helping hands

[xaara]

I am a barista by trade. I love it, mostly because I love coffee, and I love people who love coffee. I love the sound milk makes when it steams and the smell of espresso. I love making a perfect drink: microfoam with a halo of brown around the outside and the tiniest flaw in the center where I finish my pour. I love the slang and the lingo, stringing five or ten disassociated words together to describe something (grande half-caf skim chai charger with whip) and then creating that thing without thought, without translation.

The thing is, I have my hands in and out of cold water, hot water, soapy water, sanitizer, and coolers all day long. I can't wait for them to air-dry most of the time; I need to be making the next drink, helping the next customer, and so I have to dry them with paper towels, which aren't abnormally rough but feel like it once I've scrubbed the hundredth one across my knuckles.

Liberal application of Bag Balm, morning and night, helps, but it's only a stopgap--I can't use it on the job, because it's too oily. So I've been just enduring it, wincing each time my skin touched something cold or hot, pretending it didn't hurt like a bitch. Finally, yesterday, my skin informed me that it wasn't going to take any more of this shit and it would like it very much if I would just curl up in extreme pain and kindly not disturb it while it went about mending itself. I came home after work with hands that literally throbbed each time my heart beat, sat on the sofa, turned on some old TV I have on my computer, and slathered on the grease. They started to feel better after an hour or two, and they felt fine by this morning, but I have to work again tomorrow and I speculate that they will not be happy about this.

I went to the pharmacy this morning and purchased something called Warm Skin all-weather guard lotion that I'll try for the next week or so to see if it works. If it doesn't, I'll have to try something else.

So, flist, I turn preemptively to you. Do you have any hand creams that you swear by? They can't be water-soluble for obvious reasons, and I'd prefer for them to be as non-greasy as possible. Also for obvious reasons, they can't contain anything toxic. Suggestions?

Comments

[womangirlchild.livejournal.com]

I do have a product that I swear by, and I'll be happy to send you some. Email me your snail mail addy :)
-Adriane
adrianeweisert@hotmail.com

[xaara.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! :)