Weekend Plans Post: Allergy Season Is Officially Here
Most parts of the year, you say “hey, I’m feeling a little stuffed up!” and you blow your nose and you feel a lot better. Deep breath. Aaaaaaah.
A handful of other parts, you say “hey, I’m feeling a little stuffed up!” and you blow your nose and you think “maybe I should take a hit of Vicks” and you get some of that sweet, sweet menthol action and you feel a lot better. Deep breath. Aaaaaaaah.
But we’re in the part of the year where I wake up at 3AM with a clogged nose and the thought “well, I should just blow my nose and it’ll be okay” and then it’s back in 20 seconds. Then I think “well, I should just blow my nose and then take a hit of Vicks and it’ll be okay” and then I think “20 seconds? More like 0.2 seconds… I didn’t have time to grab the Vicks!”
And then, 20 seconds later, well, I should just blow my nose and it’ll be okay. Like it didn’t just happen the exact same way 20 seconds ago. Like it’s November or something.
Additional testing is needed but it also might correllate with whether the sun is up. When the sun is up, it’s not as bad. When the sun goes down, WHAMMO. (This might also be due to vertical/horizontal. As I said: additional testing needed.)
(And, no, it’s not the cats. They, or ones very similar to them, have been constant companions since 1998. This is a thing that happens when May flowers.)
I mean, it’s one thing to be stuck inside during a global pandemic. These things happen. But allergies? That’s insult added to injury.
Pardon me, had to take a quick break there to blow my nose.
Anyway, this weekend will be spent doing strategic napping and attempting to catch back up on the sleep stolen by the innumberable buzzing bees in my sinuses. Also: Game Night On Saturday.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is Tiger, having a nap interrupted by a camera. If I can’t sleep, he can’t sleep.)
Yeah, my allergies have gotten bad again. What’s causing it? IDEK. Probably the early season grasses (our trees are pretty much done). It’s been a wet and windy spring, so there’s more pollen. It’s ironic – as stuck inside as I am my allergies are STILL bad.
I’m totalling up grades today/doing some last minute “hangover” grading. Monday I submit the grades. I’m telling myself this weekend I can have off to either bake bread or sew on a quilt. Hopefully the whole wheat flour I ordered actually gets here today so I can make something fancier than plain white bread….
I also need to start making a schedule for myself for “summer work” – I have a couple probability books I want to read for Biostats, and redo that part of the course, and I have some environmental policy books to read. And even though I kind of feel an internal brick wall of resistance when I think of it, I guess I have to start looking around for a lab package of “simulated labs” I could have my ecology students do in case we are online again in the fall.
Our new university president has said he “intends” for us to go back in-person in the fall but is putting together a task force….and this morning we got an e-mail from the registrar showing summer enrollment (for all online) is surprisingly strong, but fall enrollment at this point (early days still but) is quite weak, which suggests to me our students would rather go back online than risk disease exposure. Frankly, i would too, as much as I loathe teaching online….
Only other thing this weekend is awaiting the modern “Wells Fargo Wagon” with some of the things I’ve ordered online. I am basically Laura Ingalls now:
– Going “to town” to buy supplies is a big deal and takes most of a day and I’m tired when I get home
– I bake bread and make quilts
– I am trying to grow some of my own food (have not reached the “I should get chickens!” stage yet though)
– Wait on deliveries from mail order and getting the mail is the highlight of the day
– Barefoot most of the time nowReport
I have heard the term “Hard Pants” used for the bottom garments worn to work in the beforetime.
Something that would have made zero sense in January is now part of my vocabulary in May.Report
Yeah. I have mostly been wearing dresses on weekdays because most of my dresses are essentially glorified nightgowns (loose fitting). I will say I worry a bit that I may not notice expansion-of-the-waist because of that. But that’s what I wear for “for real” work, so it’s not a change from normal.
I do put on jeans for yardwork and so far, I can still get into my own pants (snerk, that came out wrong)Report
I’m not a cat owner, but I’ve heard that allergies can vary by cat. A person’s body can get accustomed to one, then another will send him back to wheezing.Report
Indeed. (I understand it’s not their fur, it’s their saliva which, of course, ends up on their fur.)
But we’ve had these cats for years and years (one for 5ish, one for 12ish).Report
Sleeping with the window open on these transition days? Outside stuff filtering in?
Strangely my (grass) allergies have faded over the years… I’m wondering if staying put for 20-yrs plus working on the pastures (with or without the allergies) have “hardened” whatever it is that hardens to not have allergic reactions? Dunno.
But put not your allergies to the test is something I read somewhere.
Then again, my wife made me rub poison ivy on my arm because we were pretty sure I wasn’t allergic… so we put that to the test… or she did since it wasn’t her arm. So what do I know?Report
Go to the doctor. I suffered through this for years with OTC cetirizine. I finally got fed up and went to a doctor a couple years ago, and he gave me montelukast and nasal steroid spray, and I don’t even notice the pollen anymore. Are pollen levels high today? I don’t know!
Weather bureau website says no, but still, I wouldn’t notice if they were.Report
The kid’s seasonal allergies have all kicked off, but mine remain mostly dormant. I have bad days around when the pine trees finally pollinate, but that doesn’t happen until it gets hot.
I’ve noticed over the years that I seem to “get used to” the local pollen and whatnot after a season (travel during my military years gave me plenty of opportunity to observe this). I’ve been here so long that the only event that really affects me to any degree anymore is pine tree sex.Report
Something we discovered yesterday: Lays Stax Chips are their attempt at the honorable Pringle Chip.
In our household, I am a Pringles Salt and Vinegar man and Maribou is more into Stax. Well, she branches out more often than I do and so she recently had a Lays Zesty Queso Stax included in our last grocery order.
While making her breakfast, I thought “Well, I should give those a try, I guess” and had one of the chips. Meh, I thought. It was okay. Nothing worth writing home about. I finished putting the cream cheese on her bagel and then licked the knife before I put it in the sink and the cream cheese and the leftover spice on my tongue from the chip WERE ABSOLUTELY FREAKING AMAZING. HOLY COW THIS IS GREAT.
I put some chips on Maribou’s breakfast plate and told her to try a chip and then a bit of the cream cheese.
She tasted it and her eyes got big and she asked “What alchemy is this?”
So if you are bored and looking for new experiences: try the chips with the cream cheese.Report
that sounds good! Although cream dips on salty snacks have been a thing for a long time. A staple snack food when I was growing up was “potato chips and sour-cream+onion-soup-mix dip”, and we had to be careful to get the onion soup mix that was only powder and didn’t contain Bits.
Similarly, you have ranch used as a dip instead of a salad-dressing spread, or blue cheese for wings, or “spinach dip” which is basically cream cheese with spinach stirred into it, or the O.G. Guacamole; and when we visit Texas we find this green cream sauce that I’m sure is common but I’ve seen nowhere else.Report
Making bagel sandwiches for breakfast today, I noticed that the 3 pound tub of cream cheese from Costco is almost done. Maybe 4, maybe 6 more bagels can be cheesed.
I used to look at that in the refrigeration aisle and think “who in the heck would buy that? Use it? Oh, yeah. Restaurants.”
Nope.
It’s me.Report