i am in hell HELL i tell you. it's like, did God say "hey - remember that deal with Job? let's do it again. Yeah!" every EVERY square cell of my body itches in flaming crawling itching madness. Every nook and cranny. my armpits are raw. i am looking for barbed wire right now to hang on the wall and scrape against like the bovine do. i now have 4 prescriptions - 1 that promises to calm things down, but alas will cause vomiting, so another one to help with that and another for who knows what and a case of Aveeno oatmeal bath. that's the funniest trick of all...my tub is muppet sized. i am not. but i was game for anything, so i filled it with tepid water and colloidal oatmeal treatment. the dog ran downstairs shreaking, thinking she was about to get baptized. the cat, however, was intrigued. i got into that tub like Mrs. Gumby all scrunched and twisty, trying desperately to keep all parts wet ...the water did calm things, but some parts had to be exposed in order for other parts to dunk. have i ever mentioned how much i've always hated the tub that came with this house that we haven't updated since we bought it which would make all things inside circa 1970 brady bunch? so i somewhat lay in a harvest gold tub made for bathing a gerbil, twisting...no writhing...and kitten is sitting up on the towel cabinet looking down at me, interested in the splishing noises, and thinking i was possibly playing the foot-moving-under-the-covers game and she is ready to launch. now, the only thing i would hate worse than whatever has befallen me at this juncture in my personal moment of hell would be: kitten launching into the tub and realizing it was actually water WATER that softened her landing, doing a 180 re-launch that would make NASA proud, and leaving me looking like i was attacked by massive swarms of very angry hornets AND a bobcat. so the nirvana of the whole tub experience completely escaped me. i got out, tried to gently towel off, but wanting to grab each end of the towel and drag that bad boy across my welted skin till i lost real blood and thankfully died right there...unshaven legs and all. my yogic breathing has failed me. my lamaze breathing has failed me. screaming deep indigo epithets at the tub and surrounding space has failed me. i am a lumpy, welted, itching miserable failure right now. and if all this wasn't bad enough...the tub, which used to fill with enough water to cover my stomach, must now be more shallow. it is somehow holding less water, because right there in front of me was the great rocky mountain sized, stretchmark covered, very very pale area between my navel and my girls. this used to be a fruited plain. once, long ago, it was a fertile valley. but now by God, my abdominal region has risen above the colloidal oatmeal line of demarcation, taunting. my misery is complete. L.