things you can wash with

Today I learned that researchers have found that you should bleach your children if they have eczema because that kills the bacteria associated with the problem. Ok, they said to put a 1/2 cup of bleach in the kid's bath, but as an EI, that still sounds pretty lethal to me. Makes you wonder what lye soap did to eczema, back in the day.

In other bath news, I've been washing my hair with salt, baking soda, or this funky super-organic clay-based "wash" since whenever I got in trouble with that last shampoo. Salt is good for not-too-stinky hair, baking soda is pretty good for grocery-store hair and minor greasiness, and the clay stuff is really good for everything. So far my scalp smells better than it did when I used fragrance-free shampoos, I don't get little frizzies on top anymore when I blow-dry my hair, which isn't all flat and perfectly straight like it used to be, and it looks fantastic, assuming it isn't falling out of a braid. I would wear it down all the time, but having easier-to-work-with hair hasn't done anything for my hair-in-the-face tolerance.

arm pains, well-fed deer, alcohol, pot, and death in a patch

Today I learned that if you have to go to the store and also need to get in the sauna, both of which require a shower afterwards, you should not attempt to conserve showers by getting in the sauna first, drying yourself off, and then heading to the grocery store. (You can't do it the other way without getting store chemicals in your sauna). By the time I got cleaned up, whatever I'd sweated out had burned my armpit. And in not exactly armpit-related news, if you work out on your rowing machine before you knead pizza dough, kneading can be really tiring.

In newspaper news:

• People besides my uncle have noticed that the deer hang out in the suburbs during hunting season. Also, suburban deer do not have a hunger problem when their numbers increase. They just eat more azaleas.
• The Pentagon parking lots trap drunk drivers.
• You can rent the basement of a shopping mall, but it's not necessarily the best place to plant your marijuana crop.

And nicotine will kill you.

doing harm, harming the desert, and death in the asphalt

It's a good thing I didn't declare this blog dead yesterday because today I learned about a bunch of things, some of which will kill you.

We'll start with my personal adventure. I went to the doctor today -- a regular doctor who schedules appointments months in advance -- and learned that you should never, ever try to tough out a waiting room, even if it doesn't seem so bad. You wear your mask, even if you wanted to pretend to be a normie for a couple of hours. Also, the detergent in the cloth drape thingies they give you to wear is actually worse than I remember it, and it didn't even have a fragrance that I could detect. So, wear your mask and don't forget your drape thingy you brought from home. (I did that part right.)

In unrelated but probably much safer-to-visit news (not that it sounds safe), there is an illegal immigrant trash dump right here in town, just south of the intersection of Wilmot and Valencia on the west side of Wilmot.

And speed humps will kill you.

hesitation

I hesitate to call this blog dead, particularly right before MCS Awareness Month, but it appears that with the demise of my laptop and the onset of pollen season, I have very little to say anymore. Next time I find anything of import that will kill you, I'm sure I'll report it, but until then, good night and good luck.

still not too bright over here

Today I learned that the toothbrush lady has been suffering from an incipient migraine (now a full-on migraine) and hasn't made a lot of sense lately. Nylon does not give her anaphylaxis, but it's unclear whether or not she tolerates it. I'm going to shut up on the toothbrush front until everyone involved is verifiably making sense.

So besides taking a brain-fogged person at her word, this morning I came to the realization that I had not rotated shampoos recently enough, something that I had discussed as a possibility as recently as last week in this space. I expect this situation has had something to do with the quality of posting lately vis-a-vis the moron quotient.

I could probably fix up that last sentence, which may not say what I think it says, but my head smells like either salad or Easter egg dye, depending on your preference, and I think I'm going to call it a day.

I'm a moron

So it turns out that the lady who is sensitive to toothbrushes gets anaphylaxis from nylon, and my understanding was that toothbrush bristles are probably nylon. I react hard to vinyls and most polyesters, so I would have noticed those, but nylon I don't detect.

This lady appears to react to pretty much everything including cotton, and she's given up trying to find soap she tolerates. I think in her position I might give up on my teeth, too, but I'll look into natural fibers and wood and see if she can't handle some of those.

disturbing behavior

Today I learned that if you don't brush your teeth, you can develop a layer of fermenting carbohydrates on your teeth along with your layer of plaque. This could explain why this one EI I know thinks she's sensitive to toothbrushes -- a toothbrush would knock the fermenting carbohydrates off your teeth, along with a bunch of bacteria, and there's no reason why you couldn't be sensitive to one or both.

The thing is that if I can't convince her she's wrong about toothbrushes, or that she can clean her teeth some other way, things are going to go badly.

I'm not sure I can do it. She's got chemicals in her brain, and it doesn't work right.