Irritated and Itchy

I'm feeling a little more irritable than usual each afternoon. I'm not sure if it's because the chores seem to stack up on me in the afternoons or if my daily dose of sunny-side-up has run out. Whatever the case, the little things set me off more than usual these days.

For one thing, my dog steels food. It's a well-known fact. The trick is to keep the food out of his reach or keep an eye on him. Whenever I leave the kitchen, I look around to see what might be within his ability to snatch and then I move it or mentally relax a bit. That and I make sure I don't leave the dog unattended for any length of time.

Others in my family haven't caught on about that. I'm really directing that at the small children (who are bigger by the moment now) who think that the grown-ups are at their beck and call. If they leave something out (which is all the time) or don't put things away (also, all the time) then magically, nothing will happen or everything will happen for them.

I wanted to make French Onion Soup tonight and I bought a nice loaf of bread to get toasted for the top and some Greyhair cheese for it, too. One of my kids decided that the loaf looked like a good after-school-snack and sliced it up and walked away. Then the dog ran off with it. I may use it anyway, since there is a good possibility my husband won't read this until tomorrow and therefore won't know about the bread until it's eaten. But maybe not.

I was also more irritable about the road construction that is happening in my neighborhood on the way home from school more than on the way there. We just finished a week off from school where the traffic would have been at the very lightest it could be and they didn't start the construction then. No. They had to start the week we're all back to school and don't know about it so we need alternate routes to school at the last minute. Not only that, the next shortest way is going to be blocked tomorrow. I'm going to have to drive all over the place for this little inconvenience. What were they thinking?

Another thing I'm terribly irritated with - and by - is the bout of poison oak. It showed up on Thursday of last week in a little rash on my right wrist. It could be from the previous Sunday's gardening, but that seems like a long time before it showed up. It could also be from my cat, but my daughter isn't getting a rash and she plays with the cat as much as I do. Did I roll around in poison oak while singing to the moon recently?

The problem is that I have it on the inside of my right wrist, the back of my right wrist and a couple of dots on my forearm inside and outside. And on my ear! I have a patch behind my right ear that is also creeping to the front of it and down my jawline. I have several dots of it on my stomach, too. There is a dot of it in between my eyebrows and on my chin. Poison oak face is not fun.

I washed with Technu and have been using (the best) anti-itch cream, which is supposed to dry out the oozing parts. Gross. I know. It makes me crabby. I'm trying my best not to give in to the itches, but sometimes, I just can't help but give it all a good scratch.