Slightly higher altitude and lower humidity levels make a huge difference in the enjoyability of the outdoors, especially at night. We are in Wimberley this weekend, and we totally could hang out on the porch most evenings and nights here, and enjoy it thoroughly. If we were home in Houston right now, we’d be sweating and be attacked by mosquitos all evening and the whole first half of the night.
Hmm…
Post-a-day 2023
Why on Earth do I keep sneezing??? I’m at home. The house was recently cleaned both by me and, this morning, by another. Everything was fine. And then I took a hot shower and had the bathroom door closed… haven’t stopped having a runny nose and sneezes ever since! Yikes! And ugh…(!)
God, please, heal my nose asap. In your name, I pray. Amen.
Post-a-day 2022
Okay, so we have officially reached the cold season, now, right? So, I’m being conscientious about lotioning my hands whenever I notice that they are dry during the day, and I have begun sleeping in gloves to give them a deeper treatment of moisture for at least a while overnight. I rub the good stuff lotion into them just before getting in bed for the night, then I slide them into gloves and then get into bed. The gloves keep the lotion on my hands instead of its rubbing off onto the sheets or my legs or pants or whatever during the night. They don’t always stay on all night, but always for at least a few hours – you know, sleep activities and all, pulling off odd items of clothing, socks and gloves in particular.
But it is also cold out now…. which means it is also cold in now. I live in a house built in the 1930s, almost a hundred years ago. It does not have real heating or cooling: window units for cooling, a gas heater on the first floor in the living room, and a plug-in localized heater in my room. I keep the heater st the head of my bed, so it can help warm my face and head, the one part of me not covered up at night.
Put simply, though, it is cold in this house. So, it is entirely normal for me to go to bed within a pair of sweatpants on, instead of just a t-shirt and underwear. If it isn’t all that cold out, the sweatpants find their way off during the night. As it gets colder, I add a pull-over sweatshirt to the mix. Same story as the pants, but the pants come off before the sweatshirt. However, when it is really cold, I also put on socks. The clothing-removal progression then goes socks, pants, sweatshirt. When it is cold like now, of course, they all stay on.
But, remember how I have begun wearing gloves for the sale of moisturizing my hands?
That means that I am now going to bed in a shit and underwear, sweatpants, a sweatshirt (with the hood up), socks, and gloves. In other words, I look more like I’m dressed to go out somewhere than simply go to bed.
And that just really tickles me. 😛 And I love it.
Oh, the simple joys of the cold season… hot beverages, hats, scarves, jackets, boots, and going to bed fully dressed. ;D
Post-a-day 2020
I think we have officially reached the time of year where I must be extremely careful and proactive with my hands. As it grows cooler and dryer outdoors, my hands, too, grow cooler and dryer… and begin to crack and bleed from that dryness.
So far, they are only really dry, and white in certain areas of extreme dryness, but they are not cracking and bleeding. So, that is good. I just found some new restorative lotion to use, and it just might be what my hands need this season. We shall see. A lot of it relies on my remembering to use it often and actually putting it on whenever I remember to use it, as well as my drinking lots of water. Fingers crossed that I succeed this year in keeping my hands warm and moist. I supposed this is just one of the odd side effects of living in such a humid climate. 😛
Post-a-day 2020
I might be at my boiling point this week… physically, though mentally regarding the physically…
You see, I have learned to handle acne rather well for my body… meaning that I have learned how to avoid having very much of it.
Unfortunately, my body is extremely sensitive – well, kind of to everything, but that’s not the point right now – to sweat, when it comes to producing acne.
All I need is to have my skin be the level of sticky sweaty – pouring/dripping sweat is fine, but, once it stops, I need to clean off the skin – in order for acne to show up in the very near future in those exact spots.
So, I washed my face three times throughout the night last night, and have done it several times today, simply because of the heat of the place where I am staying this week – it is warm, like 76 overnight and 82 degrees Fahrenheit during the day (And, before you start saying the temperatures are to save money on electricity or to help save the planet, know that the air is set to “ON”, not to “AUTO”…, so it is always running…, but with warm-ish air abouts.)… I couldn’t identify at first why I was so mentally disturbed by the fact that the apartment was kept so warm, but I eventually realized that that was it: the acne concern.
I was kind of supposed to go take photos with someone this week… now, it is definitely not happening… I already have more acne on my face than when I got here yesterday, plus, I only slept a maximum of a few hours last night, for fear of bugs (I got bitten while aiming to sleep) and for the struggle of the intense warmth of sleeping atop a fabric sofa and wool-like blanket…. so, no photos of me this week, buddy – I need to be not semi-miserable and not annoyed at my physical state to go take such specific photos.
Let’s be real: sitting here, writing this, I keep taking breaks to move my arms away from my body, and to breathe deeply, both in hopes of cooling off even a little bit more… it reminds me of the days of no a/c in the world, when everyone just suffered all summer long, and sat, miserable, on their porches with cold lemonade and a cool rag, unable to get themselves to do anything else, because the mental effort involved in starting any physical effort was just too much for the overheated body and brain to handle…
That’s about how I feel here, breathing in the warm and humid air of the apartment, as though I might just be sitting outside still…, but outside has bugs and wind and rather low humidity, actually… man… not even my deep breathing is relieving, it feels so oxygen-low…
Ugh… okay, you can do this, Banana…
Post-a-day 2020
Tonight, a few friends and I got on the subject of housemates and the comfort of being pant-less at home (US pants, not British, of course). It reminded me of my first flatmate. When we lived together, it was a quickly-known thing that I ditched my pants almost immediately after I walked in the door after work.
Truly. It was part of my ‘arriving home’ routine, really. I would walk in the door (and shut it, of course), set down my stuff, take off my shoes, shove off my pants, toss them to the side, and then put my shoes on the shoe rack. Some days, I even would collapse forward onto the carpet after the pants-removal step, and sigh with exhaustion and relief. We live in Houston. It gets hot here, but the insides of buildings do not. At my job at that time, my classroom was guaranteed winter temperatures, so I was extra overdressed for the outside weather. Sometimes, I would be more peeling off my pants than sliding them off of me, it was so hot outside.
Since it was a well-known fact that I was pant-less almost the instant I arrived home each day, slight precautions were taken. One day, I received a message from my flatmate’s boyfriend, asking if I were home. He said that he was told he should text me before coming over, because I might not have any pants on. I think I let him know that I was home and all was appropriately dressed. He then added that perhaps he should have just not asked, and just shown up and caught me off guard. I chuckled hard at that one. I knew it was a joke, and he knew that I would understand it to be, so the comment was actually quite funny, instead of terrible, as almost any other person in the world would have caused it to be.
Thinking about all of this tonight had me notice how rarely I am pant-less nowadays. I guess I’m just not so hot outside anymore, that I want to strip the moment I arrive home. I also have little space of my own, in which I am even able to be pant-less. Though, I don’t recall being without pants/shorts very often in Japan… You know, I think I have moved to a slightly different style of pants/pant fit. The other bits are valid, too, to a certain degree, but so is this one. I found a pair of pants that I used to wear to school, and wore them tonight. It was warm out, but not hot. I remember peeling off these guys regularly in the afternoons. Yet, now, I can hardly imagine being able to peel them off, they are so loose on me. Have they stretched with the aging of sitting around? Have I lost weight in my legs? Both? This would not be the first pair of pants that has seemed oddly large on my legs lately, however, I still weigh what I have weight the past two-ish years. And I haven’t done enough exercise since moving back (I think, anyway) to have had such an impact on my body yet… have I? I don’t know, but, if I am losing fat in my legs, it’s for the better – my body needs it. Now just to trade that loss of fat with some gain of muscle and tone.
Anyway… this has gone a bit of a ways from being pant-less at home. I will leave this open for further consideration, and I will go to sleep now. Goodnight, world. Sweet breathing.
Post-a-day 2017
hannah ananas 