Bringing It All Back Home

Going back to the village where I grew up for my great-uncle's funeral was a stressful, but necessary observance, as I struggle to process the continuing disappearance of an admirable generation. (Who didn't park at a desk, send all the money to Wall Street or Madison Ave. and flush it down a coke-spattered toilet. At worst, they could be called lousy plumbers, who also took a huge dump when they jumped to Reagan. One can't just blame the child standing next to the mess.) This branch of the family are pretty serious Christians. Which, I'm sure, is partly why they were always so good to me. I offered my best jar of grape jelly to the church ladies who put out the sandwiches, but you can imagine why I might have overdone the coffee. Probably also due to recent Halloween treats, my dermatophytes were inspired to rise with a vengeance in the evening.

Well, I didn't turn the other cheek; I struck like Eisenhower! First, I searched the September archives for the Egyptian skin saponification recipe, and gave it a nuclear-powered update with fiber. This took the inflammation and itch down to a blood-infused soreness, in places, which I hope represents a more productive immune response.

1. Eat half a banana, with peel.
2. Oil cleanse affected areas with jojoba.
3. Dissolve potassium bicarbonate in Witch Hazel, USP and scrub with cotton pad.
4. Repeat 2&3 with coconut oil.
5. Dermasil to re-moisturize.

As deathly gray as my pinky toenail is, it seemed to be thoroughly cleansed, or as they say for hair, "clarified." But I woke to more itching, if not flakes, and used a slice of banana peel to enable sleeping in. When I actually got out of bed (feeling much less depressed, thank you Lord), I read online that coconut oil would have been a better choice than Dermasil, as it is naturally anti-fungal. So I put a coat of that on, this time including my scalp, with a couple drops of tea tree & E oil mixed in as an afterthought.  On the internal front, I made a simple aloe juice cocktail with lemonade, and ate oatmeal for breakfast.

Postponing the shower until after my final leaf-raking session of the year, I mixed up a fresh pump bottle of boo-boo juice with potassium bicarbonate, and wet the hair/smeared the skin with it just before getting in. Then again with the coconut oil upon emerging.

I got that organic, unrefined coconut oil awhile ago at Christmas Tree Shops, and I'm not going through it very fast in the kitchen. I see the price has really dropped on the other kind, if I did want to cook more, so there's no reason not to use the good stuff exclusively as a cosmetic commodity, except for some generic acne warnings. Since I had it out, I let it take the place of moisturizer on my armpits, and so far, it's working well. Nice thing about that is, that since there is no glycerin to balance out, I can stick to the cheap Witch Hazel in the "odorless" preparation, instead of Humphreys. So far, so good -- no smell. My hand calluses are now nearly invisible and my hair noticeably darker looking, having been clarified like my toenail. Impressive stuff.

My shave, not so much, as I wanted to see what Williams would do with nothing but sweat. It did well enough, but my skin announced that it was clearly the end of the Racer in Stella, as only high-velocity strokes didn't dig. That meant a two-pass, three-hour smooth shave. Which I think is fine, given the lack of effort. Damn fine, even, since it was already almost suppertime.

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