What is neither functional nor decorative and lives in the middle of my face?

My nose.  I have a very large nose.  If the size of the nose is an indication of intelligence, then I am a super-genius.  I was teased mercilessly about my nose my entire childhood... and beyond, really.  It doesn't help that I have a small head and relatively small features.  My eyes are small, my mouth is small.  Even my shell-like ears are small.

And then, there is my nose.  It starting growing faster than the rest of me when I was about 10 and there has been steady growth ever since.  I was born with a deviated septum, which you can't see, of course, but which makes me a mouth-breather a good part of the time, especially in the winter and summer, the two seasons that love my nose the least.

When my son was a toddler, he accidentally whopped my nose with his hard little head and broke it.  I reset it myself while it was still numb to save the cost of a doctor visit.  Big mistake.  The left half of my nose collasped making the honker asymmetrical.  It has a decided larboard list.

A few years ago while I was minding my own business and sleeping peacefully in my little bed, my cats got the rips and came careening into my bedroom.  They leapt onto the bed and launched themselves at each other off my face, ripping my nose in the process.  I screamed, which woke up my hubby, who was initially peeved at me - he hates when I wake him up by screaming- until he saw the blood.  I now have a scar and a pit on my nose, which wasn't a particularly attractive appendage before the cats mauled it.  Note to self- keep your bedroom door closed.

Over the course of innumerable colds and bouts of hay fever, chronic nose-blowing has burst many of the tiny little blood vessels near the nares so that it looks like I have written on myself with a fine tipped red pen. I have yet to find a concealer that really conceals those fine red lines.  I am an almost total tea-totaler but have the schnoz of a boozer.  How fair is that, I ask you?

Now August  is nearly over, and I am battling my annual summer cold.  I cannot breathe through my nose.  Nothing as massive as air can penetrate the swollen membranes.  And yet, my nose is running.  Constantly.  Makes you wonder, doesn't it?  I am going through a box of Kleenex a day, so my nose is red.  And I have been swimming, so my nose is sunburned.  As I type, I am trying to figure out how to blow my nose without touching it because it is chapped and sore.  I hope I figure it out soon.  When something this size hurts, it's a BIG damn hurt.

All my life, I have prayed for a nose job.  (Most of my life, I have also prayed for a boob job, and lately, a tummy tuck has entered my petitions to the plastic surgery gods).  I know that cartilage never stops growing, and the nose is mostly cartilage. It doesn't bode well for an attractive old age, does it?

Any plastic surgeons reading this... call me!