Saving Graces

Barbara: For a long time I've wanted to share this little "miracle" treatment I've been using to great success. In all my years of trial and error, one of my favourite no-fail natural cure-alls has been castor oil. It was recommended to me by an amazing healer many years ago and I use it religiously. Not to be confused with cod liver oil, castor oil comes from a flower and is mild and lovely. I use it externally as a remedy for skin issues like rashes, bruises, those hard little calcium deposits that love to pop up around the eyes, and for spider veins on my legs. I am prone to all of these and applying the castor oil has eliminated the calcium bumps as they come up, helps to diffuse the darkening of any bruises, and has actually kept more spider veins at bay, even minimizing the look of the ones that are already there. It is cheap and easy to find at a natural store. It is completely safe and can even go into your eyes if you apply it too closely, with no issues at all! The only problem is that it is goopy and thick. I rub it into my legs every morning until the goopiness has mostly gone and only wear it when I'm wearing jeans or thick pants where it won't bleed through. After doing this for the better part of five years I can assure you that it won't damage your clothes. I also use it as a cheap night cream every few nights and most nights I also massage it in around my eyes on top of my eye cream. Every one I know who uses it absolutely swears by it. But most people don't know about it, so I'm sharing it here! If you've tried it, let us know your experience. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them to the best of my ability (although obviously no expert) (and, no, this is not an advertising endorsement!).

Liver to Brain

Deb: Yesterday I was at a dermatologist who was checking out my litany of new moles, bumps, calcium accumulations, and other markings of that ilk.

Upon examination of the offending marks, she proclaimed them safe and removable, music to my ears.

So I asked her to identify the marks for me so I would know what they were and how to gage their normality if they started to increase in size, colour, or shape.

She responded by saying they are “wisdom marks.”

“What what????!!!”

I looked at her. She was dead serious. She was selling me on the “wisdom marks”. She was working me on the “new age, age”.

Her intentions were good, granted, but as I looked at this young, modern, educated doctor, I thought, “Wow. You are being trained to say shit like this TO ME! You are being told that this is what I need to hear.”

Does this mean that the onset of wisdomy warts and clever, devious moles brings with it an ability to go back in time and pass Grade 11 Math????????

Me thinkith notith.

So here is what you need to know, doctor. I reached my Holy Shit Trinity years ago and I have grown with the vernacular of liver spots to age spots to wisdom spots. And just so we understand each other, referring to my brown tea-stained facial spots as wisdom does nothing to conceal the fact that I am fine with it, thank you very much.

Liver spots should be my only worry.

ARE we really that fragile?  I don't think so. I'm not.

Barbara: Weird, huh? I mean, I’d rather they didn’t use euphemisms at all, but called them, I don’t know, the official Latin term, or something equally medically official sounding. I’d rather offer a resounding “huh?” than be pandered to (egotistically-speaking). And with the endless shifts and changes to the aging skin/body, it’s nice to believe our vocabulary could actually develop exponentially. Might make up a bit for the wisdom spots ... er, liver spots ... er, lentigos (???). 

When The Bugs In My Bed Are All In My Head

Barbara: I woke up the other night, my back itching like crazy. It was smack dab in the middle of the night—I was almost REM I was so out, I was so out I’d have to be pulled physically out of bed for any of nature’s calls––and so I was in no mood to discover the source of the itching. I’d rather have just flopped over and gone back to sleep and waited for a more godly hour. But my back had other plans.

This itching was driving me so absolutely crazy that I started to scratch and squirm. I wriggled and writhed. And THEN I remembered that there has been a lot of talk lately about bedbugs infesting city homes. Well, I live in a city. And they were especially infesting the homes of people who travel a lot. Well, Phil travels a lot. And suddenly I had to replay every article I’d ever read or report I’d ever seen, going through the nauseating lists of the ifs and whats of bedbugs. If they were bedbugs, then I’d have to completely overhaul my home, maybe throw out my mattress, maybe fumigate the entire place, toxins infiltrating every nook and cranny. And what were bedbugs anyway? Minute, invisible creatures that attacked and disappeared, that were impossible to trap, that crawled up out of the darkness of your precious sleep-space, ate voraciously of your flesh, then crawled away again, leaving no evidence of their route except drops of blood on your sheets.

Of course I spent way way too long considering all this and not getting up to see for myself if there was any actual evidence on my body of these scurrilous creatures––beyond the itching. It was twofold: the aforementioned mid-night laziness and the dread at having my fears confirmed. But finally I couldn’t take it anymore. At the very least I had to put something on my itchy skin or I’d be up all night.

I managed to heave myself up and out and I stumbled to the bathroom. Then I got a handheld mirror and positioned myself to look through it into the large bathroom mirror so I could inspect my back. It was inconclusive. My vision was blurred from lack of sleep and my back was covered with incriminating red scratches. But all I could see when I looked closer were tiny bumps the size of rash-spots, not red or all congested like a rash, but spattered here and there like dead skin cells sloughing off. And when I googled bedbug bites—as we are so compelled now to do, right?—I saw how alarmingly awful they looked and how thankfully different from my own itchy skin. And, no, it wasn’t psoriasis either.

As I’ve told you all before, I am a habitual creamer, but despite that I think my skin is just really really dry from the cold air and the endless heating. I slathered on the cream and my itchiness abated. It is an unhappy skin I sport these days, but I will say this, it is a happy happy thing that it isn’t friggin’ bed bugs.

Deb: Okay, I can barely type, what with one hand busy scratching. Pavlov’s dog lives and I am he!

Barb, I think you showed great restraint frankly. When my mind goes to the dark place of anything, do NOT be in my path. In one sweeping motion I would have had the bed stripped, and my husband up, a flashlight combing his back. Then the mattress would have been turned on its end, inspected within an inch of its coils. The dogs would be barking and the lights in the house blazing. In the end, I would have been, as you were, covered in cream. I would have also been uttering a string of apologies to my disheveled husband and receiving a grunt in reply. And sleep? Fuggedaboutit!