this homemade product.

This ain't your mother's face mask.  On top of the energizing smell and heavenly granular texture, it left my face bright, resilient, and milky soft.  I could feel the dead weight of skin sloughing off cell by cell and the angry inflammation becoming subdued to not a whisper.  

What coffee does for the mind, body and soul, it also does for the face.  I think I'm finally ready for that run now.  Or maybe I'll just run for president instead.