Downtown Los Angeles, circa 1983

Downtown Los Angeles, circa 1983
STMcC in downtown Los Angeles, circa 1983

Saturday, January 21, 2017

I GOTTA HAND IT TO 'EM...

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O'KEEFFE'S WORKING HANDS
Hand Cream
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...O'Keeffe's Working Hands hand cream really works. This is hands down the best remedy for dry, cracked hands that I've ever found.

Out here in Airheadzona it's a notoriously dry climate -- so dry in fact, that it has given birth to our most popular regional joke: "But it's a DRY heat!" Come spend some time out here with us (if you're stupid enough) and you'll hear this joke repeated ad nauseam. You'll find it on the lips of every brain-baked resident, and on coffee cups and T-shirts accompanied by images of skeletons crawling across the desert wasteland where only snakes, coyotes, roadrunners, cacti, and idiots seem to survive.

But we experience this dryness not just during the hot Summer months -- which is May through October -- but even during (what we call) "Winter". And the joke can sometimes be heard even when we manage to get a little precipitation:

"Man! Was it raining cats and dogs last night, or what?"

"Yeah, but it's a dry rain."

Of course, usually it's too dry to rain. As I write this, Phoenix is in the midst of a near record-setting drought. We have not seen drops of anything, wet OR dry, falling out of our sky for 135 consecutive days!

I hope to capitalize on our reputation someday by opening my own Phoenix business which I intend to name "BUT IT'S A DRY CLEANERS".

For me, the Airheadzona dryness affects my hands the worst from December through February. In the past I've had my fingers tortured by those deep cracks that develop along the nails and across the joints. We're talkin' painful paper cut-like wounds ("skin splits") that open up and can take 3 and 4 weeks to heal. I've tried innumerable hand cream and lotion products over the years to avoid these skin ruptures. Jergens? Fuhgeddaboudit. Lubriderm? No good. Corn Husker's Lotion? Not bad; absorbed better than any other brand, but it needs to be reapplied constantly.

Late last November or early December, when I felt that dry, unpleasant sensation of oncoming "skin splits" along my knuckles, I picked up a jar of O'Keeffe's Working Hands, attracted to the lovely green container and the idea that it was something new for me to try.

The directions read: "Apply at bedtime and 2-4 times daily." So I rubbed the stuff into my hands very well for 4 or 5 consecutive nights at bedtime, and during the day once or twice in that 4 or 5 day period. And I don't mean once or twice each day, I mean once or twice TOTAL during that span of time. The dryness disappeared and my hands were quickly rejuvenated.

Since those 4 or 5 days and nights, I've used O'Keeffe's every so often, only when I felt that wizened tautness across my joints and around the nails. That feeling is always gone within a day or two. This is the first (what we call) "Winter" in my eleven (what we call) "Winters" in Airheadzona, that I have not experienced a single "skin split" in my eight fingers and one thumb. (I lost a thumb in the "Winter" of '96 when the "skin splits" forced me to chop it off to get some relief from the pain!)

O'Keeffe's Working Hands works on hands (feet too, they say) and is "safe and effective for diabetics." Whatever you pay for it, that's a small price to pay for the remarkable healing it provides.

Do your hands need help? Give 'em a helping hand with O'Keeffe's Working Hands hand cream. It's a great, great product! The stuff is so concentrated that this one jar I purchased will probably last me a decade... or until I wise up and move out of Airheadzona, whichever comes first.

(Yeah, we're humorous out here, but it's a "dry" humor.)

~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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8 comments:

  1. We here in Canada also suffer from dry, cracked, hands, primarily in the winter, when our furnaces are running full blast. I've been using Hemp hand cream, which works well but it's a bit greasy. I see that O'Keeffe's is available locally, so I'll give it a try. Thanks for the review. Do you like Reno's climate better? It's much colder, isn't it?

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    1. HiHelloHowdy, DEBBIE ~
      I'd never heard of Hemp hand cream. If you smoke enough of it will it make your hurting hands disappear altogether?

      O'Keeffe's has just the very slightest greasy feeling to it. That's probably unavoidable 100% in a hand cream. I mean, I think by definition a "cream" must have at least some greasiness to it.

      But without a doubt, O'Keeffe's is LESS greasy than any other hand cream I've tried. And the stuffs works so damn well for me that I don't mind any side effect whatsoever.

      >>... Do you like Reno's climate better? It's much colder, isn't it?

      Living in Phoenix is like living on the Sun 7 months a year (nighttime lows of 98 degrees). The ONLY DIFFERENCE between Phoenix and Hell is that in Hell they won't let you wear sunglasses.

      But the ONLY THINGS I like about Reno are...
      Roxy's Lounge and Great Basin Brewing Company. And... it ain't Phoenix.
      [:o)}

      ~ D-FensDogG

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    2. 3-D. I'm seeing O'keeff's being sold in more stores these days. Burt's Bees has a product very similar to O'keeffe's. It's pretty awesome too. We got all the snow birds here in full force now, creating all their bullshit on the road, like driving 35 mph on the freeway to get to the all you can eat breakfast buffet before it's over.

      Delete
    3. "Snowbirditis"... The cure for that is regular doses of .45 caliber administered at 35 mph until the symptoms of the illness are relieved.

      Is it still a dry dust storm there?

      ~ D-FensDogG
      'Loyal American Underground'

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    4. As Johnny Carson said: "Guns don't kill people; driving 55 in the FAST lane kills people."

      PS - I have discovered that the continuing problem I am having with posting to ALL y'all's blogger blogs is with Chrome. When I use Firefox as my browser or when I use my Iphone, posting is no problem. This is a new issue that Blogger has cooked up. Jerks.

      Delete
    5. SBB-6 ~
      Ha-Ha-Halarious! I loved Johnny Carson! And I very vaguely remember that line. But ain't that the truth -- especially in L.A. (There's a great old Waylon Jennings song -- 'How Much Is It Worth To Live In L.A.?' -- where the lyrics mention dodging bullets on the interstate.)

      Oh, I hate Google Chrome anyway. And Blogger (aka Google) recently made some (totally unnecessary and inconvenient) changes to the blog Dashboards, and I'll bet that's how the trouble started.

      Every single time they fix something that ain't broken, they break something that NOW needs to be fixed. Retarded I.T. people -- about as helpful as the weather folks at "Fake News".

      ~ D-FensDogG

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  2. "But it's a Dry Cleaners" - ha, you crack me up, Reno! We use Neutrogena's Norwegian Formula Hand Cream - when we can find it - the label proclaims that just a dab will do ya, which is good since it's rather pricey.
    I couldn't quite place where in my life I've seen the O'Keeffe's label, but thank you for this unforgettable review ;-)

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    1. dIEDRE ~
      Glad you enjoyed this. And that's right -- you're a Tucson gal, so you know all about that "but it's a dry heat" bit, don'tcha?

      >>... We use Neutrogena's Norwegian Formula Hand Cream - when we can find it - the label proclaims that just a dab will do ya, which is good since it's rather pricey.

      You might want to give THIS a try:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6F4GtyRfto

      It's readily available and undoubtedly less expensive than the Neutrogena product. According to the advertisement, it seems it might work just as well.

      ~ D-FensDogG

      Delete

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