Curing the Itchy Leg

Last August I began experiencing a horrible itching on my shins when I'd go to bed.  I'd claw at them all night and wake with scratch marks all over my legs.  At first I suspected it was my laundry detergent; with it being summer I wasn't wearing pants or anything covering my lower legs so I switched to see if that would make a difference.  It did not.  The itching persisted, lasting all this time, though now it goes all all day with no relief.  There's no sign of a rash, no bumps or bite marks, just maddening itching.  Rob did some research and saw a link to my symptoms and a thyroid disorders.  Around the time that the itching began some other things started to occur as well, and I'm only just now making the connection.  Hair loss, (slight) weight loss, and body flush were all things I noticed last summer.  The body flush is particularly alarming when it happens.  It begins with a tingling sensation all over my scalp, then my face and ears become hot and prickly.  Within minutes my entire body is covered in a blotchy red rash.  It lasts for about a half hour then goes away.  It happens irregularly, once a month at most, but I've never been able to trace a pattern with it like a food reaction.  I've made an appointment to see a doctor about this and have my blood tested to determine whether or not it's a thyroid issue.  These are hereditary and my mother battled an overactive thyroid when I was young, so it's likely.  In the meantime, however, I'm going to follow the advice of an acquaintance who has fought with itchy legs like I described for seven years.  Hers are the result of hypothyroidism and she claimed that whenever she eliminates gluten from her diet the itching goes away.  So today is my first day of this experiment.  My biggest problem will be giving up steel-cut oatmeal, my staple breakfast.  Looking at the rest of my diet, though, I don't see this being a problem.  I'd gladly give up oatmeal, though, if it means itch-free legs.  We'll see how this goes.

Goal Setting

I've been feeling hyper-motivated in the last few days.  Having the garden right outside our windows has done something to rev my energy.  Going out to check on and water the leaves of kale and the rest is one of the highlights of my day.  Making art more regularly is creeping back into my daily routine (I'm pleased with how I'm making use of my time, already working on a birthday gift for a special girl who is turning thirteen in August), and I'm starting to prepare paper, a major process in itself, for a collection of work that will be on exhibit at our neighborhood coffee shop in January.  And then there's the running.  I was just reviewing my running log and saw that there were two months so far this year that I ran over 50 miles.  I'd like to shoot for running 50 miles each month.  It's a great head-clearing activity, and I love that Nina has expressed an interest in it, too, so I've taken on a kind of trainer role for her.  We're starting slow and short, but I've encouraged her to keep a journal-calendar so she can record how she feels after each time we go out.

We've also been making improvements on our home.  Anyone who knows me is well aware than I'm no housekeeper, but at the end of most days we spend the five to ten minutes it takes to tidy up the living room, the space that sees the most wreckage during the day.  It's so nice to wake up each morning to a neat room.  The alternative is simply too chaotic for me to think clearly.  And I've been making the bed.  Not every day, but I'm starting to get into the habit.  It looks and feels better.  I feel better.  Things 'round here are good.

Brave Buggy, the Self-Suckler

It was a long day at the market for Olive today and she didn't take a nap, though during the last half hour she nestled down under a blanket and prepared for slumber.  I caught her on several occasions attempting - rather impressively - to nurse herself.  She had a handful of flesh that she was pulling mouthward, determined to get some satisfying results.  Silly girl.  Here's a picture, though it doesn't do justice to what was happening.

Sometimes when she's shirtless her pale, almost translucent skin calls to mind the scene in ET where Michael is biking around frantically in search of Elliott and sees ET half dead in a stream with a raccoon nosing about.  Does anyone else see it?

Later, while I was getting my bag out of the front seat of the car, I hadn't noticed a little hand slipping quickly into the door frame and I closed it.  I looked down and saw that my child's finger was still in the crack and I yanked it back open.  She made no sound of protest, though I was reminded of the time I got my fourth finger dislocated by a heavy metal cooler door and how it took several seconds for the pain to register.  I could see already, though, that her finger had been spared and it was only bruised and had a pretty good (as in bad) scrape down from her nail.  And then, oh, did she wail.  I was frantic and considered rushing her to the hospital but reassessed the injury and deemed such measures unnecessary.  Still, it gave me quite a scare to think of how badly she could have been hurt, the severed digit I may've had to retrieve and have sewn back on.  Yikes.  I knew that her pain was fleeting when we went inside and she was immediately calmed and distracted by her toys and books.  Since she wasn't about to let me near her "PBJ finger" - the blood and raw flesh must have looked like strawberry jam to her - I tossed her in the bathtub along with some splashes of tea tree oil to help disinfect the wound.  She went to bed happy as can be.

Holdin' on to Black Metal

Olive has some very clear preferences when it comes to music.  When we're in the car it's always, "Black Meddew (Metal)", so I play it.  It's track 6 off My Morning Jacket's 2011 album, Circuital, a pretty terrific collection of songs.  "Holdin' on to Black Metal" is one of the best cuts and was an instant favorite of Buggy's from the time I got a copy.  She'd bop in her carseat to the killer guitar-and-brass-driven beat.      It's now extending into the home.  At nap time today she requested it so I picked it out on the piano and sang for her; she seemed pleased.  This evening she demanded it so I cued it up on the computer, but once is never enough.  The moment the song ends - or even transitions into the song's bridge section - she's saying, "Listen Black Meddew!"  It's okay having this on repeat, especially when I think of some of the songs that play incessantly in the homes where children dwell.  The content may be questionable (five Lucifer references), but I'll take it over anything that plays on pop stations that insidiously capture the devotion of the 5-25 set.  MMJ is coming to Pittsburgh again in August so perhaps we can make it a true family affair.

We Got a Garden After All!

After last year's ultimate garden failure I wasn't willing to give it another go - at least not in the same location.  Its proximity to a heavily wooded area brought with it wildlife so invasive that we were only able to harvest basil, hot peppers, a few leaves of kale and lettuce and a single bean.  Also, its 1.5 mile distance from our house, which seemed so agreeable initially, may as well have been in Ohio.  You see, there was no water source so we'd have to cart in our own each time we visited, an inconvenience of such magnitude that I began to quickly tire of the project.  I love growing my own food but longed for a space within view of my house.

For the past month or so I had the pleasure of being across-the-aisle neighbors with Mick and Maggie (and their darling daughters, Claire and Evelyn), of M&M Robertson Farms, who were selling transplant seedlings.  I'm not usually one to resist some red Russian kale (or white Russian, lacinato, rainbow lacinato, and Beedy's Camden, a variety I've never tried!), and I love supporting family farms so I purchased a few kales, a pear tomato plant, a cucumber vine and a flat of various marigolds (one of Olive's middle namesakes).  These I sat on our front steps where they got a pretty good amount of light.  Yesterday was Mick and Maggie's last day at the market so I snagged two more tomatoes, a salad variety whose name I forget and an indigo rose, whose inky stalk caught my attention.  Mick showed me a picture in the catalog of the dark, plum-like skin and flesh of the fruit.  He then asked if I liked kale.  DO I?  He sent me home with an entire flat of seedlings.

When I got home I surveyed with doubt the dwindling real estate of our front steps.  These sweetlings needed a true home.  Then this morning, while looking out our bedroom window that faces the south, a window whose light breathed life back into our flourishing fig and continues to nurture Precious Junior, our rubber plant, it hit me.  Why not make use of the strip of yard that gets so little use, save for the Hoop Union, the hula hooping group that congregates there on Wednesday evenings.  I grabbed my tiller and spent Olive's nap time clearing a wide row nearly half the length of our house.  I kept it close so as not to encroach on Union Project grounds, though I was told that twenty feet of the lawn was ours.  I scattered last year's food scrap compost (a more vicious odor I don't think I've encountered) and mixed it with the soil, then sunk each pod into the earth.   My only regret is that I didn't think of this two months ago.  There's always next year.

Stay tuned for pictures!