I don't know what's in the water lately (probably a bit of New Year's Eve champagne, if I had to guess), but I've been getting request after request for recommendations for under-eye issues - primarily puffiness and dark circles. And I'm certainly the right person to commiserate with about these kinds of beauty troubles, because I have been through it with the eye drama.

Dark circles I don't know a ton about (see below; would love your recommendations), but I've always had a problem with puffiness - and specifically one eye that gets way puffier than the other, creating a stunning lopsided effect. And then in the summer of 2010 I hurt my eye in an embarrassing dance floor mishap, an injury that ended up compounding the problem to the point where the appearance of my eye became something that I obsessed over. I even (sharing secrets, now) briefly contemplated looking into surgical help, because it was starting to affect my ability to function at work.

You know how when you have a pimple as a teenager and you think everyone's looking at it, and your parents tell you to stop being silly because you're the only one who even notices the thing? Well, I was hosting a project awhile back, and as the shoot rolled on I began to feel my troublesome eye growing puffier and puffier. I tried to apply that no-one-notices-but-me logic...until I realized that everyone was most certainly noticing. The producers had a whispered conference in the corner that was quite clearly about the golf ball popping up on my face, and shortly afterwards a cameraman instructed me to please direct the remainder of my lines to the food that I was preparing (in other words, keep those eyes far away from the camera).

So we're not talking run-of-the-mill poof; we're talking a sorta major problem for someone who does the kind of thing that I do for a living.