The 22nd was Earth Day, and the 23rd was World Book Day and William Shakespeare’s birthday. So many awesome things!
I would have made my post yesterday, but illness has struck me down! For the second time ever, I’ve contracted Covid-19. Based on the timetable, I could have gotten it at a child-filled Easter family celebration or the people-filled airport (though I did mask up for the airport). Either way.
When first arriving in the UK, I’m always temporarily slammed by New Location Allergies for a couple weeks. My sinuses were burning three nights ago, which was odd. Saturday morning while my partner and I were unpacking groceries we’d gotten from the farmer’s market down the road, he offered me a bundle of rosemary to sniff (because we love sniffing fresh herbs). It smelled a bit weak to me, but ok – I was having an allergy flareup. After the second bundle smelled almost nonexistent, my spidey-sense started tingling. I quickly grabbed the jar of cinnamon from the spice cabinet to sniff. Almost nothing. Shit. At that point, I took a Covid test and got a positive result. Damn it! I couldn’t go on our next errand to drop off some stuff at the second-hand store’s donation bin. I hope everyone at that farmer’s market fares well. I only hope that my natural tendency to avoid proximity to people served us all well there. I’ve been taking it easy and getting lots of vitamins since then. Yesterday’s socializing plans were also scrapped.
Besides Covid, my biggest problem right now is the low humidity. I knew about the dryness. I prepped for it. There were moisturizers waiting for me. I even pre-moisturized for months. But my skin is so painfully dry. My hands are cracking in some places. My hair feels like straw. But I use cocoa butter and Aquaphor on my skin daily (in one-hour bursts because of my aversion to sensations of stickiness and slime) and hair masks followed by a leave-in serum every time I wash my hair! New Orleans is so humid. It’s subtropical. And oh… help. I must find either something stronger or something that doesn’t trigger my automatic recoil and gag reflex. The moisturizer for my face is doing surprisingly well, but that may be partially because I have combination skin. The oily areas just share with the dry parts, I guess. My nails have little vertical ridges in them, so I know I need to be combating this issue with vitamins as well. It’s funny. I can’t imagine this is the big crisis anyone would guess for someone moving 4000 miles from their old home to a new country. C’est la vie.
Ah… This isn’t how I wanted my first big London post to start. I wanted to talk about how I stumbled into being welcomed as a DM for a new Dungeons and Dragons game and where my partner and I went when I first arrived and what sorts of tasks we’ve had to complete to get my life here in order. Those will come soon. For now, I need to get the excess mucus out of my body. I feel like a nasty Jello cube. That’s gross. I’m sorry.
Magical Musings 