This medical experience I pass on from first hand experience.

We lived on two acres of God’s land on Squaw Island, Hyannisport, Ma for ten years during which time I became an avid landscaper.
Cape Cod, as many of us know, is a hotbed of poison ivy.
And greenery provides free housing to nasty biting insects.

I spent many hours pulling up the ivy that grew profusely over our acres.
Tried to wait to tackle the poison ivy until the fall when the plant lost most of its strength.
But, despite best efforts, at least three times a summer I got a healthy case of poison ivy.
And what a joy to get it.
Huh?

Accidentally I discovered the bliss.
With the poison ivy rash on my left leg, I stepped into the shower.
The hot water striking the rash brought instant relief to the itching.
I ramped up the water temperature making the water hot enough to be uncomfortable but not so hot as to burn me and was rewarded with a surge of pleasure.

Not relief, you understand.
Which would be good enough.

But pleasure as in…
Oh, well, you know.

And the miracle worked the same for mosquito bites.

Note: poison ivy can be spread over unaffected parts of your body.
Do not wash the affected areas; do not touch the infections.
They’ll go away in a week.
No more pleasure.

Lately, my skin or body has gotten very itchy.
Itchy as to keep me awake.
Me, who can’t sleep anyway, now has to overcome another obstacle to enjoy a good night’s sleep?

The dermatologist was of little help.
The cream prescribed did nothing.
The second, more powerful cream did nothing.

Despite his warning of the effects of hot water on skin, “Will lead to drier skin and more itching,” I gave it the hot water cure.
Amazingly effective.
Obstacle removed.
Sleep returned.

Holistically speaking, I had to choose between hot water and sleep and drier skin or an ineffective cream and restlessness leading to insufficient sleep.
I chose hot water and sleep.

Lack of sleep affects my functioning and is worse for my overall health than dry skin.

As for medical advice I counter: Common Sense where art thou?

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Tagging Today
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
My 265th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
Time is 12.01am.
On Wednesday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 32* with less wind than Tuesday, a perfectly acceptable winter’s day.

Dinner is roasted pork hash.

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Question of the Day:
What is a daydream?

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Love your notes.
Contact me @ domcapossela@hotmail.com

From Sally, some spiritual thoughts :

Dear dom, 

Great notes today on self-esteem and New Year's resolutions.  You are so right on both topics.  

I am in the middle of reading one of Nick Vujicic's inspirational/motivational book called "Life Without Limits," about how he shifted his focus in life from negative, limiting, "I can't" thoughts about not having been born with arms and legs to positive, limitless, "I can" thoughts about the skills, talents, and abilities he does have. He discovered as a teen that his hard-headed determination to lead a normal life became a powerful example to his fellow high school classmates, and that speaking about it motivated many of them to see beyond his strange physical abnormalities to the human being within. Now he speaks to huge crowds around the world. In learning to accept those who appear to be so different from ourselves, we learn better how to accept (and love) ourselves.

Our culture (and perhaps many others around the world) seems to promote self-denigration and discouraging others with a vision. In response, my reaction to those who inflict meanness on others (sometimes including me) is to tell myself, in all truth, "Who died and made you God?" Destructive remarks reveal more about the smallness of the speaker's heart and mind than about the person to whom they are directed.  "Consider the source" before taking action on another's words.  Honest criticism is not the same, and we can benefit ourselves greatly by heeding the wisdom in it, but nastiness with no basis, born of jealousy, greed, or other negative traits, cannot find a foothold within us if we don't let it.

When I lived many years ago in far-eastern Maine, a reviewer in the regional newspaper was followed avidly for what he wrote about the area's cultural events. He wrote the nastiest things imaginable, regardless of whether he was reviewing a just-released movie or the neighboring town's 4th Grade Christmas pageant. He even cruised the dictionary to plug in big words that he assumed none of us was bright enough to look up in the dictionary - his coupling of them provided frequent hilarity among his readers, as they made no sense at all. It was so vitriolic that at first I wondered why nobody ever wrote any rebuttals. I came to realize that local folks followed him avidly because when he said something was awful, they flocked to it and enjoyed it thoroughly. His groundless, mean-spirited nonsense ended up being the cultural events' greatest promotion.

 Happy New Year, Dom!

 Sally

Web Meister Responds: Thank you, my dear. We learn something with every one of your posts.

Answer to Question of Day:
What is a day dream?
Daydreaming is a short-term detachment from one's immediate surroundings, during which a person's contact with reality is blurred and partially substituted by a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.

There are many types of daydreams, and there is no consistent definition among psychologists, however the characteristic that is common to all forms of daydreaming meets the criteria for mild dissociation.

Freud pointed out that, in contrast to nighttime dreams, which are often confusing and incoherent, there seems to be a process of "secondary revision" in fantasies that makes them more lucid, like daydreaming.
The state of daydreaming is a kind of liminal state between waking (with the ability to think rationally and logically) and sleeping.
They stand in much the same relation to the childhood memories from which they are derived as do some of the Baroque palaces of Rome to the ancient ruins whose pavements and columns have provided the material for the more recent structures.

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Good morning on this Wednesday, January 2.
We talked about personal experiences with itchy skin and hot water. Sally sent along several notes that will help us to face the winter. And we discussed daydreaming.

Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Love

Dom