Fixing The Extra Dry Hand Effect

If you are washing your hands more often and using hand sanitizer more than ever due to good practices to prevent getting and spreading the Covid-19 virus, you probably noticed this terrible side effect: extra dry hands. And for those like me who have a thin skin this is even more of a problem. And honestly, using a regular hand moisturizer all the time (or as often as I could remember) or even some body oils to address the problem didn’t prevent nor worked to treat the dryness, cracked skin of my hands.

And after considering a Dermatologist to help me out on that, I remembered about this product I had used once to treat the extra dryness of my hands a few years ago. And boom, game changer. The product is O’Keeffe’s Working Hands Cream. And it’s a miracle cream because within a few days my skin went from extremely dried, totally cracked to a smooth looking (and touching) one. No kidding. There are still some roughness in my hand’s knuckles, but it’s so little that I can hardly feel it. For me it’s good enough already.

I only used it before bed every night for about 3 days and that was enough to reverse the damage. But you can use it as often as you like. Now I keep on using the cream so I can keep it like that, hopefully. Because it’s very unpleasant to have extra dry hands.

The cream has no fragrance, it doesn’t make your hands greasy after using it, but leaves your hands highly moisturized and protected. I do recommend it.

And just to disclosure: this is not a paid post. It’s totally my experience with the cream and the dry hands problem that I wanna share with you.

Disappointed

Disappointed I am. With some people, some Zen, supposedly caring people, healers even, who are taking this whole quarantine-pandemic in a complete wrong, selfish way. People who should know better and act better.

But they don’t.

Currently, in the middle of so much pain and sorrow, they are more concerned about their lack of “freedom “, the imposed restrictions, the uncomfortable use of masks and the impossibility of going out just like it used to be.

And others are taking way too light the restrictions of social distancing and the quarantine mode, going out and about, just because, not for the essential.

Yep, life is currently interrupted. At least, the way we knew it. And it really sucks, but life is interrupted in the attempt of stopping the virus to spread, to give time to doctors and nurses to take care of everybody who might need care. Life is interrupted to save lives, the most we possibly can. Because lives do matter, regardless the age, health condition, race, gender and status quo. And they should be our first and main focus. And we should do our very best, our part to stop this damn pandemic. If we handle it correctly, everything else will follow. And bit by bit we will all return to our lives as we knew it. Hopefully with great lessons learned and applied, with more compassion and kindness in our actions, with focus on what it really matters, appreciating the ones we love and spending more time, a good time with them.

But that is just a hope. A wishful thinking. Because when I look at those people who as I said should know better and act better and the way they are approaching this whole crisis (and I am not even tackling the conspiracy theories they are firmly believing in) I can’t help thinking that yep, life will return to its normal self, but not with improved beings or even an improved reality. Not this time around. Not yet.

Because even people who should know better and act better are not.

And although this is not a surprise, it’s unfortunate.

It’s sad.

And highly disappointing.

Is Love Ever In Vain?

Image by Shift and Sheriff from Pixabay.

Yesterday, early in the morning, out of nowhere it came to me that it was an ex-boyfriend’s birthday. My last boyfriend. He actually was not a real boyfriend just someone I was starting to know. The whole experience was not a smooth one, because we lived our “romance” for most of its brief time a Continent apart. And since I am not the best when the subject is keeping in touch via messages, videos, texting… I guess at some point he thought I was losing interest in him. But I was not. I was just being me, the antisocial me, the person who sucks in keeping in touch. Or to keep any relationship, to be fair.

So when we reunited al last, he ditched me. With distance and then words in a message. Still don’t know why exactly, but I let him go. Easily. Not because I was no longer interested in trying but because I realized I didn’t like the version of him that didn’t like me. That simple.

And yet, that hard.

We moved on, in different directions and up to this moment our paths haven’t crossed. And I don’t think it ever will. Because that is what happens every time with me and my relationships. They only last till they last. And when it’s over it doesn’t become something else, just a nothing.

And that is the tuff part for me; this nothing afterwards. Because all my exes or most of them were keepers, men that I would like to keep around, in my life. Not for sex or any romantic innuendo but as a friend or at least someone that somehow would still be part of my life, even if sporadically. To talk, laugh here and there, over a coffee. Or a tea.

It’s not because we are no longer in love or falling in love that we couldn’t keep in touch. At least for me. For them it seems an impossible task. When it’s over it’s like I got a terrible contagious disease and they feel as if they need to be far away from me. As far as they can. It’s a matter of life and death.

Dramatic but true. And that is how endings like that makes me feel. A failure. Worthless. Nothing.

Just someone who never had a bad, sore breakup does believe that the first impressions are the ones that remain. In this case, it’s not. It’s that last sad, ugly, sore memory of that melancholic breakup that will stick with you, that will flavor the whole story with its bitterness, regardless the story you had before it. Because when you look back and recall the story, it’s not the good silly times we had together, the way our conversation flew as if we were best friends for years and years, the way he knew how to put a big smile in my face that will come up. All of it is vanished and what remains is how bitter and sour was that ending. How horrible it made you feel. And it’s impossible not to think that that story deserved a better end. Not necessarily happily ever after, but a much better one. I deserved better. You deserved better. We deserved better.

Would then this and other love stories with bad endings be in vain, I wonder?

It sure does feel like that, but then again love is love. And love, regardless the ending, is never, ever in vain.

Never.

Frozen

Photo: Pixabay.

Yet, still moving.

Where to?

No idea.

But always moving.

Away from my dreams.

For sure.

Because they are THE things I am doing my very best (or worst?) avoiding to go for.

So I move…

In other directions.

Any direction.

Away from them.

That is why I fell stuck, frozen in time. Because although I am moving I am going nowhere really. Not where I should go.

And that sucks.

Big time.

Not only because time is getting short each day, month and year I procrastinate yet another step in the right direction.

But because deep inside I know I am not doing what I am suppose to do.

Funny thing is I don’t think I am moving too far from my dreams.

I stick around.

Just in case?

With a wide opened eye on them.

A heart beating in their rhythm.

But my feet, damn feet!, follows my scary mind that keep on walking away from them.

Poor thing.

Just going round and round, waiting to jump in any moment.

Actually, not in any any moment, but the perfect moment when inspiration becomes so impossible to avoid that I have no other alternative other than jump in.

All in.

Organically.

Fully.

But the sad true is the fear of failure (or should I say, to succeed?), the ghost of perfectionism, the critical devil inside keep guarding me from this vital jump.

With words.

Emotions.

Blindness.

Anxiety.

Procrastination.

Till when will I be around waiting for that perfect moment that will never ever come? I wonder.

Because there is no such thing as the perfect moment. Just the moment. And by itself, without harsh judgements or romantic ideals, it can become the perfect moment.

Or something very close to it.

I don’t fear the answer. I know the answer.

What I fear the most is to know that even knowing the recipe to unfrozen me, here I am, frozen as an Iceberg.

Floating.

But not really.

Stuck.

And yet moving.

Round and round.

Going nowhere.

With this huge and amazing ocean to brave ahead.