This morning and this evening
A blog in two parts.
This morning:
I’m sitting in Charly’s having breakfast feeling so relaxed I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s been awhile since I’ve done the breakfast-while-the-kid-is-in-preschool thing and it feels so good. Since they are closed on Mondays I’ll only be doing this one time a week but it’s still wonderful.
I’m really looking forward to going to Chicago this weekend. Wrapping up Audrey Woulard’s workshop with seeing Jen and family will be a great time. I’m really hoping we can slip away to get pedicures so she can get some time away too. Plus, who can resist pretty toes? What’s funny is that outside of one time with Christie, all of my pedis have been in Chicago. That doesn’t say much about the condition of my toes but I’ll pretend that pedis are a luxury I save for time with adored friends and hope people believe me.
My mom and I are getting our hair done tonight and I.am.ready. My grey roots are blinding and my bangs could star in a Disney movie provided you found a delightful sheep dog to attach them to. I scheduled this way on purpose so I didn’t look like a hag out of town — people here are used to it. It’s not only the grey; my hair seems to behave better once it’s colored. My bangs annoy me to no end because the left side has a wave that rolls into a curl the longer it gets. The right side does something similar but it’s not as obnoxious. Because the beauty gods frown on me, at the exact length my bangs would be perfect they look ridiculous and have decided they’d rather be a thick handlebar mustache instead. Of course this mustache is affixed to my forehead so you can imagine my frustration and unwillingness to resemble a side-show freak. Feh. Why don’t I grow them out, you ask? Because the way my hair grows I’d constantly be yanking hair out of my eyes so I prefer this to stocking up on barrettes that would result in my looking like the Caucasian version of Ugly Betty.
I’ve been too busy/lazy to google but I wonder if it’s possible to develop an allergy to gold. Until this morning I’ve had my wedding rings off for a couple weeks or so. When I was out to dinner with Kelly I noticed the skin under my rings was raw and red. I took my rings off and let the skin heal. It was as if my skin was sunburnt and it started to peel and dry out. I put Neosporin and lotion on it and when it seemed better I put the rings back on. Boom. Same thing again. This time I figured it may have been something stuck in the tiny holes under the stones in my wedding ring from the work I had been doing at my mom’s. Again I let my finger heal, cleaned the rings really well (or so I thought) and this morning put them on again. Now I can’t get them off and I feel the itch again. Can you be allergic to gold?
This evening:
I got the rings off and again my finger was starting to look like raw hamburger. I was on the phone with Jen and asked her if she knew anything about gold allergies and she proceeded to share with me her experience with the nickel that you find mixed with almost all gold jewelry. Pure gold is too soft for use in jewelry so they mix in nickel and other metals/alloys to harden it. Or bla bla bla whatever Google said bla bla bla. Anyhow, what she described sounded exactly like what was going on with me so I googled and there it was. It seems I have some sort of contact dermatitis and have a sensitivity to either gold (not very common) or nickel (pretty darn common). Can you believe this nonsense? Oh well. It’s not a top priority so I’ll have to find a substitute silver/CZ combo for the time being. I’ll move on to platinum since from what I understand it’s 90-95% pure and it’s mixed with iridium? Eh, whatever. I’ll whine and blog about it next year maybe. I really miss my rings and feel naked without them but there’s nothing I can do about it.
The waterproofing is moving along nicely and that will be nice not to have to worry about anymore. One of these days I’m going to spray again and then scrub the walls. I want to get that damn basement cleaned up so we can start moving stuff in already. What a pain in the ass.
Thanks to Walgreens I am now innoculated against some certain strains of influenza which I may or may not be exposed to at some point in the upcoming flu season. I stopped in with Iz initially to just get my mom some milk when I saw everything set up. I figured that I might as well get the shot now when I had a couple of minutes to spare than try and orchestrate getting to the doctor’s office at some point in time that may or may not happen — ever. It was good to get it out of the way and Iz ended up with a Breast Cancer Awareness Beanie Baby in the process. Win-win!
And if you’re reading, weeJen, I miss you. I wish you were coming to Chicago this weekend. It’s been too long and I really do miss you.
