Not snake oil

So I keep seeing these ads on Facebook for a pill that stops itching. Apparently it works like a charm. I get all interested until I realize it's a pill for dogs. 

Move along

Nothing to say, I just wanted to make it so that the first post you see at my blog is not one about difficult struggles and so on. Instead, here's a picture of my dogs out on the deck on a hot, sunny day.

Of course, one might find it distressing to see so many weeds growing between the pavers, but today I am optimistic about getting the weeding done. Later I may post about my accomplishment of planting all the plants I have bought so far. That is better than I've done in probably seven or eight years.

Also, I have a nephew & family visiting soon who have teen and pre-teen kids and I may see if I can hire them to help with some deck cleanup. Sometimes when I talk about work like that my sister-in-law says, "That sounds like a job for strong, young grandchildren." I have no grandchildren, but she has. They are still young and strong, but not so young anymore that they are not busy with their own lives.

That's kind of a double-negative, in the grammatical sense, not emotional. Anyway, they are busy doing things like having jobs and getting engaged. I have another grandchild by proxy (i.e. great-niece) who lives locally but is too young for such labor.

So I am hoping the visiting greats will welcome an opportunity to earn some money while helping their old Auntie. (I like to pull out the Old Lady card when handy.) If not, I'll still get it done, just not as quickly. So no pressure, youngest generation.

Okay, one more photo. While I was writing this entry, I felt a warm little presence by my left foot, so I took a quick picture of what was under my desk chair.

Discomfort

I remember reading once, in a novel, a description of a character that he was “comfortable in his own skin.” It’s a figure of speech that indicates self-acceptance and confidence. Now, not as a metaphor, but as a physical fact, I am uncomfortable in my own skin. My skin is dry and itchy. I scratch the itches and my skin becomes raw and painful. And ugly. Sometimes I see it as so ugly that I tear at it with my fingernails, making it more raw, more painful, and more ugly.

When I go to bed at night, after I’ve been lying there a while, my skin starts to feel hot, tight, itchy, and painful. It is almost impossible for me not to scratch it. After a while, I feel so upset about the ugliness and unpleasantness and pain that I become stressed, unable to relax—almost twitchy. I keep lotions nearby to rub on to try to do that instead of scratch. Sometimes, after I’ve been asleep for a while, I wake up with these feelings and scratch in a half-sleepy state until I wake up enough to get up and go to the bathroom to clean my skin with cool water and a washcloth.

Sometimes I've taken Benadryl at bedtime with the idea that it may alleviate the itching and in any case it will make me drowsy. But eventually I felt like Benadryl was starting to trigger restless leg syndrome instead of putting me to sleep. I also tend to develop allergic reactions to any skin product that I use for a while.

During the day, while I’m sitting at my desk, or in my car, or—excuse me for mentioning it—on the toilet, I explore my skin with my fingers, finding rough spots that I want to scrape smooth. This leads to increasingly raw, painful, and ugly skin.

Sometimes after I’ve scratched the skin on my wrists and hands until I am bleeding, I apply an antibiotic balm and wrap my wrists and hands in cotton bandages. For a while, this is soothing, often even for the better part of a day. Eventually, the bandages become annoying and I cut them off.

Scratching until I bleed makes blood accumulate under my fingernails, so I spend time cleaning my nails. Because my skin may bleed at any given time, I wear dark clothes that won’t show blood spots. I wear a lot of black, navy blue, and brown. I wear shirts with long sleeves and full length pants. I can only wear cotton clothes, smooth cotton. Anything else feels painful when it touches my skin.

Sometimes I plan a skin-care session where I take a shower and then apply my latest remedy to my damp skin—over the counter lotion made for dry skin or a prescription thing (lotion isn’t quite the correct word as its consistency reminds me of Crisco). I do this when I have time to slather it on, then sit wrapped in a cotton robe or sheet until it absorbs and I feel less greasy and sticky. Another complication is that my dogs think lotion is tasty, and they try to lick any exposed part of me that has lotion on it. So I have to be able to spend time in my room with the door shut to keep the dogs away.

I’ve had a bit of a struggle with dry skin since childhood, but it has been at its absolute worst the past few years. When I was in about elementary school, I would scratch the lower part of my legs. My sister once laughed at an old photo of me at about 10 years old wearing shorts with knee socks. I definitely looked like a dork, but I needed knee socks to cover my scabs. As I moved into my teen years, I got better at putting lotion on every day and stopped having such itchy skin.

My skin was clear and acceptable looking (always pale and blotchy but at least not with open wounds) from about junior high until my 40s. It started up again with my lower legs and then my lower arms. I would always have one or two sores on an arm or leg, and I would try to keep them covered. My dad told me that he and his father had had the same thing.

My dad also suffered from psoriasis. All of my siblings and a significant proportion of my nephews and nieces have some form of skin issue—dry skin, psoriasis, eczema—some more severely than others.

So after my issues started to resurface in my 40s, I was at that relatively mild level for the next two decades. When it really became bad, with all the severe symptoms I’ve described, was during covid. I had some mental and emotional issues going into covid, mostly related to the decline and death of my parents, but I’ve had recurring bouts of depression since about age 10, so my mental health can range from getting along quite well to really feeling shitty.

I’m an extreme introvert and I would see memes about how introverts were loving covid isolation, but it didn’t work that way for me. My main feeling about the pandemic situation was that everything felt unnervingly weird. The situation was bizarre, and that stressed me out. Also, a few months into the isolation my dog, who’d been my dear companion for close to 15 years, died. More specifically, I made the decision to have him put down. Even now, tears come to my eyes as I remember that.

Sitting alone at my desk at home doing my office work—by the way, I was extremely thankful that I did not lose my job because of covid but had that steady income and benefits—but constant solitude gave me the opportunity to scratch and tear at my skin as often as the urge took me. No one could see me and be grossed out, so scratch and tear I did. I became more and more depressed and anxious until I really could not do anything my job required, nor could I care for myself or my house. I went days without showering, weeks where the only time I opened my door and left my house was to go to a grocery store to have my online order loaded into my car. I had gotten new puppies and their love was comforting, but I couldn’t train them or clean up after them. I finally had to take a medical leave of absence while I got medicated back up to functionality. Not to a high level of effectiveness, just functional.

I never caught the covid virus, but the pandemic still caused a severe (mental) health crisis that is still affecting me. Since getting effective meds, I no longer sit indoors with the shades down for days on end. I take showers, and I clean up dog poop. I was able to limp along, so to speak, with my job until I was eligible for Social Security and could retire. But the one thing that has not improved has been my skin.

I keep trying different approaches. Starting just the other night, I put a damp towel across my lower legs at bedtime, because that’s where the problem is the worst, and that cool, damp feeling did help soothe the pain and itch. I had a smaller damp cloth to wrap around whichever wrist felt worse. I hope that this tactic helps my condition to improve.

For several years, the way I am able to calm down and get to sleep is that I listen to and silently participate with the night prayer liturgy of the Divine Office, which I play on my phone from the Divine Office website. Night prayer is usually between 15 to 20 minutes long. Sometimes I fall asleep by the time it’s over. Otherwise, I move on to the Hallow app and listen to and silently pray along with the rosary, which lasts 20-25 minutes. I often fall asleep before that’s complete, but, if I don’t, I still feel more peaceful.

(I'm silent in my devotions so that my dogs don't think I'm talking to them and get excited.)

During the day, I try to spend some time using my hands to do needlepoint or write in a journal to give them something else to do besides check on how rough my skin feels. I only do brief journal entries; that’s all I’m up for. Since retiring, after I wake up and take my dogs outside, I come back to my bedroom with a cup of coffee and listen to and silently participate with the invitatory and morning prayer liturgies of the Divine Office.

But still my skin and I are in conflict. I am not comfortable in my own skin. I can only hope and pray and do my best to improve.

Keep on the sunny side

"Your nose is so delicious, mom."

About a month ago, I started a Word document that I call “Positive Accomplishments,” in which I list under the date any things that I did that I can consider positive actions to boost my mental health. Sometimes it’s things like “Washed some dishes,” “Washed & dried a load of laundry,” “Raked leaves on my deck.” Other times it’s things like “Went out to lunch with friends,” “Blogged,” or “Sat in the sun.” 

I have a southern exposure on my deck. One side of the deck is shaded by the upstairs deck and the other side is in full sun. Today I sat in the sun. A special thing that may happen while I’m sitting in the sun in an Adirondack chair is that all three of my dogs want to join me there. And by “special,” I mean “utterly ridiculous.” There is not ample room for the three of them, and two of them (the bitches) do not like to share space and so express hostility to one another and the hapless boy dog, Benedict (who just wants to get along). Also, Rosamund really, really wants to lick my nose. For a long time. Non-stop. So I have to hold her off while she tries and tries to get in my face. It’s nice to be loved, I guess.

Nevertheless, it is overall a positive experience.

We call this Friday good

More than a decade ago, at work, someone said to me, “Happy Good Friday!” which struck me as wildly inappropriate. I wondered if he spoke from ignorance or from mockery. He was not a co-worker but a co-tenant of the building where I worked, and he was a strange fellow. (In case anyone doesn’t know, Good Friday commemorates Jesus’s crucifixion—not a happy occasion.)

Remembering that greeting this morning, I also remembered the line, “In spite of that, we call this Friday good.” I thought it came from a John Donne poem, so I searched online and found, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward.” I found a youtube of someone named John Melton reading it. I don’t know anything about Mr. Melton, but he did a good job reading the poem. However, it did not contain the line I had thought of.

It turns out the line comes from T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker,” one of his “Four Quartets.” It could also have come from somewhere else; Eliot was a great one for quoting others in his poems. “East Coker” is a relatively long poem; the line comes at the end of part IV. I found a recording of Eliot himself reading it, but he is not the best reader of his own work; he is rather affectless. So I found a recording of Ralph Fiennes reading it, and that was better.

So, yes, this is the day of the agonizing death of our Lord. He was the lamb sacrificed for our sins—the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That is why, in spite of his suffering and death, we call this Friday good. 

Being seen

“Thou God seest me.” My Grandma on my dad’s side embroidered that and had it framed. The cloth she embroidered on was an old shirt of my Grandpa’s.

The words are from Genesis, Chapter 16. Hagar, a slave, has been used and mistreated by the great patriarch Abram/Abraham and his wife, Sarai/Sarah. They have used her as a surrogate to bear Abraham a child. Abraham has used her as a concubine, but once she is pregnant, Sarah mistreats her and Abraham does not interfere. So she runs away, but she encounters the angel of the Lord, who tells her to return to Abraham and Sarah and prophesies that the child she carries will have countless descendants.

The God Who Sees Me by Patricia Ewing

The King James Version of the Bible then says, “And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me.” The New International Version has, “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me.’” (This is verse 13.)

Yesterday, I went to look something up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is online at the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. I browsed my way into the section on Christian prayer. In defining prayer, the Catechism alludes to the story of the woman at the well (John 4), where Jesus begins a conversation with the woman by asking for a drink of water. The Catechism says:

Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.

I also watched a video, “How God speaks to us in daily life.” A priest in Great Britain, Father Stephen Wang, has a Youtube channel called Pause for Faith. In this particular video, his discussion of prayer draws on the story of two of John the Baptizer’s disciples who follow Jesus—literally—after John points him out as the Lamb of God (John 1). Father Wang dwells on the fact that, as they walk behind him, Jesus turns around and sees them and asks, “What do you want?” So, again, the emphasis is on the Lord’s initiative: he turns around and he sees them. 

It is a commonplace in psychology that people want to be seen, that being seen is a basic human need. If we feel invisible, unlooked for, unseen, we can remember this name of the Lord:

Thou God seest me.

Let the pottering commence

We have had some beautiful weather the last few days, sunny and mild. I have sometimes left my door standing open in the afternoons, letting fresh air in and allowing my dogs to run in and out at will. It really feels like spring.

The forecast predicts this weather will last two more days, then start to cloud up, and then will start cool, rainy days for the foreseeable future. So carpe diem. Make hay while the sun shines. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Time’s wingèd chariot and all that sort of thing.

I have been clearing leaves out of plant containers and adding soil, to get them ready to receive new plants. Last year, again, I bought plants that I never transferred to the containers. Part of my work today was dumping dirt out of the little plastic starter pots. 

I bought four English lavender last year and never transplanted them, yet they seem to have survived the winter albeit in a somewhat bedraggled state. I ruthlessly pruned them this afternoon, and we’ll see if they come back. 

This year, I really believe, will be the year I make my comeback in growing flowers on my deck. I used to make my deck a bower of delight with fragrant and beautiful plants, but a year or two before my parents died, or maybe longer, I just didn’t have the energy. Since then, every year, I’ve bought plants and every year not planted them. I think it will be different this year because I am retired. I no longer have to get it done on the weekend or else. I can go outside and do a little work, then come in, and I can do that any day or every day.

When I was approaching retirement, when people asked me what I was going to do with my time, I replied, “Potter. Potter around my house and garden.” This week, I’ve been pottering on my deck, and it’s been wonderful.

Container with honeysuckle. 

Cleaned up and added a layer of new soil.

Cleaned up this stone (actually resin)
that had been covered with dirt and mold.

My pot of herbs.
The rosemary thrives through the winter,
and the chives come back every year.
Sage & thyme were looking sorry
in the pots they were in when I bought them.
I planted them to see if they'll revive.

Charmed, I'm sure

 I was scrolling down YouTube and saw a video title that I thought was “charming mistakes you may be making.” Intrigued, I looked closer and saw it really was “cleaning mistakes you may be making.” Shucks.

But it reminded me of an interior conversation I had yesterday. I had made a nice cup of coffee, and put it on my desk and then went to quickly do something—I forget what. I got distracted and much later I remembered my coffee and realized it had probably gone cold.

“Oh, Jan,” I said to myself, “you are so”—I paused—“cute. What delightfully amusing things you do.” That was not where I was originally headed, but I wanted to be kind to myself.

Three is enough

 Day three of inclement weather. No more snow since yesterday—instead, freezing rain, which is worse. It just covers every surface with a coat of ice. Now it’s just inching above 32° Fahrenheit. (I’m so proud I spelled Fahrenheit correctly on my first attempt.) It’s sprinkling rain. Where there is snow, it’s just getting rained on. Where the snow was light (under a slatted shelter) it has turned to slush. Rain and this temperature make everything slippery.

I can own to a slight feeling of ennui. All my needs are provided for. I’m not short of food or necessary supplies (read: toilet paper). The power is on, the heater works, and I am warm (enough) and dry. But the confinement becomes just a little tedious.

On Facebook, my friends with school-age children are expressing their anticipation of Monday and—they hope!—schools opening back up. Lots of businesses have been posting closures or shortened hours both for safety of their patrons and because employees can’t come in. It’s starting to look a lot like covid. But, thankfully, it will not last so long. 

What a drag the pandemic was. I attribute my mental breakdown a couple years age to covid isolation. I’m still recovering. I never actually got covid, itself, ironically, but it still made me ill.

But let’s talk about more pleasant things. Um… January is more than half over—hurrah! The winter holidays are like wonderful food, and the post-holiday season is like acid reflux. Oops, forgot to be pleasant.

Handiwork, such as knitting or needlepoint, has been in abeyance ever since I brought home Beatrice three years ago. Each year for three years I adopted a puppy. Puppies are ebullient. Energetic. Lively. Hyper. Every time I sit on my couch, I am swarmed by ebullient, energetic, lively little furballs, all anxious to lick my face and also to prevent the other two from sharing in that pleasure. They wiggle and wag and chew each other’s faces and paw at me and climb up my person as though a wonderful prize waited at the top. My face, lickable. 

By now, Beatrice is three and no longer inclined to chew my fingers and anything they’re holding (like knitting needles). Benedict is two, and calmer than he used to be. Rosamond is one and still highly excitable, and her antics influence Benedict. So it’s just not relaxing or tranquil to sit on the couch, and working on a craft is impossible. I’m hoping Rosamond starts to calm down as she passes her second birthday this summer.

We have reached maximum puppy.

Snow and forgetfulness

 This time the predicted storm did show up. I woke up in the morning to couple inches of snow and now (early afternoon) a few more inches. I am snug inside.

Rosamond bounds into the snow.

My dogs have varying reactions to the snow. Beatrice, my chihuahua mix, has no interest at all in going out in the snow. Meanwhile, Rosamond finds it exciting and goes leaping through the drifts. Benedict, the chiweenie, follows Rosamond's lead but is not quite as eager to jump around in what, to small dogs, is deep snow—especially for Benedict, with his short, wiener-dog legs.

I don't like to leave them outside too long in the cold, so they're all back inside. I can hear my nephew and his little girl playing in the snow. My dogs hear them too. so Benedict keeps barking. He's the barkiest of the three. I keep sternly telling him, "No! Be quiet!" which is often effective for up to a minute and a half.

I was sitting at my desk this morning when I suddenly recalled, with a sense of panic, that I have jury duty this week. I've been supposed to call the jury message line the past three evenings to find out if I need to come in the following day. I completely spaced it. So I called the number and the message says no jurors are needed this week. Phew. I trust that is true retrospectively to Monday. If I missed showing up when I was supposed to, no doubt I will hear about it. I believe that failing to appear in response to a summons is contempt of court. In my case, it was not contempt but oblivion. I'll have to throw myself on the mercy of the court, if the need arises.

Time to stay home

 Well, the blizzard tentatively predicted last week did not materialize. We had the wind and the cold (very cold), but not the snow. Now there's another winter storm watch out for starting tonight. Not blowing snow, as far as I understand, but frozen rain and snow. That will make for horrendous driving. It will be good weather for staying inside.

When I saw the prediction I thought I'd better run to the store again to stock up. But when I started to think of a list, I realized I am still pretty stocked up from last week. There are a few things it would be nice to have but not enough to make it worthwhile to drive to the store. To paraphrase some designer or other, "Take no drive that you do not know to be useful or believe to be enjoyable." I'm a great one for staying home. It's what I've longed for every morning since fifth grade.

As long as I have enough coffee, I'm good. I will hope for no power outage, although even that I can live through. I fortunately live in a neighborhood where we don't get many outages, even when lots of other areas do, and, when we do lose power, it doesn't usually last long.

There was an era in my lifetime when, after a power outage, I had to go reset the time on my microwave, alarm clock by my bed, television or video player, and sometimes even my coffee maker. Now there are just two clocks in my home. One is my phone, which is not affected by a power outage. The other is my Zaanse clock, which likewise is not affected. It runs on weights, gears, and a pendulum. It does lose about 10 minutes a week, so that I have to push the minute hand ahead every Saturday when I also pull the chains to bring the weights back up. That clock is not for accurate time-keeping but for chiming and contributing to the homely ambiance.

My folks bought this clock while they were stationed in the Netherlands (with the U.S. Air Force). It is not any super-valuable antique but it has sentimental value for me.

Being the tortoise

Tuesday. This is the second day of what I consider my true retirement. Although my last full day of work was at the end of December, the first week of January consisted of holiday and vacation days, so I still was employed. I did go into the office at the end of Friday for my own retirement party. That was so nice. Present and past co-workers said lovely things to me and gave me lovely gifts. 

Then was a weekend, which, of course, I would have had off even if I were working. Then yesterday was Monday, my first non-working work day. 

I have the goal for the start of my retirement to get my house clean, organized, and de-cluttered. I have made some progress yesterday and today. Small progress, but I tell myself that any progress is progress. I will not internalize any discouraging words trying to convince me that small progress isn’t good enough. I'm like the tortoise in "The Tortoise and the Hare." Slow and steady wins the race.

My dad used to say, "We're off like a herd of turtles," so there you go.

One thing I did over the past couple days is lay in supplies, in case we get a blizzard (Northeaster) that weather people are saying is possible. I also have some paperwork that I need to complete related to a source of income.

Another thing to anticipate is jury duty. I’ve received a summons. Now I have all the time in the world to spend on a jury if I am selected. I’ll have to call in every evening to see if I must report to the courthouse. As a legal assistant, I visited the courthouse fairly often in the course of my job. The last time I was there, I thought that it would be the last time I was there. The joke’s on me. Maybe. I may just call in every night and never have to show up.

Morning view from my deck chair while the dogs frolic. I'm in no rush.