Too Pooped to Pope… or Poke.

This is a metaphor, friends. Clearly, I am not running the Vatican (something about a missing Y chromosome and fifty years of additional living on planet Earth), but Benedict XVI and I have something in common – we’re both tired. Should he be more tired than me? Perhaps. But this is not a contest – I’m not trying to outrun the Pope (he could legit beat me now because I can’t run), nor are we having a Latin spelling bee. I do have a good reason for my whining – I have been googling how to successfully itch under my leg cast for over two hours, and so far, I’ve got NOTHING to use. I’m exhausted. And the itching is driving me bats. Despite my desire to believe the best in people, mankind seems stupid to lack common sense, my friends. Being the perpetual optimist that I am, and even though my attempt at finding a safe remedy has been futile, I’d like to share a couple of my favorite “suggestions” with you (for those of you on which irony is lost, i.e. Dubliners, let me be blunt. Don’t try these.):

• Use a knitting needle – uh, exsqueeze me? A baking powder? This sounds like a terrible idea.
• Use a hanger that is folded over – again, I can’t see where I’m going. How is this a good idea? Unless you’re a small child with no self-control, sticking any pointy-ish object down a cast sounds ridiculous, especially if there are stitches (the thought of something catching in there makes me want to throw up a little)…
• Use a vibrating massager – okay, my mind slipped on this one. I immediately thought about Sex and the City. Remember when Samantha bought a neck massager from Brookstone to use as a… nevermind. I’ll pass.
• Saw the cast off yourself and then duct tape it back – this was probably my favorite. I absolutely think this is what Uncle Si has done would do. Maybe I’ll just get my cats to do it for me. Over a bottle of wine.

• Frozen peas over the cast – perhaps the distraction of me trying to balance an already opened bag of peas over my cast was enough to alleviate the itching for a tick, but definitely not a long-term solution.
• Cornstarch or baby powder – what?! Why not use bread crumbs? This will smell like dirty baby diaper great once it’s congealed. Hopefully we all learned from Ross what happens when you mix baby powder and sweat…
• Pick your favorite giant kitchen serving utensil and insert here – again, splinters, broken skin, infection, sepsis. That is the order of things… Also, apparently this can push down the cotton bandaging, thus removing a protective layer that helps when they’re sawing the dag-gone thing off.

So, here I am. Laying like brocolli, comparing myself to the leader of the Catholic world and resorting to the internet to find relief for my sad, atrophied leg. I’m thinking all my meditation practice should work for this eventually, right?! For the record, I’m really excited to see what my leg looks once the cast is off (chicken leg runs in the family, so what God gave me coupled with atrophy will probably equal a leg resembling limp celery).

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT, people?! What’s a girl to do?! I can only hope the laser hair removal sessions endured throughout all of 2012 miraculously worked on my left leg, because right leg never got the memo that it should be nekkid like a mole rat. So I’m going to go to bed and meditate… or whimper; but not before I leave you with this image (although I’m hoping my leg doesn’t look like this either…)