Dry Skin

Problem –
My skin hurts. My skin is dry year round but it especially hurts this time of year when the air is so dry. My hands especially suffer. The nails are short and bitten. The cuticles are ravished and spiky. I wash my hands too often. But alternative #1- not washing - wakes up my germ paranoia, alternative #2 – using hand sanitizer (thickened alcohol) – is as bad as washing. So fall rolls around and my skin dries up and starts to hurt.
Interventions –
Past -
I’ve tried all kinds of things to remedy my dry skin.

• I’ve read about dry skin.
  
• I’ve had humidifiers.
  
• I’ve greased myself in oil - baby, sesame, olive, blends.
  

For a moment, the interventions all seem to work.
Then my skin gobbles up the moisture and goes back to hurting.
What haven’t I tried? Please post suggestions below.
Present -
I drink my water. I try not to take hot baths even though that’s how I like them.
We don’t have a shower so it’s seldom that I indulge in that luxury. I have bottles of lotion everywhere - in the car, at school, multiple places in the house, my purse (these need a refill).
I’ve taken to buying expensive lotion – Nivea is the latest experiment.
Six plus dollars for lotion is totally against my attempts at money management - but that’s another rant.

Cosmic confusion -
I was born in the fall so I’ve always thought that my body should be attuned to this weather. But the season doesn’t love me. Should it? Was I born at the wrong time?
I have often felt out of place, out of time, out of this body. Is dry skin just one more indication that I am right about my temporal displacement? That topic seems best left as fodder for fiction.
Solution? –
I’m going to do a systematic observation – keep a log – run a real experiment.
Will I? Will I really let my dry skin add another project to my already over extended project list? I should not have let that idea into my psychological world. Now, according to my productivity biblio-mentor, David Allen, I have to deal with it. Is this another ploy by my body to capture and hold my attention?