Emchap's Shit from the Internet 04/6/22 🍠
My body seems to have waited until I went onto a high-deductible health plan at work to decide to start falling apart. This week’s ailment of choice is that my hands, on which I periodically get eczema, have now returned to their truest, scaliest form with a vengeance, and they itch horribly.
Scratching of course only makes it worse, and stops the topical steroid + moisturizer regimen from doing its long-term work. But god, absolutely nothing feels as good as just absolutely going to town on my hands, right up until I stop because the skin has broken, at which point I am now itchy and in some pain, and have to just wait it out. It’s awful.
I’ve started sleeping in gloves so that I can reduce the amount that touches my hands + keep the moisturizer on them, and my boyfriend woke up the other night to me (half-awake) squeezing my fingers together like a little raccoon over and over again because at least that way I wasn’t irritating the skin quite so badly as actually scratching. I only learned he was not asleep while I was doing this when he asked if everything was okay the next day, since he was slightly worried that I’d been fully asleep and dreaming of washbear malevolence. (Itchy hands was, apparently, the more appealing of the available options.)
The itching feels to some extent like punishment for moving here; the pollen is up and my eyes hurt when I go outside and my hands are on fire etc etc etc. Stupid Oregon, stupid natural beauty, stupid hands.
Shit to read
As I’ve been trying to break myself of feeling guilty for moving my schedule at work around if needed, this piece on the arbitrary nature of the 8-hour workday for office work rang true.
Cat Marnell interviewed some other, Cat Marnell-like woman.
Was fully unaware of the wild history of Burt of Burt’s Bees fame.
I do not miss living in New York.
I always enjoy Cat Cohen’s advice column.
Everyone go learn about Ruination Day.
This is a genuinely gripping Chris Fleming interview.
Shit to eat
Go pick up groceries on your lunch break.
When you return home and put them up, reward yourself with a Lunch Bagel.
First slice the lunch bagel in half. This is tricky if, like me, you are an idiot who nearly cuts her finger off with a bread knife and is as of typing this wearing a bandaid around her sliced-through fingernail.
Put on a bandaid.
Finish cutting the bagel.
Broil it for 90 seconds. You’ll think 2 minutes is fine, but it’s too long.
Take it out, cover half with half-assed cream cheese and the other half with avocado you failed to mush up enough.
Red pepper and salt on the avocado, pepper in the cream cheese.
Eat at your desk (carefully, because your hand), and enjoy.
Shit to listen to
I cried laughing. Demi for president.
Shit to buy
I really liked this photo.
And I have liked this painting ever since I saw it on the Toast a million years ago. Maybe I’ll just get a big one and hang it over my couch.
Is this the year I get into bowls that are plates?