Itchy?

Is anyone else out there itchy? 


Deep winter is making me VERY uncomfortable again.  You know, deep winter?  When the air is so dry is sucks every bit of moisture out of your hide no matter how much you moisturize? 


I've tried moisturizing soaps.  I've tried skipping showers.  I've tried various and sundry lotions.  I use benign laundry soap/fabric softeners.  I sit here scratching.  My back itches.  My tummy itches.  My scalp.  In the bend of my elbow.  The backs of my knees. 


I try, unsuccessfully, to not scratch in public, so people don't think I have a skin disease or something.  I just can't stand it!!


I sometimes close my eyes and try to meditate the itch away.  Haven't had much success with that yet. 


My favorite part of the day is when I can come home, strip down as much as possible and switch to super saggy soft unstructured clothes that barely touch me and then scratch my hide with my hair brush.  AHHHHHH!!!  I swear that this time of year, if I had to choose between a good scratching session and a great orgasm I'd opt for the scratching session!


Sometimes scratching that itch can be a downright super fantastic feeling!!! 


I can't wait to be sweaty.  I want moist, well moisturized skin again!


Sigh.


Go away winter...

"The Walk"

Last week I decided to start mall walking.  I’d recently gone out with a girlfriend to wander around the mall and chit chat.  By the end of that excursion…maybe about 2 hours worth…my back was stiff and aching, my calves were tight and sore and I had a painful blister on the side of my right foot so was limping.  I felt OLD. 

I’ve had some back problems recently.  I’ve been very careful trying to avoid causing further damage.  I've started to question the wisdom of that after my painful shopping excursion.  Maybe instead of protecting myself so much I should be strengthening myself to heal my back problems.

I’m too young to feel so old after doing so little!! 

I decided walking would be a good way to get my muscles exercising and hopefully strengthen my core so that my back would get better. 


On Monday I went shopping and bought some good New Balance tennis shoes.  I’d tried on other brands and had weird lumps in strange places that I figured would lead to more blisters so went back to my comfy default…New Balance.   JCP had them on sale!

On Tuesday I started mall walking.  I powered thru it pretty good!  Was feeling proud of myself!   Literally patting myself on the leg for doing it on my drive home!  My calves were complaining so I figured that was a good sign. 

I chatted with Ken about my adventures that evening and he suggested getting a pedometer app for my phone so that I could measure my progress, so I started investigating.  I found one called “The Walk” that niggled in the back of my brain for a while, but since it was $4.99 I held back.  It seemed a little expensive for an app.  I'm cheap about some things.

Anyway, I kept doing the mall walk every day.  My calves kept bitching which drove me on because I figured sooner or later they’d stop bitching and that would mean I’d made progress. 

By Friday I realized I was going to get super sick of mall walking if I didn’t come up with some sort of distraction (mall walking is incredibly boring for those who go it alone).  That night I finally decided to splurge and spend the $4.99 for “The Walk” and try it out. 

On Saturday I was there at the mall, with ear plugs and my app ready to go!  


My ear plugs didn’t work.  I was walking around wondering why I wasn’t hearing anything...why it seemed muffled.  Took them out and realized that the reason the sound was muffled was that it was blaring out of my phone and not thru the plugs!  I almost walked into several people trying to solve the problem to no avail.  I finally gave up and held the phone up to my ear to listen while I walked.  That was a struggle for a couple of reasons.  First, the mall was busy and there was a lot of white noise around me.  Second, the characters in “The Walk” have Scottish and model accents, which are a bit hard to understand thru the white noise and the various distractions. 

Here’s background on “The Walk”

A bomb explodes in Inverness station, and you’re given a package that could save the world. To stay alive, you’ll need to walk the length of the UK. The Walk is more than just a great pedometer/step counter — it's a way to turn walking into a journey, a challenge, and a rip-roaring adventure.

During this walk I realized that a single pass around the mall only took me about 15 minutes.  15 whole minutes.  15 minutes that had been making my calves bitch at me for days!  Sigh.  I was an even worse marshmallow than I’d suspected!  I hadn’t realized it was such a quick walk until the app told me…and here I’d been feeling all proud of myself, aside from the older folks who’d been powering past me on their mall walk circuits!  The good news is that my calves finally quit bitching over the weekend. 

I went home Saturday and played with my phone and finally realized that I needed to push the ear plug cord in HARDER for it to work.  <eye roll>  I have experienced a lot of personal shame recently.

Sunday I went for my mall walk with the ear plugs working and I did a double circuit (30 minutes!) and actually understood the story line from “The Walk” because I could hear it!  No complaining calves and no discomfort!  Definitely making progress :)


I restarted episode one since I missed a turn off and wanted to get the sound byte from it and also realized I'd missed some points of interest.  It's more walking so that's fine with me. 

It’s Monday again and I can’t wait to go do my mall walk after work!  How’s that for progress?  “The Walk” is a big part of the reason for that.  Once I could finally focus on the story line I started enjoying it and couldn’t wait to get farther along to open up another dialogue.  I was mentally imagining how funny it would be if I play acted the story out!  Sneaking here and there...running for cover from bombs…ducking bullets!  Part of my enjoyment of the story is the mental image of how others would react if I started running and ducking and sneaking into places in the mall to hide J 

I recommend "The Walk" to all bored walkers out there! 


I'm looking forward to some spring weather so I can take this walk outside and enjoy the fresh air!

Bras vs. Bandaids - if you don't want to think about boobs avoid this post!

Gasp!  My boob just fell out of the bottom of my bra!  At work!!


There.


I discreetly tucked my boob back into my bra without anyone seeing me. 


Whew!


I don't like bras very much.  Honestly?  The minute I get home I switch to a shirt that won't show so much (like a t-shirt under a sweat shirt) so I can get the damned thing off as quickly as possible! 


I hate being squeezed around the ribs.  I really do!  It's awful!  It's like jail!


That's why my boob just fell out of my bra at work.  Not cool!  I'm wearing my most comfy, sloppy, loose hanging bra possible.  I know.  TMI.  But it's my blog and I get to talk about what I want to.  Many women will get this. 


Some women love bras!  I am NOT one of those women.  I find them horribly uncomfortable and restricting.  Who wants to wear a tight band around their ribs all day?  Not me!  My BF isn't around.  I have no one to impress.  He wouldn't care if I went without a bra anyway unless it turned into an embarrassing incident and then, knowing him, he'd probably just laugh at me and never let me forget it!


Personally, I'm aiming for comfort.  I buy a bra and loosen everything up as much as possible.  As a result the straps tend to slide down my arms on a semi-regular basis.  It's obnoxious but the alternative is having something tight over my shoulders and around my ribs and that does NOT appeal to me in the slightest.  So I tug them up.  Well I was just tugging the strap up when my boob fell out the bottom.  And my male co-workers were standing outside my office door waiting for their cohort to join them for lunch!  Very bad timing for one of the girls to escape!


I miss the old days when they were smaller.  I went braless a lot back then because it wasn't so obvious.  Now it's kind of cow like.  I shouldn't be so mean really.  They aren't that bad.  But they move around a lot now.  Kind of hard to hide them when they are be-bopping around independently.


When I started having mammograms in my 30's the techs would complain about how hard it was to squish them flat for pictures.  Now they are quite content as my boobs are totally cooperative.  They'll go flat without much of a struggle!  They have gotten older and less firm just like me.  Bummer.


Even when I was young and they were smaller and perky, I hated bras.  Underwires dig into your ribs.  I used to remove them the instant I got the bra.  Now I don't.  Sadly, now the girls need the extra support. 


Now my mind is wandering to that one time, after I'd stopped nursing my child and thought the milk was dried up so went motorcycle riding without a bra on.  And got an embarrassing wet t-shirt for my troubles!  Nice big circles around the nipples so it wasn't even a hot wet t-shirt! 


I like my boobs but they are often a pain!  I envy men their lack of boobs some days.  Well they have boobs but most will never wear a bra.  Some will but that's another story...


Anyway, there was a point to this.  Back when I had smaller boobs (they got bigger when I got heavier - no boob jobs - too cheap for that plus I hear it hurts real bad and I'm not into pain for beauty.  I'll live with what I got.)  Detoured again...I figured the only reason I needed a bra was to keep me from showing if I got nipped from a chill breeze or some such.  So one day I got the bright idea of putting those little round Band-Aids on my nipples to hold them down.  I'd heard male joggers do this to avoid chaffing. 


It worked like a charm!  No nippler incidents that day and the girls were still firm enough not to be caboodling hither and yon independently so it was working for me.  I thought I'd figured out how to beat the bra rule!  At least until I got home that night and tried to take the Band-Aids off.  HOLY GODS!!!  That was NOT FUN!!!  Trying to even get an edge up to grip to peel was a challenge and then peeling them off the nipples??  I've had waxing sessions that were less painful!!  I quit waxing and went back to shaving so you can get how well I tolerate that kind of pain.  Maybe I am a wimp like my chiropractor intimated?  Anyway, I never did the Band-Aid trick again and I think joggers who do this are masochists. 


Moral of the story...never put round Band-Aids on your nipples.  Unless you're a masochist.


Secondary moral of the story (because it's not painful)...I'm going to be more careful about the level of force used to tug my straps back up. 


You didn't really think I was going to wear my bra tighter did you?  Ick.

Thinking about mortality

The recent past has been full of reminders of mortality for me.  I can’t go into much detail to protect other's privacy.  The people who need to know, do.  That has to be enough.  But I want to try to write about it somehow, in a way that won’t expose someone else’s private business.

I feel unsettled. 

Life is so much kinder when it gives you a break from the specter of death…when it allows you the illusion that you and your loved ones will all live to a ripe old age.  It’s a comfortable place to be isn’t it? 

Then life slams you to the ground and reminds you that we can all be taken away in a moment.  This day that you’re living?  It might be the best day you’ll have in your life.  Tomorrow things could change and everything after will carry a stabbing sliver of pain in it. 

You’ll adjust to the loss.  You have to.  It's how life works!  I’ve lost loved ones.  I’ve grieved with my friends as they’ve lost loved ones. 

Then you learn to live without them.  You never forget them but you learn to move on.  You are forever changed.

You think you’re doing well and then something will trigger a memory and it will all wash over you again.  But it’ll bring a sad sort of joy to have them back with you when that happens.  They sit in the background so that we can go on with the tedium of our lives but every now and again they jump to the front and remind us that we loved them and that they loved us.

It’s painful to remember.  Wonderful and painful at the same time.  Yet you can never regret having any of them in your life.  There is a price to pay for loving people.  The more people you love, the higher the chances are that you’ll pay this price.  Nothing is free.

It’ll be worth every bit of it. 

Right now I want to go back to my illusions of immortality.  I want the fear of loss and the heartache to fade so I can return to my inane, tedious little life where I piss and moan about traffic or annoying things or car repairs.  I miss my comfortable illusion.  I’m waiting patiently for it to return.  Hoping life cooperates.

Just to be on the safe side? 

Family, friends...I REALLY love you guys!!!  You make life worth living and I hope to keep all of you with me for years and years and years!  I hope to stay with you as long too!