Philadelphia heat is a different, more miserable heat than you will ever know.

I'm up on time for once so I'm going to get my calamine-and-neosporin-covered self back into the swing of things on here. Very slow weekend for me, no going out and a good retreat into work that I missed out on while wiped out from this leprosy-looking thing.

First of all, seriously, I know I've been bitchin' about the itchin' lately but it LITERALLY consumes 70% of my thoughts. They warned me that when they start to heal, they're going to itch like hell, and they weren't kidding. I'm doing all I can to avoid scratching - a steady diet of Benadryl, the aforementioned calamine lotion, cutting all of my nails down to the point where I can't get any effective scratching out of them, even putting socks on my hands when I sleep. Yes, I'm apparently doing it in my sleep. Even though they assured me that there is absolutely nothing crawling under my skin or feasting on my flesh other than run-of-the-mill staph bacteria, my body betrays me and is paranoid in thinking otherwise. When I told a friend of mine about it, she told me that it's actually very normal after having an allergic reaction or a bad case of bug bites. Seems it's called delusional parasitosis, which has a less than lovely ring to it, in my opinion. Haley knew about it because she works for a drug rehab center and said it tends to be a prevalent side effect for Crystal Meth users. I'm just in fantastic company, as evidenced by these photos she sent me, which made me laugh a bit. At any rate, I feel like I now understand why Leprosy Colonies existed - even if it's not contagious, any sort of skin problem is just horribly embarrassing - I don't want to go outside if I can't wear something that covers my arms and legs for fear that someone would see me. Horribly vain of me, but hey, I now have an extra ounce of compassion for people with bad skin. I'm thanking my lucky stars that I never had any acne worse than what . I dated a guy in college who had really bad skin when he was in high school, and I never realized how tough it was for kids like that until I heard him talk about it. He went on that crazy drug Accutane, as did my friend Sarah when she got a sudden and severe case of acne in college, and it just kind of hit me about how scary it is to have something wrong with your skin - so much so that people risk the horrible side effects of that drug. When I mentioned to the dermatologist that the black-box warnings on Accutane might make me think twice before having my kid take it, she just looked at me and said that she could probably have an entire practice just centered around people who want to be on Accutane. Yikes. Thanks for good genes, Mom.

Change of topic:
IT'S SO DAMN HOT. I woke up at 8 am and it was already 93 degrees. Heat index of satanic proportion. When I lived in Boston, I used to get a little high and mighty when people complained about it being hot outside - because as a Southerner, I KNOW heat. That wasn't heat. I even survived a summer in Italy and Greece - with air conditioning being a rarity - and only complained about it once. I was on an overcrowded 3 hour train from Athens to Piraeus while sitting right behind a window that would only open 5 inches - just enough for thick diesel smoke exhaust from the engine to pour in. Even my sister complained about that one, and she's lived in some pretty uncomfortable digs. I thought I was a trooper in the heat, however. I thought that two Atlanta and four Athens, Georgia summers had adequately prepared me to not be miserable in heat.

That being said, Philly heat is just DIFFERENT. We have only about eight trees left standing in this concrete jungle, so any "shade" we get is from buildings. Buildings that are, by design, radiating heat. When I worked in the corporate world and took the train to work every day, I only walked a total of five blocks in my commute, but I always brought an extra camisole to work in the summer - sometimes an extra shirt as well - because by the time I got into the office, I was drenched in sweat. Combine that with the basic industrial city stench and the world's largest collection of body-odoriffic homeless people, and heat just gets different. I don't have to wear a suit (wearing jeans for the bug bites and a polo shirt today) but really - it is HOT. CVS is across the street, but I don't have the energy yet to brave the heat to walk over there. Starbucks is out of the question, it's a full block and a half away. I could die walking that far on day 4 of a heat wave.