So my daughter kind of struggles at school. She is very meticulous, but slow. Most of her grades are lower because she gets the 'late' markdowns.
Anyway, she tells me this week that her physics teacher meets her at the front of the school before school starts all excited to see her. He asks her how she thinks she did on her physics test and she says "probably okay". He proceeds to tell her that she made a "GREAT grade". She made a 105 on her physics test. Apparently, he was much more excited than she was about it.
I still haven't ordered her senior pictures. I will, but with holidays, all my recent car maintenance (2 cars), and cat surgery expenses.....blah. So watermarked photos for now.
Because she is a senior, we are getting all kinds of mail from colleges. Hayley told me that she's also getting Email from colleges. She said the Emails start with......"Based on your academic achievements, we'd like to invite you to apply..." So again, I'm going to win mother of the year for this....we laughed for 1/2 an hour about how they obviously didn't look at her academic achievements.
I hope everyone is in the Xmas spirit. We did a 6 inch 'real' tree this year. Hayley said she didn't want to bother putting up a tree, decorating it, and then taking it all back down. I felt a little like Scrooge, so I did pull out the lights for the outside of the house.
So one year, I decided I wanted purple lights. The only place I could find them was online. They showed up and they look way more pink than purple. I wrapped one of my trees in in the so-called purple lights. It looks like I have a breast cancer awareness tree in the front yard, but its lovely.
So Peaches, our kittie, who just got surgery to get her external fixator off last week (after being hit by a car and breaking her femur) has now gone into heat for the first and last time. My daughter summed it up correctly. It's like there's a magnet on the ceiling and one on her butt. She is driving us crazy.
So last weekend, I went to the Dallas Arboretum for the first time. Even though my runflat tire has a screw in it, I decided it was a nice day for a convertible ride. Runflats really do run flat. I drove on it for 6 days....well really more than that because I didn't know it had a screw in it, but 6 days between the time they told me it was punctured until UPS delivered the new tire this week. What a great day for December. Walked around saw the Chihuly glass exhibit. It was a little overcast and chilly out in the morning, but then again it is December. It was warm and sunny by noon.
Afterwards stopped by Uptown Dallas and had a late lunch at S&D Oyster Bar. Yum. Love that place. I hate cole slaw, but I like theirs. Also, had some oysters on the half shell. http://www.sdoyster.com/dnn/
Then saw the Ginger Man bar. http://dallas.gingermanpub.com/
I hadn't been there since get this....I remember 1995, or 17 years ago. Stopped to have a beer on the patio as the sun was out and it was a beautiful day. I'm not a big beer drinker, but I had a Young's Double Chocolate Stout that was awesome.
Saturday evening, decided to take a walk through my neighborhood. There are three what I like to call "Christmas Vacation" homes, but they are even better because they have hundreds of tiny cottages all lit up. Hard to see in the picture, but they are in front of the fence and then inside the yard too. All of these homes are next to each other and extended family live in all of them. I wish the pictures could do it justice.
So we continued the walk to Frisco Square, but my pictures are not that good because the lights are timed with the music and hard to get it when all lit up. From there, we walked to Frisco City Grill for dinner. I love that I can walk from my house to go out to eat.
Today's blog is a public service announcement about Ichthyosis. Growing up, I always had really dry itchy skin in the winter. My skin would flake and look kind of scaly. The skin on the back of my shins would get so dry sometimes that they would bleed. My mom took me to specialists and everyone told me the same thing. Slather on baby oil or Vaseline. Well that was pretty disgusting and didn't make it much better, but it made me really slippery.
If I was in the sun, my skin was completely normal. Thank goodness I live in Texas and it is sunny and warm most months. January and February were always rough months on my skin.
So fast forward a decade or two. I was 36 years old and living in Grapevine. I go see this 82-year old doctor for a physical. So while I was there, I thought I'd ask one more doctor about my skin. He looked at me and said "You have Ichthyosis." WTH?
Well that was a huge turning point in my life..,.well between that and the Internet. I came home and Googled Ichthyosis. For years, not one doctor diagnosed me and this is a genetic thing that affects 1 in 250 people. That is pretty dang common. How could none of these doctors ever heard of it?
Ichthyosis Vulgaris is one of the more commonly seen types of ichthyosis. Sometimes called Common Ichthyosis. It appears in approximately 1 in 250 individuals. Ichthyosis vulgaris often goes undiagnosed because people who have it think they have simple “dry skin” and never seek treatment.
For the past decade, I have been using a couple of different lotions that make my skin look and feel like normal even in the winter. I have to use lotion that has alpha hydroxy or lactic acids. I prefer Dermal Therapy, but you have to order it from Canada which can take a while to ship. You can pick up AmLactin or Lac-Hydrin Five at Target or CVS. At Target, they keep it behind the pharmacy counter, but no prescription is needed. I believe these lotions are also used commonly for diabetics. Market Street also keeps some generic alpha hydroxy lotions behind the pharmacy counter that are a little less expensive.
Dermal Therapy with Alpha Hydroxy
I also hear using Voda soap or soap with Shea butter is helpful, but I have not tried it since the lotions seem to work just fine.
In addition to just dry scaly skin, this condition causes you to not sweat which makes you overheat. Seriously, I can do an hour-long cycle class and barely begin to perspire.
Itchyosis FIRST
