jennifer patel

In one of my first outings for 'me time' after we got Alex, I went to get a pedicure. I went to the same place I'd gone for the previous 6ish years.  As I was sitting at the park a few days later watching Alex play, my legs were itching a lot.  I lifted up my pant leg to check out the situation and saw faint, red bumps from my knee down. My skin has always been sensitive in weird ways that I can't always pinpoint.  When I was a kid, I broke out into a rash after using the pink bar of Caress soap.  When we moved into our first house, I broke out into a rash and it took forever to realize our carpet was full of gypsum powder from the remodeling the homeowners had done.  The dust was so fine, it was undetectable...until I vacuumed one day.  Powder filled the bottom of the canister.  At the park, I was wearing fuzzy pants and figured they had stuff in them from being stored all summer...maybe more gypsum powder? Each day that passed, the red bumps got...

"There are black sand beaches...and white sand beaches..." I read out loud to my special ed. English class the school year of 2006-2007. The boys snickered every time I said "beach" and it finally hit me that they thought it was pretty funny that it sounded like a bad word. Unfortunately, Alex's first trip to the beach was neither black or white sanded and far from crystal clear water...but every kid in Texas should experience Galveston once in their lifetime. I thought he would be timid or scared of the ocean, but nope...he ran right in.  It could be argued that he should have been a little more afraid because he was taken out by waves and went under multiple times.  Maybe in his mind he thinks he can swim, but he definitely cannot.  Near drowning was not enough to deter his excitement. There was lots of sitting in the water and digging in muddy sand... P.S. Don't wear anything white to Galveston (or the gulf coast in general).....