Sometimes the Capitol Hill life is glamorous, al fresco dinners at Cava with good friends and staffers, briefly discussing policy before chatting about our non-work lives as if they were our primary foci.  And sometimes…well…working here is about as glamorous as the hangover from last night’s fundraiser, hastily dry shampooed hair and a breakfast of saturated fat from the deli above the liquor store.  You didn’t see that on The West Wing, did ya?

But as I’ve mentioned a few times on this site, if you’re hungover, the most unprofessional thing you can do is announce to your colleagues that you are sleep deprived, dehydrate and nauseous with a big brass band playing a Sousa march inside your skull.  So don’t tell anyone you’re hungover, and don’t show up looking or smelling like a hangover.  

To prevent that exhausted, rolled-out-of-bed-after-hitting-the-snooze-50-times look, I like to use Kiehl’s Eye Alert ($21.50).  It deflates puffiness, lightens dark circles and brightens.  (For dark circle elimination, I’d give it a 7 out of 10, which sounds lackluster, but with all the snake oil on the market, is quite good.)

It also hydrates so that my desperately needed under-eye concealer doesn’t feather and crease during the day.  This prevents those mid-afternoon tiger stripes from forming under your lashes.

I almost never get to the bottom of a product tube (I’m terribly fickle when it comes to beauty products.), but I am on my third tube of this.  And two weeks ago, when I ran out, my Boss actually asked me if I had been sleeping because I looked like “I’d pulled an all nighter.”  Can’t let that happen again.