Randomly Freaky

"It's hot in here." My husband says every single night, as soon as he enters the bedroom.  The thermostat is set for 75 degrees, electric bill be damned, and he's hot.  I won't let him have a fan blowing directly on him, because it will blow on me as well, and my sinuses are dried out enough as it is.  Mr. Hot wears a CPAP machine with a built in humidifier, so he's not going to have bloody noses and headaches when he wakes up, but I will.  When Zane gets in the bed with us at night, he also gets the dried out sinuses.  I've tried doing the small things, like keeping the closet doors shut, but the big things that might help, like resealing the windows or flushing out the system, is up to him.  So he gets to lay there and be hot, at least until he falls asleep. 

Yes, in case you missed that, Zane continues to sleep in our bed, no matter where he starts out.  I finally asked him why he didn't like to sleep in his own bed.  I pointed out that he has a nice room with lots of toys and plenty of stuffed animals to cuddle with.  I reminded him that his father had painted the room just for him, and had made him several big posters of Batman and Superman for him to hang on the walls.  Was his bed too soft?  No.  Was it too warm/cold?  No.  Then why? 

"Because I hear voices when I am in there."    My skin broke out in goosebumps.  Darn you, Stephen King!

"Okay."  I just changed the subject.  I'll look into it later when I'm not so creeped out. Also, when I have a 5lb bag of salt, seven bulbs of garlic, and every cross in the house. 

I have tan lines!  Yes I do! They're on my...feet.  The lower parts of my legs have been having a great time in the sun, but since I wear these slip-on shoes everywhere, well...  The good side to all of this is that maybe this year when I hit the pool, the astronauts at the Space Station won't be calling to tell me that they can see me! 

I found this app for my Kindle, so of course I had to play with it.  It was free, since the Amazon App store offers a free app each day for download.  This is my first attempt at flowers, and I had a bit of trouble because my fingers are a little bigger than I wanted them to be, but they at least look like flowers.  All of you, of course, will be seeing some of my better attempts to get arty.  Gotta work that right brain!




My pinkeye seems to have cleared up.  I don't have the bloodshot eyes that might or might not be misinterpreted as a sign of something else, and I am pleased to say that I have not infected anybody else.  I have done my part to protect the public, and while I don't expect a reward, I will just be happy if  Patient Zero at least went to a doctor.  Down here it takes the hand of God coming down from on high to get people to go to the doctor.  For anything.  Until it's an emergency.  I don't know what happens if a person doesn't do anything about their pinkeye, but I imagine that it involves losing vision at some point.  So go to the doctor, person who infected me with pinkeye--where ever you are!

Check out the Stacy today, please!


 

No Handwringing About Handwashing

I am not afraid of the germs.

Oh, I know they are there, I just don't believe in scrubbing them into oblivion. I generally advocate a "you stay over there, I'll stay over here, and we will just go on about our bidness' stance when it comes to living things.  Most of the time, microbes don't hurt us; circumstances have to be just so before someone gets sick.  Most of the time if we get sick, our bodies respond by building immunity.  That is the way it is supposed to work.
 
I never went along with the whole "Every Bacterium on the Planet Must Die" panic of the last twenty years.  It never seemed like a good idea to me.  Yes, some places need to be scrubbed and disinfected almost hourly, like hospitals and nursing homes.  But people went overboard, and all of a sudden everything was 'antibacterial'.  Mothers were carrying around Purell, and squirting out for their kids every five minutes.   People in the public restrooms looked like they were scrubbing up for surgery, lathering up to the elbows.  Drinking after someone at a water fountain required a hazmat suit.  It got ridiculous.

There have been consequences to all that paranoia.  Triclosan, the major ingredient of antibacterial everything, is in the water supply.  Too much of that stuff causes muscle weakness,not a good thing for people with cerebral palsy.   Kids have been poisoned by the alcohol in some purifiers.  And the bacteria have evolved, becoming resistant to the very medications we take to cure illness. 

Growing up, we were constantly outside playing in the dirt, mud, grass, and lord-only-knows what else. If there was something icky, someone was daring a kid to eat it.  We didn't take baths every day because my parents couldn't afford the water bill.  If we got dirty, most of the time we just got a damp washcloth and rubbed it off, and went about our business.  If we got a cut, we rinsed it out and let it be.  Most of us went barefoot a great deal of the time, stepping in all sorts of things.  If our hands got dirty when we were playing, we would wash our hands with soap.  Not that pump soap, the kinds we have nowadays.  We had bar soap, like Ivory, or my personal favorite, Lava, that we would roll about in our hands under the water, lathering up and flinging the suds at each other.  I can remember occasions where my dad would use bleach, like after he had been fishing, but not much more than that.

Good times.

I still don't wash my hands a lot, and I don't freak out if I can't wash them.  I don't slather my cuts with neosporin, either, just wash them off and let the my body take care of the healing. And you know what?  I have a pretty strong immune system.  Except when it comes to things that I have never encountered before; then I am just like everyone else.  So when I took Zane to a bouncy castle place to play with his friend, and I sat on a random bench to watch him, I brought home an extremely virulent strain of pinkeye.  It hit me within hours, and the next day I went to the doctor, because I knew that it was serious.  The doc advised that I stay away from the masses and wipe down things that I've touched. Oh, and he gave me eyedrops.  Problem solved.  I had a lonesome Fourth of July, but I'm not that big on fireworks, anyway.