It’s the Jewish new year 5799.  The time of year when we review our achievements of the past twelve months, ponder areas that need improvement, and set a course for the new year.

Over the last few decades, I’ve made it my personal goal to mentally lay out a few things to change in the Jewish new year.  Do volunteer work.  Read more.  Talk less.  Work out.  I do admit to having one constant on my list every year (and I even include it in my traditional January 1 new year’s plans too).  Ready?

Wear lipstick every day.  And reapply it when necessary.

Yes, I said it.  It’s out there.  Except I hardly ever wear lipstick in the first place.  To me, lip color finishes your look, brightens your face, and it can make you look and feel awake.  That may be the root to my most recent medical conditions.  I’ll mention it to the hematologist next week.

I add the lipstick requirement to make the rest of my new-year to-do list seem less serious.  The High Holidays prompts us to answer questions posed in the Talmud, such as did you conduct your business faithfully?  Did you have a family?  A local rabbi writes:  “There is a deeper perspective on [acting faithfully].  Not only is the issue acting faithfully to others, but also about acting faithfully with ourselves.  In other words, we are asked if we reached our potential.”

He continues:  “So many of us tell ourselves that there are things we can do and things we can’t—which many times means we won’t do….  We are each given unique gifts.…  The reason for our existence in this world is to use these divine gifts to bring sanctity and purpose into the world.  If we don’t challenge ourselves, we are falling short.”

The High Holidays should prompt us to evaluate if we are using our own special gifts.  What are you doing to make life better?  For you?  For your family?  For your community?

Ever find a stray hair on your face that you could have sworn was not there yesterday?  You look in the mirror every day and all of a sudden you scream “WHAT IS THAT?  WHERE DID IT COME FROM?”

I don’t get these stray hairs often.  Usually, I find a white hair growing straight out from my eyebrows, and I’m quick to find the tweezers and pull out that one hair with super powers.  Of course, I know these mutants can be found anywhere on the face, and I’m just lucky I haven’t seen too many.

Well, yesterday, while driving to work, I was treated to a woman behind me who was determined to remove that errant hair on her chin like right now.  In the car, one hand on the steering wheel, one eye on the road, and the rest of her focused on getting rid of this hair.  I could see her yanking and she appeared to be tweezing.  And I wondered if she carries tweezers in her car for just such an emergency.

Okay Google:  is a stray hair something to be alarmed about?  Is it a sign of some health problem?  There are some scientific reasons, of course, and some reasons are better left saved for last.

As for the scientific, logical explanation:  Dr. Heidi Waldorf, the director of laser and cosmetic dermatology at The Mount Sinai Hospital, broke it down for HuffPost.  “These are terminal hairs versus the vellus hairs on the rest of the face,” she said. “Hair differs in its susceptibility to testosterone. Beard and mustache hair are more susceptible.”

“Hair follicles have a mind of their own,” Angela Lamb, director of the Westside Mount Sinai Dermatology Faculty Practice, director of dermatology at the Institute of Family Health and an assistant dermatology professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told HuffPost. “Many cases are hereditary,” Lamb said. “If the women in your family grow facial hair, you may as well. It has to do with how your hair follicles respond to androgens [male sex hormones, like testosterone] that are present in all women’s bodies.”

Waldorf did say, however, that the reason it may appear longer is thanks to the different ways hair grows on the body.  “Hair growth differs in different areas of the body, as does the growth cycle,” she said. “Which is why scalp hair generally grows longer than eyelash hair.”

Or we can go with this completely non-scientific reasoning:

It seems that these errant hairs are related to being a unicorn.  No really.  Read on.

Every night I wash my face and examine it to see if I have any new wrinkles.  So, last night I washed my face and checked it carefully and it was normal and then this morning I woke up and found a three inch white hair growing out of the center of my forehead.  What the hell, y’all? 

It was totally not there yesterday and today it’s there.  So I pull it out with tweezers and I go to look on the internet for “fast-growing white hair” and turns out that there are a lot of message boards about people who woke up with long white hairs growing out of them and about half are growing out of the middle of their foreheads.  Which is a really weird coincidence.

And, yes, I remember my great grandma having those old-lady chin hairs but this is not that, let me assure you.  It’s a giant, white hair growing out of the center of my forehead.  And then I started thinking that horns are made out of the same thing that fingernails and hair are made of and maybe this is just the way I turn into a unicorn.  So it was probably just a very limp unicorn horn.  The bad news is that I freaked out and plucked it before documenting it in a picture but the good news is that, according to these message boards, these white alien hairs frequently come back out of nowhere.  So if it happens again, I’ll totally take a picture of it.

Anyway, this post is just to say that if you got here looking for “HOLY CRAP, WHY IS THERE A THREE INCH WHITE HAIR ON MY FOREHEAD?” you are not alone and you might be turning into a unicorn.

There you have it, ladies.