Rash action

Yesterday the back of my knee felt itchy. Then it got red and bumpy. My calves, ankles, and the tops of my feet got bumpy and itchy. The back of my hands became first itchy then bumpy.

Why? What's it all about? I don't know.

I googled "oatmeal" to see how to use oatmeal to soothe rashes. You can put it in a bath, put a sock full of it in a bath, and follow more or less complicated recipes to make it into a poultice. I went for the simplest and mixed some oats and water in a bowl and bathed my hands in it. It helped short term.

While I was browsing the oatmeal world wide web, I came across some no-bake cookie recipes, so this evening I made some. Perhaps taken internally with a lot of sugar and butter, peanut butter and cocoa, the oats will be good medicine. I made them more like bars than cookies. Instead of dropping spoonfuls onto the wax paper-covered cookie sheet, I just glopped the whole thing onto it and spread it around. After refrigerating it for half an hour I cut some edges off, and ate the pieces. It may or may not help with my rash, but it did gratify my sweet tooth.

I gotta be me

Every morning and evening, during the times of year when the light is long, I walk my dog around my back yard. As I walk along and stand waiting while he takes care of business, I picture to myself all that needs to be done. In my imagination, I pull weeds, trim branches, weed-whack along retaining walls, spray weed killer on weeds in graveled or paved areas, have tree stumps ground out, and eradicate blackberries. Then I go back inside.

So really I have have two gardens, the clean, trim, well-tended garden of my imagination, and the weedy, overgrown, messy garden of reality.

When I went to the Festival of Faith & Writing last month, one of the speakers I heard was Nadia Bolz-Weber. She talked about the difference between the you you think you are, the you you pretend to be and the real you. She says God loves the real you, so you might was well, too.

Good advice for my garden and my self.

In the garden

Busy weekend. In addition to time with family, I dug the weeds out of a flower bed on Saturday, and today, Sunday, I planted flowers in the bed and also mowed the lawn.