Category Archives: health

Jun5

Sun has cooked my brain

Posted on June 5, 2013 by heretherebespiders

Randomness will abound. Forewarned is forearmed!

I have a hammock now.

Actually, I’ve had it for nigh on 10 years. Now I have a stand to hang it from. And even that took 3.5 hours of fiddling, giving up, and having some fabulous local welder a make me a longer centre pole so the massive hammock would fit.

My arse still hits the ground when I sit up, but it’s lovely. I’m desperate to sleep in it overnight. Maybe tonight?

I’ve been off work, because my brain finally had a big crash and now I’m on happy pills. About time I admitted I needed help. Coincidentally, the weather has been amazing and just what I needed. I’m actually peeling from a sunburn – I don’t think that’s happened to me since I moved here. I got so hot today I had to go inside to cool off with a damp towel. Woot!

I also went swimming today, but I didn’t bring my iPhone as it was scary enough leaving the car keys on shore while I snorkelled about. It was cold! But I had a good time. Here’s the view from where I parked.

Well, that’s a crappy photo. But I didn’t want to take a pic of the two little boys in their underwear (knickers, they kept saying – thought only girls wore knickers?). Don’t you just love that warning sign?

I’m out front – and getting chewed up by midges so I don’t know how long I will last. I was out here last week (before the midges hatched), and the sunset was pretty interesting.

I washed the car yesterday so I bet the reflections tonight would be clearer if the sunset was cooperating.

I still don’t know what this is. Help?

It apparently comes in more than one colour.

Okay my face is on fire from bug bites and I’ve retreated indoors. Little noseeum bastards. Like I’m not itchy enough on a normal day? Perhaps sleeping outside isn’t such a good idea. A bird pooped on my hammock today, anyway.

A bird with better aim pooped somewhere else this afternoon.

That’s my iced tea, in the cup holder of my favourite camp chair. I was sitting and reading and suddenly – splash! tea all over my right bicep. I look in my cup, expecting a chunk of moss from the roof. No. It’s a perfectly aimed bird shit. Right in my cup. Thanks, avian friend. The tea was all warm and nasty from the sun, anyway.

Now, some say that having a bird crap on you is good luck (why o why). Immediately after this happened, I checked the lottery ticket my mother in law bought for me last week, and I’d won €12. But it was purchased May 31 and I only thought to look at it because someone said bird poo was good luck. Ooooo, spooky, eh? Hehehehe.

Apr24

iBabies – Is that a bad thing?

Posted on April 24, 2013 by heretherebespiders

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Someone posted this link today: Toddlers becoming so addicted to iPads they require therapy

And I had to give a long response, the more I thought about it, the longer it got. And now I’m making it even longer.

You should see me throwing a look of death when hubby touches my iPad. Or if the battery goes dead but I want to sit outside. They are so EASY to use! It’s been a running joke since the VCR was invented that kids understand technology better than adults. My thought has been, since I now have friends and family with young ones who also have smart phones and/or tablets: are they created to be so easy, or are they easy because some (not all!) of us are willing to learn? My dad is in his 70’s and loves computers. But daily, I have to tell people (over the phone, how hard is that?) how to copy and paste – and they can’t be as old as my dad. I had one who was just back from maternity leave. How can you be young enough to have a baby but still not know how to copy and paste? These children will never have that problem.

Maybe these kids will be the next-generation equivalent of Jobs and Gates, because they have had this fabulous thing their whole lives. They will be able to think, and invent, in ways that us old farts never conceived of because a touch screen and Skype didn’t exist when we were three. Maybe they will be behind the times because by the time they are 18, we will have the same level of technology access by eye movements or subdermal implants. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll be normal adults, the same as us who stared at MTV for hours turned out. Is it an addiction, or is it the future?

This is our i-thingie collection: second, first and third gen phones, and my precious, precious iPad – which you will pry out of my cold dead hands. Or, you know, take away and set aside nightly when I fall asleep.

Mar26

Depth in a Spider’s Web

Posted on March 26, 2013 by heretherebespiders

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I got all overcome with a poetic impulse at lunch today.

I don’t write poetry! Okay, I have a few times when super stressed and depressed. But I don’t read poetry.

But maybe that’s a sign, a good sign, that my creativebrain is waking up again?

Maybe it would have been a depressing poem. Donno, I didn’t write one. I didn’t have any time to think of lines or wording. Lunch is only 30 minutes and I have to actually concentrate on eating during some of that time, right?

Anyway, I have a spot that I have my little lunch moment in. It’s outside, come rain, come shine, come snow and below zero temps. It’s behind a door, in a corner, where the big air conditioning units are. Cozy, right? ‘My’ spot used to be a few feet away in front of a window, and I’d put my drink and iPad on the sill. But that sill was for a window into a stall of the ladies’ room, and someone told me I scared the crap out of them (literally?) by standing RIGHT THERE and being a big creepy pervy shadow. After that I moved and now hide behind the door with my iPad on top of one of the AC units. Suits me better as the ‘shelf’ is higher, anyway.

Why do I have lunch there? Because I’m anti-social and I don’t want to talk about stupid TV shows in the ‘canteen’ with people I barely know. And I smoke. And I don’t smoke in the car unless it is moving and the window is down. I hate the way it makes my hair and clothes – and the car – smell.

An aside: we hired someone new and when I went to lunch she was outside smoking in my spot. I was not amused. I made sure she saw me reclaim my territory as soon as she moved out of it – and she apologised a few days later. I didn’t even need to pee on anything!

A second aside: people coming out of the door don’t always see me there, even though it is a glass door. As evidenced by the man who came outside and walked off, farting loudly and copiously. Eh. Better out than in, big guy, and I’m sure the woman in your office appreciates that you held all that in. At least there was a good breeze and my only sensory experience of his farts was auditory.

In my usual long winded way, I’m leading up to why I was waxing poetic.

There’s a spiderweb, you see. Oh wait, you can see!

I have looked at this thing at least three times a day, five days a week, for many months. I’ve found that the corpse of the crane fly (daddy longlegs over here, I got no idea why) particularly draws my eye. His legs are scattered and broken, but still stuck fast. I especially notice the one leg that is entirely removed and off to the left of the body. It annoys me that it is out of place, and not with the rest of the shell that used to be a fly. Just sort of a fleeting irritation, but I don’t want to touch it, remove it, duh, it’s a filthy dead bug. And I’m meant to eat with those fingers – and touch my iPad. And the sink is pretty far away.

Not that I actually plot all that out every day… I’m making myself sound more nuts than I am. I look, and look away. The decision was made months ago to leave it be – until today. Today, there was a new bit of…something…stuck to the wall. I just had to pick that whatever it was off the wall. And lo and behold, that one action got me started really, really thinking about the old spiderweb (and blathering about it on the Internet hours later, apparently).

I began drawing correlations between that web and myself: my thoughts, my history, and my future. The dead bugs – are they evocative of bad people in my past that I have managed to break free of? That was my initial idea. Thinking about it now… maybe they are something much darker. Maybe they are the guilt and regret that I feel about the people that I have made use of and then left behind when I moved on. The blown dirt and rubbish stuck there for so long made me think the things in life that have been thrown at me, the ones I was powerless to stop. The cigarette ashes… they are mine, both figuratively and literally. My mistakes, my stupidity, my many years of daily pig-headed obstinacy to keep doing things that are bad for me. That one is easy.

That is one seriously abandoned web. Nobody’s lived there in a while. No one has been tending the strands or cutting loose the detritus. No one cared enough to cut loose the strands that are coated in dirt and useless material – the crud that has blocked the web’s true use, its true purpose. Okay, for a real spider that’s mostly just catching dinner. But on a deeper inspection, it is also a home, a safe haven, and a place of security that a living being worked hard to intentionally create, for the purpose of bringing good and necessary things closer.

Maybe it isn’t poetry, but I think I have a mental image of needed change that finally makes sense to me.

I hope that someday soon I can post a photo of that same place with the useless net of garbage wiped clean and ready for new threads to be woven in place.

Mar23

Deep Thoughts By Spiders

Posted on March 23, 2013 by heretherebespiders

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Do you want an interesting life? Or would you rather your life be settled, routine, ‘normal?’

The supposed ‘Chinese curse’ is may you live in interesting times. That is by no means the same thing as may you have an interesting life. Interesting Times happen TO you. An interesting Life, hopefully, is your choice.

What would you define as interesting? What is interesting for some is tiresome, tedious, or downright horrifying for others. I think crocheting is interesting, but I’m terrible at it and it makes me angry that I suck at something creative that I also want to do. I think mountain climbing, or rock climbing, is fucking dangerously stupid and why would you want to do that!?!?! But, I have a friend who loves it.

I’m reading Koontz again, his Odd Thomas series. Main character, Odd, is constantly approached by dead people needing help. He’d rather be a short-order cook, or a tire salesman. Well, he is a short-order cook, because the rest of his life is just a bit too interesting. But, he makes the case that he would never want to be famous. I don’t think I’d want to be famous either – not with the lack of privacy and the downright creepy attention people pay to everything you wear and every wrinkle or bulge on your physical body. Perhaps that’s only something famous women have to worry about? I can’t really care about my body’s appearance when I live entirely in my mind. And, if I had a choice, and lots of money, I would dress like a three year old goth: Spongebob and skulls. I don’t want to ever be put in a situation where millions think way too hard about the crap I’m wearing. And I will only wear makeup these days when it is socially expected (which I resent heartily) or I feel like hiding behind it.

There are innumerable women who stay with abusive men because (combined with other reasons) the excitement, the passion! involved is interesting. If and when these women break free, they absolutely miss that excitement. I totally understand that. Adrenaline is addictive.

So. All this comes about from a comment on my Gory Story Time post. Tom basically said that my life was too interesting and he had nothing close in his history to what I’d gone though. And my first reaction was to laugh – because that’s not a big story in my life at all. That’s an amusing side note, a small anecdote, a bit of nothing in the larger history! My life has been truly interesting – but I’m only now realising that it’s pretty much all been by my own choices. These, for the most part, have been pretty stupid choices. But goddamned exciting, nonetheless.

After I grew up a bit, I thought my biggest problem was that I have a tendency to run away. And I do, going back to childhood. But as a ‘growedup’ I would find a great relationship and stick for years – until I got bored, and/or cheated, and used that as an excuse to run away. I’ve also never worked a single job longer than four years straight – pretty impressive as I had my first ‘real’ job at about age 10. I’ve a history of moving around America, town to town, job to job, that finally ended up with me moving entire countries. On a whim, in retrospect. I didn’t have to. Not that I don’t love my husband. But I could have moved him to the US instead. Truly, it made sense for me to move here. BUT – and that’s a big but, that’s why it’s in all caps – I went looking for a man in Ireland intentionally. Because I was bored. I didn’t know that then, this is a new insight into my own motivations. I thought I just didn’t really like the US, and had finally realised that moving from redneck Lower Alabama to Big City Ohio didn’t make a difference – I still didn’t “fit in” with American culture.

Well fuck me, but I sure as shit don’t fit in here, either. After nearly eight years (an all-time record for me staying with one person and a growedup record for living continually at one address, since I was about…14), I’m bored again. I don’t know what is my trigger this time! Do I think I’ve learned all I can about where I live and this culture and all the people that I know? Is it just that the job I’ve had for the last year+ is one I dislike intensely? Am I, deep down, just a lazy feicer and I really, really miss the almost two years I was unemployed as it finally gave me a chance to feel that I had a right to be creative – to write, to draw, to start this blog?

Is it all of the above? How am I supposed to know? Is there something else I’m still missing? I’ve had a few shrinks and therapists, and not one ever pointed this rather important bit of insight out to me.

I know this much: Tom’s comment was a revelation for me, once I gave it some thought. I was pretty damn surprised, because it gives me hope – if only I can figure out what I can do to save myself that doesn’t involve running away. That’s a hard one, as the feeling of being trapped is, for me, something that inspires fight or flight. I fight for a while, but in most situations in my past, I have picked flight. The fight right now has nearly deserted me, leaving only a serious dearth of flight choices that gives me depression in spades. You can guess, if you’ve had depression, what the ultimate choice for flight is when all other options appear to be closed.

But, for now, I’m at penultimate. Because I am still fighting this! I had nearly given up, until Tom’s comment. I’ve fought before when things got this bad: I once decided that getting in my truck in Florida and driving to Maine, with nothing – nothing at all than would fit in the cab (including a very angry and upset Siamese) was better than suicide. Why? I’d never been to Maine, and Stephen King lives there. Those were my only reasons. My point being that I can still see that insane changes will make a difference, for me, rather than the one, irrevocable, change that I will come to, eventually, by choice or not.

I understand that this truly is a revelation, and I don’t expect deep thoughts or even good advice. I needed to write, and this is my outlet. I have written my thoughts and discarded them so many, many times over the last few months – because I don’t want this to be a negative space. This blog is my happy place and I just couldn’t ruin it. I hope I haven’t ruined it now? I still have a lot of stories to tell and – maybe – some art still left in me.

Mar1

Gory story time!

Posted on March 1, 2013 by heretherebespiders

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My current life is so… uninteresting, for lack of a better description. But I feel the need to write. So here’s a true story that is educational, and quite disgusting if you’re squeamish. Don’t say I didn’t warn ye.

When I was 16, I kept getting colds and bronchitis all the time. It got annoying. So my parents and I talked it over and decided that I should finally have my tonsils out. I was sort of old for the surgery, but I have been a lot less prone to that sort of illness since having them out.

I don’t remember much about the surgery itself. I know they made me take my shirt off, and I clearly recall my surgeon saying to the others in the room as he moved the sheet down (why!?!?) to expose my chest, that I was “very mature.” That bothered me for years. I was ashamed to even speak about it. It felt like visual group rape. I’ve often wondered: did he/they give me a suggestion to not talk about it when I was all the way under the anaesthetic? because after I told someone the first time, it got easier until it didn’t bother me any more.

What will bother me until the day I die is that not that he was a bit scuzzy and inappropriate, but that he cut too far down on the right side. Really, really far down. I have a pocket between my tongue and what should be throat-meat, but isn’t. Quite often, food that is small and hard gets stuck in there (peanuts and popcorn shells are the worst) and the only way to get it out is to fish it out with my index finger or suck it out while making vile-sounding slurping snotty noises. Thanks, doc.

I haven’t even gotten into the disgusting part yet. Honestly, it gets worse!

We were given a slip of paper with post-operation instructions. It said: ‘about a week after your surgery, the incision may open up and bleed. This is nothing to worry about if the amount of blood is a teacup or less.’

What the leaflet failed to mention is what to do if it was more than a teacup.

I have a mental picture of when it started: a combination of my actual view and a sort of distanced movie of where I was and what I was doing. I was outside, at the end of our driveway, right by one of the odd, light grey, cinderblock-and-concrete-stucco pillars that lined the road in front of our house. There was a small popcorn tree behind me, and I was facing toward our red-clay driveway. I was talking to one of the two beautiful, white long-haired cats that ‘belonged’ to a neighbour (my grandmother adopted one later, the other was a tom and went feral). I leaned over to pet the kitty, who had trotted across the street to see me, and suddenly I had a strange tickle in my throat.

I opened my mouth to talk to the kitty and blood sprayed on to the driveway.

I can no longer recall if I ran right inside, or gave myself a moment or two to figure out what was going on. I’m not prone to panic, and blood has never bothered me, so I’m guessing I didn’t scream for mom and run inside immediately. When I did go in, we found the leaflet and read it. One of us grabbed a smallish coffee cup (no tiny teacups in our house) and when I had filled that up, mom brought out a massive, three-quart, square Tupperware container from the cupboard. The very same one my sister and I had puked into for years when we were small and very sick. It was so deep there was little chance of splash-back, you see. Mom was practical like that.

Even better, this thing had measurements on the inside of the bowl so we could see just how much blood I was losing. The measurements were in quarts. We dumped in the coffee cup-full of blood, in the interest of accuracy. It had jelled already – perhaps due to the properties of saliva, perhaps that’s what blood does anyway – and it slopped into the bowl, keeping the shape of the cup. That was when I first realised that what was going on wasn’t “normal.”

The spray was at the very back of my throat (probably coming from the right where Dr. Inappropriate had cut too deep; it directed to the left). My mouth was constantly full, and I swallowed quite a lot without meaning to. That didn’t bother me, either. What did bother me is when it finally stopped, and I discovered that I had clots of blood everywhere inside my mouth – the worst were stuck in the top surfaces of my teeth the way potato chips do sometimes. I had to pick them out with my tongue, and swallow or spit.

The bleeding had stopped, so I grabbed the relevant Encyclopaedia Brittanica off the shelf to see how much blood someone of my age and size should have inside them. I’d lost almost a quart, according to the awesome Tupperware bowl. Brittanica said I should have about 4 quarts (a quart being about 950ml). Current Googling gives me a lower number.

In any case I was fine, it had stopped, no panic, and we’d all learned something interesting.

Then a short while later it opened up again. We rang the doctor, and he said to go to the hospital. I kept spitting into the container – good data for the hospital, right? Before we left, it had stopped again. I had closer to two quarts in the bowl, and I now knew that wasn’t a safe amount.

It was a small Florida town, and we had a (new at the time) hospital in town so the drive was short. I was fine, cheerful and chipper as I could be, and the bleeding had stopped again for the longest time yet. They decided I should to to another hospital in the next town over, and have Dr Inappropriate cauterise the area to stop the bleeding. They put me into an ambulance.

They strapped me down, as they do in ambulances apparently (this was my first and only experience inside of one). I started bleeding again on the way. I was tied down on my back, spraying blood at the back of my throat, not even able to talk because I would choke, and unable to sit up and spit it out. I always thought from movies that when a kid was in an ambulance a parent was allowed inside, too? Stupid movies. I remember feeling a bit of panic at that point, waving my arms as much as I could under the straps and gurgling for help. I swallowed a lot more blood before they let me up and I could spit. Into my mother’s bowl, still keeping track. I know I had lost over 2 quarts by then – over half my blood supply in a jellied square mass on my lap. That’s not counting the amount that I had swallowed.

By the way: ‘human’ vampires are bullshit. I know, for a fact, from this experience, that the human body can not digest fresh human blood. I will never forget what it looked and smelled like coming out the other end.

I might have gone a bit light-headed by the time I’d arrived at the other hospital for the cauterisation. I don’t remember anything else.

I know that my mom was irritated that she never got her awesome Tupperware bowl back, though.

Feb19

Head space outer limits

Posted on February 19, 2013 by heretherebespiders

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I think I’ve titled a post ‘Where’s my head at?’ before. Shame. I doubt I did it justice… but there’s no chance I’m going to make anything resembling sense right now.

Screen shot of a “free” app I have, called Paper. The app is a bit, um, up it’s own arse, to be honest. But daaaamn, my handwriting never looked so good. In one take, too! In the head-space I’m in, also! Normally my writing looks like a 7-year-old on acid was writing with her off hand.

I’m not sleeping, my intestines are on strike, I have eczema on my hands and one foot (no cause determined, but no fungus thank fuck, that’s just too narsty. And too easily cured, of course). Possibly stress-related, possibly contact-related. Oh, joy. It’s not enough that my joints, my digestive system, and my heart have all jumped on the stress-symptom-bandwagon, now my goddamn hands and left foot have gotten into the act. What’s next? Oh yes, the twitch in my left eye for the last three weeks, perhaps? Who knows what my pancreas is plotting, or what my spleen is scheming?

Anyhoo there’s too much going on in there for me to discuss at length. So (hopefully, as I seem to have lost the knack for embedding a vid) here’s a video that I think of quite often when my brain is all over the shop (or the locker, or the shower, or in a a dog’s mouth…)

http://youtu.be/bs0ctNb2sVI
So – I can’t do it right. Here’s a couple of screen shots. Copyright I’m sure Stephen King or the TV company, sorry.

Feb15

Lokii-Mon(ster)

Posted on February 15, 2013 by heretherebespiders

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I’ve not devoted a post to my little Siamese boy Lokii in a while. Actually, it’s been over a year since “Let’s Meet Lokii” and “Let’s Meet Lokii’s Dark Side”. However, he’s been disgustingly adorable the last few days, (and it’s not even that cold in here!) so I ~~got the chance~~ was forced by cuteness to take a few pics.

First, a shot from Monday, when he was helping me watch a David Attenborough documentary on predators and prey. I’ve never caught him really watching TV like this before (but he is fascinated with iPad games, not even the ones made for cats). Not sure if it’s the size of the new screen, or the lions on it that got him so interested.

Wednesday night, Lokii came to bed with me. I always curl up on my left, with my iPad open to an e-book propped against hubby’s pillow. He Lokii-poked to get under the covers, and curled against my chest with his head under my chin and, as it happened, his whole head in my right hand. He fell asleep, purring, and after a while the purring dropped into silence. Then…a while later…a faint rumble started again. Neither he nor I had moved or made a sound – it was just him waking up a tiny bit and realising where he was and who he was with. That’s cat love for sure, and it gave me a much needed happy feeling after a hard day. (Apologies to Cats n Co for pretty much reposting my comment on her blog on ‘Do Cats Love?‘)

Thursday we had a really, really hot fire going. Too hot for me, but just about right for the heat-seeking Si-missile that is Lokii-mon. He was so happy sprawling in different directions on my legs that I couldn’t conceive of getting up to get a better camera. Sadly, these pics are all from my ever-present iPad and they are accordingly terrible. Sorry. Hope the cuteness shines thru all the static caused by taking close-ups by firelight!

Ahh, laps. And fire. Ahhh. That’s a yawn, he’s not about to eat me. Promise.

See? Chin-scratches. Nothing could be better, for him. Me? I had to take this, and the next few pics, with my nose. Yep. One hand is holding the iPad, one is scratching precious kitteh – my nose was my only option!

Ooh, that’s nice, we loves a finger in our ear.

And ear-scrunches from the outside are nice, too!

More ears? Heaven, I’m in heaven…

Who gave you permission to stop with the ear-love?

Okay, no more petting…guess I’ll just enjoy this fire instead.

Ahhh. *yawn*

But things are back to normal now. I’ve spent a good part of my Friday evening sewing up the holes he’s chewed in the new dog bed. Sigh.

That’s the biggest of dozens of holes I had to sew shut. I need advice! I’m really worried he’s going to get horribly sick from eating fabric. We can’t stop him. Take away one thing, he finds something else. He’s really great at listening, remembering, and not returning to the scene of the crime again when we say NO! (ok, I say, as I’m the observant one) but he is also good at making sure he never hears ‘no’ in the first place. There’s no blockage in his guts – yet – but I don’t want there to be one.

How can such a smart kitty be so damn dumb?

Feb1

A long-arse post about my largest organ

Posted on February 1, 2013 by heretherebespiders

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I can already tell I’m going to have some typos here. My fingers can’t move fast enough. Oddly I’m using my middle finger on the left and my index on the right to use the touch-screen, I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that before. Could be something I’ve adopted because my left index finger has, for the first time in my life, decided it wants to grow a proper, decent nail and the sound of it ticking on my iPad screen is completely annoying. It might be okay if both index fingers made a sound but they don’t and that confuses my widdle brain.

But fingernails are actually something I wanted to talk about, sort of. I’ve never mentioned my annoying, weird, skin-thing here. Mostly because I have no idea if I’m making the problems up or not. Hell, I shat blood for years before I realised that wasn’t normal. Okay that really is off-topic. But bear with me, fingernails are related to the skin and hair, that keratin thang, and I’ve got some odd shite going on with all of it. I think.

My hair is done growing and that is that: it won’t get any longer. I’ve never had really long hair, and I believe there is a genetic cut-off that says ‘done!’ at a certain length. Hubby hasn’t reached his limit after over 6 years without a haircut, so I’m a bit jealous. I seem to be finally coming out of a months-long hair loss trend that pissed me off and also worried me a bit. I can now actually stroke the last few inches of my pony-tail and not have dozens of hairs come out in the process. So that’s good – but why was it falling out and why did it stop?

My fingernails (see I said I’d get back to that) have always been really thin and soft and squooshy. A while back (could be years, I have a terrible sense of time) I noticed one or two on my left hand had an odd texture. Heavy ridges, and little bumps like sand dunes on a beach. Google wasn’t any help to figure it out. Then my left index actually started making a real nail that didn’t break when you looked at it funny (and turn into a deadly razor-blade), or rip off below the nail-bed and make me sore and bloody for weeks. So: second question – why is my hair falling out but my nails are improving – but also doing funky patterns?

Last issue is the biggie, and the reason I finally am going to talk to my GP on Monday. I have very dry skin. It looks pretty good, I have to admit that. I don’t physically appear to be over 40 – in the summer, at least (I’ll get back to that in a bit). But, it’s thick skin (maybe why I don’t have the wrinkles I should, considering my childhood in Florida when sun lotion meant putting on baby oil or something else to get a better tan). It’s so thick that it requires, as I get older, an immense effort to exfoliate. I’m talking a lot of damn work that I resent a lot.

I have to use those gloves that are super-scratchy to take off the dead skin. I have to soak myself in hot water – and I have never liked hot showers – first, and then again and again after each scrub. If I run out of hot water, which is bound to happen, I’ve left a layer or three of damp, itchy, dead cells on my entire body that drive me INSANE for the next hour or more until I dry out entirely. Baths are much better, especially if I beg hubby to do my back, but our water tank is small and it takes ages for me to fill a tub, and then another 2 hours for the bath. And…the dead skin floating in there is just…horrible. I have photos that I might share with the doc, if I’m not too embarrassed to do so.

Skin lotion doesn’t help much. All it does is make the un-shed skin still stuck to me stay wet longer and prolong the itchy nightmare. If I really get to do a thorough scrubbing-job I’m always debating if I should use lotion or not. I want to, because I get so damn dry, but I rarely see that it makes a difference. Currently I can do an Ally Sheedy impersonation just by rubbing my leg, arm, or forehead – I’m talking about her fabulous dandruff-snowfall in The Breakfast Club, of course. My forehead annoys me the most right now. The dryness has extended down below my eyebrows. My goddamn eyelids are peeling! Ick. You’re not supposed to use exfoliating gloves on your face, but I can’t get the dead skin off any other way – and if I use face-cream more than once a day, I’m a mass of zits. Quite annoying at my age when I didn’t have a problem as a teen! So, I’m sort of hoping that a professional will be able to help, as I can’t and won’t buy every face-cream on the market to test it out, that shit is crazy expensive.

Well, I’ve been dealing with the skin-issues for years. It’s gotten worse in the last eight but I couldn’t say if is it due to the damp, sunless climate in Ireland, or if it’s just me getting older. I do know that I mentally crave sunshine, and that my face ages five years in the winter. I suspect a vitamin D deficiency, but I’m not going to play around with taking tons of different vitamins and waiting seasons for a result just to experiment on myself.

I finally am going to ask for professional help because since Christmas morning, I seem to have developed a fungus, or something. It started on the sole of my left foot as a clump of tiny blisters that looked like a particularly nasty cold sore and itched like mad. Google told me it was likely athlete’s foot, a fungus. I then caught the local creeping ick after new year’s eve and stayed home for a week taking antibiotics – and the very next week at work I noticed a load of tiny little bumps on the sides of most of my fingers. I thought it was a soap allergy, as I had just used a liquid soap in the bathrooms at work that I usually do not use. However, within two days it had progressed to the palms of my hands. No longer little bumps that didn’t bother me, I have had, since the first week of January, leopard-spots on both palms that itch and refuse to be cured by the miconazole ointment I bought and have used at least once a day since. The hospital-grade antifungal soap at work I prefer, and use about four times a day, also hasn’t helped. The little bumps on my fingers have peeled around the edges, but haven’t gotten smaller. The ones on my palms, and the original spot on my foot, also have a ring of peeling skin but the crud keeps coming back. This also worries me as I am a very fast healer. Sweating and hot water make it itch worse – not very great when I require hot water for the other skin BS, right?

I believe there is a pill I can take to cure the fungus that will have to be prescribed – but the thick-skin issue that seems to have prevented the ointment from working now has to be addressed. It isn’t going away, and if continual fungal infections are my future I Am Not Amused. I’m also not keen on the theory that I might need a sun-bed in the winter months (even if my whole being cries out for sunshine).

If you’ve bothered to read this far: any ideas or advice appreciated, especially as regards what I should ask or tell my GP.

Dec18

Let’s talk about…Pee!

Posted on December 18, 2012 by heretherebespiders

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I am SO going to bring the overall mood of my blog back down into the childish, scatological range. It must be done. Come along, if you dare!

I’m sure most if not all of my extremely intelligent readers know of the phenomenon known as ‘asparagus pee.’ I like to call it “asparapee”. This amazingly unique scent isn’t produced by everyone, however. I have understood for years that there’s a genetically inherited enzyme that lets you excrete this special odor after eating asparagus (I call it ‘special.’ I really don’t find it offensive, just pretty damn identifiable).

But…that’s not true. We all have asparagus pee! It turns out that only some of us can actually smell it. I have a super-sniffer so I am not surprised to know I am one of the supposed tiny fraction of 22% who can tease this odour out of the air. My challenge to those of you who know that you have the smell in your own pee, and have a partner who swears that they don’t: smell their pee. It won’t take much effort! It might take some bravery on the part of those (Socks, I’m looking at you) who keep their bathroom habits very private. You don’t have to look or observe, just sniff!

I don’t have the option of keeping private potty-time habits. Not in my own house with one tiny bathroom for two people. My guts are “not right” so when I gotta go, I gotta go and right now. I can’t afford to wait until he’s done with his shower. Or his shave. Or sometimes, horribly, his tooth-brushing. Disgusting but unavoidable. So! Being already accustomed to way too much personal intimacy, we agreed years ago to a green way of toileting; one used on ships, and probably a lot of other places where water is a premium: If it’s brown, flush it down – if it’s yellow, let it mellow. Hence my theory that hubby (who has no sense of smell whatsoever compared to me) only learned to recognise the scent of asparapee after he was informed in advance, by me, loudly and gleefully, that I had asparapee and he had a potty visit shortly afterward. It only takes about 15 minutes to come out: how cool is that? A science experiment right in my own bladder!

Moving on from asparagus. I have noticed for a while that my pee occasionally smells exactly like coffee. Not pee at all. Fresh-brewed coffee. I don’t drink that much coffee either. Just in the morning, maybe the equivalent of a cup and a half, and I use sugar and cream. But it is pretty damn strong coffee. It doesn’t happen every day – but when it does? whoooo, stanky! I’ve remarked on this to hubby but he seems unimpressed, uninterested, or unbelieving.

Last week, iDJ asked me if you can pee garlic. This was after he told me that a co-worker could smell garlic on him, the morning after the night we had split a bulb of roast garlic that was cooked with our Sunday chicken (if you haven’t had roast garlic, do it, do it now). My response, “Well, not in my experience so far, but I suppose it is possible?” I was rather unimpressed, uninterested and unbelieving. Until tonight when I opened the bathroom door to a mellow yellow and the reek of garlic about knocked me down. Wow. Took two flushes to clear the room (it’s very, very small). So how come he can pee garlic and I can pee coffee and neither of us does the other? I’d love to sign us both up for experimentation. I wouldn’t mind peeing in a cup for the answer to this question!

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