I am absolutely killing Pinky blog. 😆 It's been hilarious watching all that drop off. Au revoir.
I started a different kind of project, which will be explained later. In the meantime, I'm fine. 😊 Super busy, as always. Maybe I'll bullet point before I go.
Approved for physical therapy on left shoulder for impingement, which, if I'd known was taken so seriously, I'd have gotten on top of years ago. I've lived with crazy amounts of pain, this is hopefully the last big hurdle.
The difference between parm cheese and candy is mega amounts of salt. Don't parm yourself like it's candy. Heart got a little thumpy this week.
I can't believe how much TV we've managed to get caught up on again this last week, even came in late to a live tweet. Felt so goooood.
The back to back euphorias finally wore off and I'm sleeping through the nights again, yay! That was pretty wild.
Plan this month is stay on top of tree allergies. This is historically one of my really bad months, so I'm mostly hiding in my house. Might be pouring liquid zyrtec in my eyes. (Don't really do that, ok?)
I'm also craving spring veggies, so I'm all over salads this week. Can't seem to get enough radishes. Check it, they're full of vitamin C and other good stuffs. Radishes
Across the street from my house.
These are as tall as the second story on my house.
See how fluffy they are.
Fluffy, beautiful pollen deathinators.
Progressing nicely into the kind of ear pressure that triggers visions of lancing my ear drums. In the old days, on handfuls of meds, I'd vividly daydream about meticulously tearing bits of my body up, and even though I never acted on it, it seemed to help with the pain. Kinda like acknowledging or something. I know your sufferings, little cells. I feel your agony.
Hundreds of these line the hightway.
They're usually half brown and sickly.
They're having a very good year.
Lots of beautiful pollen, making more baby trees. Deadly baby death trees.
My whole body has turned into a mega sprinkler system trying to scrub the pollen out of the air I'm breathing. That would be fine except breathing is a thing, so it's a little self-defeating.
This is the most beautiful juniper year I've ever seen here.
Look at all those healthy fluffy trees.
Just look at them.
Death trees.
I really hope this isn't an early indicator of an especially nasty tree spring. I know this planet is pretty, but I'm about ready for a hazmat bunker.
This is about my level of processing tonight. I'm done.
click for the Bunny Halloween wiki
bunnies and Halloween are not strangers
I think one of my sister's girls started that one years ago, not sure if it was around Easter or what else was going on, but it has stuck with us ever since and we say it a lot. :edit:Thisis the original source.
I love you more than bunnies.
Growing up in a family where hearing "I love you" didn't happen often enough around me, or was said more out of expectation or under trite circumstance, I went out of my way to change that with my family. It was hard, but once I got used to it, it started rolling off my tongue unbidden even to strangers, sometimes in very funny or awkward places. Oh, well, lol. Maybe someone needed it.
Last night's vivid dream was about bunnies. If we could see in bunny form what humans do to each other, maybe we could understand better. Like when someone's day gets crushed by an angry person flinging their emotions around, literally seeing a bunny stomped hard with a big boot and the painful squeal of death while eyes gouge and guts and brain spurt out. Or like if someone was all best of luck to someone else whose bunny was out in rough choppy water and you could see the bunny was literally drowning in front of you. Or like sending someone off to handle something with a you can do this, and there was a very sad bunny hiding deep in a backpack or glove box. Sad bunnies would be pretty hard to push out there into the big cruel world. We'd want to cuddle them and make them feel safe.
click for tons of clip art
Today is brought to you by the letters K and MC and the number every 30-60 seconds. Kaspersky is a big bad biatch, and I really love it. Kaspersky on Windows 10 is a whiny brat. I've used Kaspersky for years, so I'm pretty good at figuring out the drags I go through and adjusting them. Our latest adventure together ramped up when I updated my minecraft game server downloads and started getting kicked off for java.io.IOException every 30-60 seconds. Kaspersky doesn't like java and tells on java all the time, so I'm well aware of the crap on my end. I fiddled around with adding exceptions and told it to ignore any more java, and at least I was able to log on. I spent an entire day relogging nearly every minute. I'm a machine, I got a LOT done in between those kicks, like renovating my player shop and farming up another $75K or so. But I got really tired of it, so I finally took the whole safe money off. I don't know what is going on with the latest Kaspersky updates and the latest W10 and Chrome duels, but I had to take safe money off just to be able to stay on a game server on a top of the line gaming laptop. Have I mentioned I'm about ready for the competition to stop? That it's time for the total integration and smooth interface of internet? That I'm ready for the brain chip? Sheesh.
If the only interesting thing in that last paragraph was 'game server', my latest post is here.
click to get to official server site
After a sweet lull in my personal allergy hell (got through ragweed season on half the usual amount of antihistamines), everything flared super big yesterday and I had to slam extra zyrtec, double the benadryl I usually take when needed, pepcid (H2 blocker) and after 30 minutes decided I'd better get on that pred burst or wind up in clinic for shots, so I'm on prednisone for 3 more days. Between our basement getting dredged for yard sale (went fantastic, yay!) and the leaf mold from autumn starting (official allergy to leaf mold), and all of it going in and out the door past me, my histamine levels were probably already popping, and then all it took from there was one of my old pain pills (some meds are well known for spiking normal histamine levels even though there is no allergy to the med), and bam. I'm not supposed to be taking those any more anyway and had gotten down to one a week, and yesterday's 30 minutes of headache relief got blitzed by my uvula turning into a lawn sprinkler. You don't mess around with that kind of reaction. Took nearly an hour to get that under control, but much better now. Guess I'd better go back to twice a day zyrtec through autumn peak. Maybe I can cut back down once we're past that.
SO. I'll be super watching my blood sugar next few days. If you're in diabetic hell with steroids for some reason, I wrote a post for that called Diabetes and Steroid Meds. If you need more, go here. I'm pretty good at this, fasting glucose was 78 this morning after yesterday's prednisone.
I think I'm getting better at cramming a lot of stuff into less space. 😋 Let's get out of here, I need breakfast and more game time. I didn't get on server for 6 whole days in a row last week, and I've been extra special good lately, so I'm going to PLAY. I don't think some of the kids nowadays appreciate that my gen inventing playing. All your tech and industries- my peeps made 4 u. Let's go enjoy something today.
Sorry about yesterday, was running around town and wanted to check something.
Big A++ on my 6 month followup with my sleep doctor. I'm very difficult with med compliance, but it sounds like I'm one of the most CPAP compliant people they've ever seen. Srsly, 2 decades on 6 or less hours of sleep on 90% of nights, and for a number of those years it was 2-4. I was the poster child for 'sleep deprivation won't actually kill you'. I have a will of steel and a healthy fear of dying in my sleep. Y'all fussing about you'd rather die than live with CPAP, your choice, and see you in the next life. I'm busy and I've got things to do.
My summer syllabus is working beautifully so far. I might share it sometime. It's a maintenance aka back on track schedule that commands a rhythm of regular down time, and my fasting glucose this morning is already down to 94. Right? It was 110 ten days ago. Doing this without diabetes meds, guys. Controlling internal environment, balancing incoming chemicals (pain control), I can do this. It's getting more and more obvious that pain referral, while being a tricky bastard, can be tricked itself. Psychoneuroimmunology. You can learn to spell it just as I did. You can also check it out. If you want more in-depth, here is wikipedia.
Thanks to rain gods, fertility goddesses, wood nymphs, and field fairies, the pixie dust around here is obnoxiously high and even worse when it's being thrown about during mowing. Our tiny grasslands nestled all through Mirkwood are as lush as I've ever seen them. Still cranking around the clock on zyrtec and benadryl, and still at least 6 weeks away from ragweed season. This year promises to be a real booger. Get it? Nvrmnd.
Yeah, I dunno wassup with my brain this morning. It seems a bit jolly. Maybe it's the blood sugar coming down. Hope this means my crabby spell is about over.
I've been off and on this post for 3 days, so if you think you can handle all this, grab a sandwich and kick back.
When a 3 year old says it's time to clean the floors, it'stimetocleanthefloors. And no holding back, very disgusted *ew* kind of thing- Meemaw, you need to clean the floor! and then dancing off sprinkling more sticky around like sticky pixie dust.
So yeah, filled up the ol' steam mop Sunday while they were off visiting friends, dropped the reservoir on the floor hole side down, cleaned it up with a used towel, and @bonenado breezed through saying Good job, way to mop! 👍 #achievementunlocked I'm calling it a presoak. It werked.
Hello mildew, my old friend.
I've come to scrub you off again
Because the surfaces that you're darkling
I think it's time to make them resparkling
And it's gross how you're coating up the drain
You can't remain
Time to go down and perish.
I could make that 4 verses longer like the song, but I'm really not that into mildew hate. I mean, I don't tolerate it, yeah, and sometimes it sucks that I live in a state that strongly promotes its flourishing growth and it gags me to see it, so I'm usually all over it before it even shows up, but I could be doing something else like folding laundry.
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I love how kids are so innocent of seeing the bigger picture for awhile.
Poor mama can't see at all.
There we go, that works.
Boops are awesome. That is all.
Flying casual, like you do... Luke: Vader's on that ship. Han Solo: Now don't get jittery, Luke. There are a lot of command ships. Keep your distance, though, Chewie, but don't *look* like you're trying to keeping your distance.
[Chewie barks a question] Han Solo: *I* don't know. Fly casual.
--quote source--
I proudly admit that I gave birth to this person. I will always love this face, and this is my fave pic ever.
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The amazing leftover waste of oak tree sex. I'm so glad humans don't do this.
While so far I'm doing uber fantastic during peak tree pollen (compared to years past), it's not taking much to trigger histamine overloads. One day I saw my psychologist (how many people hang out on that beautiful fabric covered couch?) and ran through Walmart (I seriously actually get facial swelling in Walmart during high histamine seasons even without touching my face, and spring sunshine only exacerbates it because I get photophobic- polymorphic light eruption- when I'm in histamine overload) and spent the rest of the day tanked on enough benadryl to take a horse down, but I was just fine. One way I know I'm dealing with a reaction is when benadryl doesn't make me sleepy. My body gets so wired reacting that I can take benadryl all day long and never keel over into a nap. I have a great fight or flight response, good thing I'm not a meta (from comics for people who don't know what that is) or I'd probably be a ticking time bomb.
It's still beautiful.
So far this month I've had moderate reactions to salmon and corn on the cob on two different weeks, so naturally I'm all over looking up lists of high histamine foods to avoid, like All About Histamines. I spent so many years in my past with doctors saying IBS and anxiety- that has all melted away since I changed what I eat and started noticing that pollen seasons and hormones tend to kick up the systemic response to foods I normally eat just fine. I didn't start learning this until I went anaphylactic on several food groups over 3 years, notably nuts and peanuts (cashews was my first biggie), citrus (I lament the loss to this day), and wheat (the worst ever, 17 days on prednisone but boy did my life change after I purged it out of my house). I stopped eating fish and seafood until that all calmed down, about 3 years. I had to purge all my herbal teas (surprise! yes, you can have allergic reactions to chamomile) and stopped eating tomato salsas and sauces (I'm not even allergic to tomatoes, but they are a super trigger for kicking the rest up a notch), and the only chocolate I'll touch at all is Hershey's cocoa and Hershey's milk chocolate chips. I've been very fortunate that I can still tolerate dairy and eggs, but I'm learning not to overdo them during spiky histamine months.
Our first Japanese iris bloom.
The regular irises are about to pop, too.
In the interim, 'little' things I've lived with for a long time have been magically healing unawares. A CT of my abdomen for something else entirely (thankfully negative) remarked that a significant years-long spot on my liver could no longer be seen, so technically I probably can no longer say I have NASH. A treadmill stress test in the last 5 years placed me about 20 years younger than I really am, which is really significant with my kind of health history. On top of that, my lungs are scarred up from a soil based fungal infection and even though I lived on daily steroid inhaler for 9 months just to breathe one year when I was at my sickest point, a pulmonologist was unable to trigger an asthma attack during testing. I'm still at risk for COPD as I age (only smoked a year and a half, go figure), but aside from airway reactions during higher histamine seasons, I have beautifully clear lungs and easy breathing the last few years, and I think I use an inhaler maybe once a year now. I keep one on me anyway in my epipurse for emergencies, but I love not having to use it.
On the outer cusp of Mirkwood.
I changed my diet and morphed over the last 6 years into the healthiest I've been in my adult life, like aging backward. I still get tired easily, and I'm getting stiffer and have to keep after mobility and core strength to stay on top of normal wear and tear during aging, but at least I'm able to take care of myself around my own house. I've been through a couple of years of needing help putting on shoes and socks, not being able to drive, etc. I run into forum posts where patients say they'd rather die slow painful deaths than be compliant with whatever, and being someone coming back from the brink of slow, painful death, I just laugh and say Ok, be an idiot, but stop complaining about it. Years ago I asked a woman I know who was terribly ill all the time if she would give up her Pepsi if she knew it would add 10 years to her life, and she actually laughed and told me to my real face (not on internet or phone) that she would die before she gave up her Pepsi. Well... I'm still here. I gave up all soda pop and a whole lot more. I'm still here being good for people, not dragging their lives down.
And that's the thing, isn't it? The conundrum of becoming drags on our families, on society, on the economy, and the horrible depression of needing support networks and compassion. If we are sick and we know that we are doing it to ourselves, how much compassion can we expect? Let's do a thought experiment just for fun. Survivalists and conspiracy theorists contend that Mormonism is a branch of Illuminati or Trilateral control, basically one of the many parts of the New World Order mobilization and execution strategy. (I'm not saying that's what's going on, but if it is, then I personally think Glenn Beck is a strategically placed doublethink cover, like many others in religion, politics, and journalism.) Mormons are encouraged to follow health guidelines, as do some other religions. Entire religions recognize how foods and substances affect their populations, and those religions are part of world control, ergo perhaps that is how the new world order is 'weeding out' the sick from the healthy and rebuilding the future. And if that is the case and you are falling for the products that spin you into a pharmaceutical loop, joke's on you, isn't it? Because it's all out there, whether it's conspiracy or not, the FACT that these things make us sick and that big corp and big pharma are living large on you being stupid enough to say you'd rather die than give up what's killing you.
Bluejacky is butting in saying we always thought humans were stupid anyway, but Pinky is reminding us that we like humans after all, and kind of feel sorry for them being so dumb. It's not always their own faults, and addictions and lifestyles really are super hard to change, as we know from personal experience. So who are we to judge? We are here to say there really is light on the other end of the long dark tunnel of suffering, there really is relief from depression and sadness, and it's worth all the work while you're feeling hopeless to finally arrive there and see it for real. I know many of us feel trapped in our bodies, in our jobs, in our lives, and on this planet, but we are more powerful than we can imagine, and every day the tiny changes we make add up to great big changes over time. You can do this.
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I've never messed with site maps. Google has been trying to tell me for months that Pinky blog is too big to crawl now. I can see them still crawling my other blogs I that barely touch (pourquoi?), but not Pinky blog. Am I worried at all?
No, I'm not worried, and I'll tell you why. Webmii ranked me up from 4.4 to 5.6 just over the last 6-8 months I think, statcounter is telling me incoming from facebook far outstrips G+ and twitter referrals (and much of the FB traffic is from outside my network, I know where all my people are), and as rarely as I use wordpress, new material from both my own blogs and Autisable show up pretty immediately in my name search in a Google search bar, so I feel like site mapping Pinky blog wouldn't be terribly different from Mantrid collapsing a universe. It IS too big, and I don't want to pull a ton of crawlers in all of a sudden and upset whatever balance keeps the internet from spiraling into a black hole.
Speaking of Mantrid... Yes, epic fail getting that done. Again. Yes, my house flipped over like a pancake nearly right on top of me taking finishing that work seriously. Again. Which basically means that my method and plan wildly skewed into an alt world kind of daily rescheduling (since when has this ever not happened?), but I do have more written out, a few more screen shots, etc. And today, as I'm adapting to this new lifestyle and time zone (I've adapted my sleep schedule by several hours), my brain was so on heading out the door that all kinds of motivation and ideas were sorting themselves out as I drove around, but an hour later, even with extra antihistamines, that was just gone and a sinus pressure headache was in its place. Still, I'm thrilled that I'm over 2/3 through April and have yet to break out an inhaler, and how I'm this far in without prednisone is amazing. Last year I made it pretty much all the way through, but was extremely miserable and hiding in my house. This year I'm juggling my stuff and actually breathing easily, worst of it is my eyes, lotta ducking my head in stabby sunlight and morphing into lizard eyeballs kind of stuff, but that beats oozy eyes and ear infections. And anyway, me talking about real life stuff does this in search engines, so I really don't see the point of wasting a day or two on site mapping.
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So here I am, my first April since I pieced together all the things and crossed the threshold of that doorway I waited so long to walk through. April will always be my month of mourning. I'll always carry shattered moments frozen in time, and I'll always feel them pierce me like broken glass in every April to come. The only difference now is that I'm aware that I'm doing this, and that this is what affects everything else I do and say to people all around me, hiding that I'm bleeding internally while the shards shred my heart all over again. I really don't think I need to talk about it any more, at least not here.
But there is a reason I brought it up. #transparency I was talking to my psychologist about how a person like me and where I come from can reach a place where I'm defending my decision to publicly support a faux snuff film producer because I want the world to really see what some of us live through, live with. I want the world to see and feel what my best friend went through being stabbed to death multiple times during her brutal rape. I want people reeling away in shock from truth, from the horrors of real, and start looking more intently at each other, at the people all around us, to really see each other, noticing those of us who've touched the darkness, escaped it, slipped through it, been part of it. Those of us who talk in code keep low profiles, braced against the sadness of stepping up into public knowing we won't have the support of our families and many of our friends while we reach out to others trying to make it through the dark, others feeling alone and lost with no one to talk to or understand.
And then the weird cognitive leap from walking out of that appointment to driving over to a library to pick up some more books for a 3 year old, that strange step back out into the kind of bright daylight that hides the pain this planet is in.
Twitter can't fix this, although it's a good start. I know it looks like I left twitter. I still see you guys, and I'm still checking in. My rock is my twitter gang.
While I was driving around, another opening sentence for another story popped into my mind, titled 500M. "There was a time when there were over 6 billion of us..." The rumors about population planning and culling might be history some day. What would conspiracy theories turn into looking back? They would become legends, myths. Just stories. So many stories in my head. Will I ever get them written down and shared? They feel important. I love writing. What is stopping all this? Besides pain and pain and pain and pain, in my body, in my heart, in the people all around me, in the world.
Pinky blog is growing into something I never dreamed. I stepped back out so timidly, and over time have slowly removed layers and layers in public view until I'm no longer timid. I may not be a youtube vlogger or a contending reviewer or a special interests networker, but I'm the center of a universe with many things in it, and all these things are part of me, and all these things must come together soon and become a New Thing.
And I laugh- How in the world is that even possible if I can't even finish writing a TV series character review? And I laugh back- We never thought it would be possible to make it through April this well, either. Touché.
I am hopefully assessing out of physical therapy today for either the rest of the year or at least a much longer stretch than I've gone in years. I'm on new ground now. I never EVER envisioned getting this far, although I have pushed hard to get here anyway.
And, like a dork, I let my zyrtec run out. I also completely missed an appointment yesterday. Crashed a little harder than I thought I would coming off the euphoria but it's all good, kept laundry caught up, meals got made, I even worked.
@bonenado sounds terrible, and I'm guessing head cold going into bronchitis. Doesn't seem to be the typical allergy stuff, all the sicky symptoms dragging around. Beautiful spring popping out, @bonenado going all zombie on us. Poor guy.
This is pretty much my head right now. Everything is all stirred up in there bcuz Bunny and PT and pulling all my focus into navigating euphoric ep and allergy boom. Been making my coffee a little stronger this month. I know I'm out of touch out there but srsly thx to my friends for shares around the medias and hopefully I get a lot more work done this year. I feel solid through my hurricanes with my gangs under me.
3-day cervicogenic headache aside (mimics migraine), I thought our first weekend with Bunny moved in went really well. I have 2 days left in physical therapy this week (doing my usual fibro-flare kickback against all the local stimulation and then sleeping better with my neck in a weird position, plus dental chair for teeth cleaning, yowza to the neck #uffda), my blood pressure seems to be settling around 116/78 kind of stuff (huzzah! CPAP, guys), I finally broke through on that stupid fluid retention from the big med change in January (still can't believe how much that bossed my whole body around), and yay we're finally back to Monday routine.
Allergies- don't wanna jinx myself, but CPAP is super duper for helping control so far. April is my bad month every spring. The air I breathe through the night now is double filtered. So far I'm using only half the antihistamines I was using last year and breathing comfortably, but oak pollen is just now really ramping up (birch is already high), so we'll see where I am a week from now. People around me, meanwhile, are struggling. I've talked before about how quickly pollen saturates a house in a variety of ways with tips on how to manage that. the definitive last word on living through a ragweed tsunami
Still euphoric, but it seems to be pretty controlled. This is the 12th day, which is usually about where it starts tapering off for me. Feeling pretty confident that I won't go through a crash and burn once it does. I think this is the best controlled big euphoria I've had, and despite all the extra stress around me, I still managed to float through quite a bit of it even though I was controlling the float level.
I'm not letting myself look at work I feel isn't getting done. I'm hugging myself for getting through all this huge stuff intact and not worse off. I think my family is a good team because we know each other so well and we're all into problem-solving, and somehow we all seemed to click into about the smoothest problem fix transition we've ever gone through together.
Number one lesson learned- no matter how smart a 3 year old seems, the probability of treasure winding up in one's tummy is 100%, pretty much just a matter of time. Bunny's amazed disbelief at how in the world it had to and actually did make its magical reappearance still cracks me up. Watching this learning process has been delightful and opened up all kinds of new thoughts about thought processes in my own mind. The conclusion, as always, is that humans in general don't 'know' anything without conscious investigation and observation, and all our knowledge as a species is cumulative. Left to our own devices, we'll always just keep swallowing metaphorical rocks and not know what to believe.
Quick summary- I'm tired, and we've still got a long way to go. I can do this.
This was my lullaby in my headphones last night after everyone else settled in. One of my last thoughts before I finally drifted off was how I never seem to talk about how much the Joker has filled background gaps in my head since I was a kid. I saw all the old Batmans in the 60s, the cartoons, all the movies. I love Jack Nicholson, but I think Heath really nailed it.
Pollen map pix click back toPollen.com I got these screen shots last night, so today is 'tomorrow' on these charts.
We're starting April early this year, huzzah! I'm already on both round the clock zyrtec and benadryl through the day.
Before I got the hang of pollen maps, counts, and forecasting, I lived on antibiotics for the aftereffects of sludging through (often mistaken for powering through) the slime that tree sex causes throughout the tissues in my entire head and sometimes goes into my chest. Now that I've got a firm grip on antihistamine dosing, I'm able to avoid the antibiotics for things like really bad ear infections, ridiculously painful salivary gland (parotid gland) infections, slimy eyeballs, and of course, our friends the sinus cavities becoming a thriving metropolitan for germ overlords.
I don't know about you guys, but tree season heavily impacts not only my health, but my depression and anxiety levels as my body reallocates prioritizing system management, and if I don't manage all of this, I wind up in walk in clinics and even ERs for some pretty big med management that goes on to super screw my diabetes, and life becomes such a joy that I hate everyone and everything and my baditude affects relationships. THAT is what trees do to me.
I live in Mirkwood. I am surrounded on all sides by rugged terrain thick with Tree People. Some of them live in state and national forests, but quite a lot of them live all around my house. They fight for dominance, and their spring mating dances, while not as raucous as frog ponds (I love hearing froggies in the spring), are violently spew worthy. Everything turns yellow for about 6 weeks (last year was longer), and humans turn into snot manufacturing plants.
I vote the trees win and we leave this planet. Don't know what committee picked this one, but I think we should be living in a dome on a forsaken rock and watching videos of trees from a safe distance. I know, I know, our ancestors could have crashed here and it's not really their fault and we're awesome for actually surviving and conquering a hostile planet, but that still doesn't change my vote.
One of the things that came up with my psychiatrist last week was my idiosyncratic reaction to gabapentin, one of the purportedly safest meds on the planet. #transparency I decided at the beginning of the year to lose some weight, as many do with resolutions, and had lost 4 pounds by the time my gabapentin dose was ramped up. I gained those 4 pounds back and added another 2 almost immediately (faster weight gain than prednisone, folks), and even after ramping the med back down kept adding until I had put on a total of 14 pounds. If we take off the 4 pounds I lost first, that's still a 10 pound increase over one dose change in a very short time frame. I'm calling it what it is, 14 pounds.
This is unacceptable, and now that I'm 1- pretty much back to my weird normal mindset and 2- ready to plunge through tree season, what better time to go back to carb counting and calorie restriction? And exercise. That was the most epic fail part of the dose change. I'm retaining fluid in my FEET and they HURT NOW when I walk around exercising, so I've been taking it kind of slow while the fluid leaks back out. Between physical therapy and antihistamines, I'm actually feeling a little dehydrated and having to remind myself to drink a glass of water once in awhile. In the meantime, staying focused on proteins, healthy fats, leafy veg, and a much better attitude.
I've been using this month to slowly turn my ship around under a new star chart, locking down a new heading kind of thing. One of my biggies I've been talking about with my immediate family lately is transparency. I've been so accustomed to hiding challenges and navigating around flaws for so many years that, since I've been opening up and really being more honest, I feel I need to stop dancing around some real things.
First of all, and this really is a big deal and affects nearly everyone I meet in real life, let's just get the whole dog allergy thing dealt with. It's usually not a big deal because I keep to myself, but it's holidays and all the people are pinching each other's little cheeks and saying howdy in person, so I need to be forthright and asplain all the awkward stuff as easily as I can, which in Pinky terms mean ripping the ol' bandaid right off.
I have never told anyone this until now- after hugging several different pet owners over a few years as visits ended (with no pet even being present), my face immediately rashed out and swelled because of indirect exposure, and I had to start slugging benadryl and watch it for an hour in case I had to run in for phenergan and possibly even prednisone. Yes, it affects my health that much. If you own a pet, you are wearing your pet everywhere you go. I didn't say anything because I didn't want anyone to feel bad. Well, that's a lie then, isn't it? I need to tell the truth.
From Dog Allergies on WebMD- "Some people with dog allergies also have skin reactions. For instance, their skin might break out where a dog licks them. Others with more severe allergies might develop hives on their face or chest. People with asthma as well as pet allergies can have especially serious symptoms." Serious means breathing emergency. I usually skip the hives part and go straight to airway with just about every allergic reaction I have, so I am ready for no warning emergency response 24/7. I live this way.
My favorite part about debunking pet allergy myths is scientists finding molecular pet evidence even in homes with no pets (that's a link, click it), because our society is so overrun with dogs and cats everywhere we go, so there you go, just avoiding a dog in its own house isn't enough. I'm also terrified of walking into a home saturated with something else that could cause anaphylaxis, and this includes everything from dogs (medically documented with an allergist) to party balloons, toys, and sports equipment (latex) to everything nuts and peanuts to citrus (which includes cleaners, aromatherapy, and beauty products, especially aerosolized), you get the picture, so it's not something personal against dogs. I would be an idiot to walk into a place where I even remotely think emergency response might become the highlight of our visit, and I know it would make my hosts feel terrible. I know a lot of people still don't get this yet, but if I could get an airline flight shut down over a peanut allergy, I can sure as hell kill your party vibe over a really scary hour of croup and face swelling, which can easily turn into 6 hours in an ER.
I don't expect people to go to this much work, because it's truly exhausting, and it's really not detailed enough to prevent a serious problem. It doesn't address issues like small children spreading contact allergens, what to do when your pet pukes during a visit, stuff like that. Are Your Holiday Guests Allergic to Pets? Here Are 5 Ways to Make Them More Comfortable
I grew up with dogs. I love dogs. I'm not against anyone owning dogs, eating peanut butter, decorating with balloons, and wearing perfume. Instead of you guys trying to make room for one person who necessarily shuts that all down and kills the whole party, just scrape all that off and meet that person halfway in a convenient place for a bit and then jovially say goodbye, no pressures, no hugs, just glad to see someone. And if it really is inconvenient, I am the first person who understands all the holiday pressures and the last person to pile on any guilt over it. I'm a bubble person in a very mobile world, so I mostly live vicariously on the webs. I'm good with that.
My second transparency thing has been playing around with tracking and thinking about making stats public, which involved tests on IP masking and code reinstalls and turned into a bigger headache than it looked starting out. I kept tweaking stuff, like turning off reports on crawlers and bots, wiping out all the IP blocking (I had that so screwed up anyway, all I could mostly see was myself instead of the other way around), generally just making visitor data more accessible. I installed a second statcounter tracker with different settings to see how they compare, and I was fine with the whole visible thing until I zoomed down on the map and actually got a real location, thanks to GPS on mobile, so there is no way I'm making all the stats visible. You guys can see a graph now, that's basically it. No maps.
Even when humans know how to mask their IPs, if they switch to mobile that has GPS locator turned on and ping my tracker without using data masking, I can sometimes see actual locations on a map. (It's rare, but it still happens.) I feel like I would be sloppy to allow all of that to be publicly available. I mean, some people I know check in all over the place on apps, you can see exactly where they are through the day and anyone following on social media can see that (but you can't see all their operating system data like you can on a tracker map), but other people might not want the world to know the actual building they're sitting in. The problem with making stats completely public is that, even with IP masking, a few people can still be zoomed into actual street and building on the map, and I know that because I could see someone in a named daycare parking lot (thank you, Google super zoom) with a timestamp on it. THAT is what I mean by protecting my lurkers by not publishing my stats. There are several of you I can see coming in from named work places, or I can tell how far you drive to work and back home, and it's not because you're careless or because I'm a stalker, it's just stats and I'm so used to seeing mine. (In the old Lexx days, I knew exactly where my 3 biggest 'enemies' logged in from, and one of them pinged from both a work computer and home computer so regularly that I could tell what her work hours were and when she went shopping or out on a weekend.) Most of you are getting really good at the IP masking, which is awesome, but unless you've got GPS locator turned off (I keep mine turned off out of habit), I can still see where you actually are if you are using certain mobile devices and browsers. Not trying to scare anyone, just saying that's why I'm NOT going full transparency and opening access to the awesome map. I wish I could, but I'm not a jerk. Otherwise it would be cute and fun to see all the pings coming in from cities and countries and stuff.
When you visit other sites, if you see a tracker, always check it out. If you can click on it and go to a data site, see if you can see yourself in the stats. If you can see everything about your operating system, IP, and location, so can the entire world, and once someone who for real deep stalks you figures out your patterns on public trackers, they can see with a few clicks what you're reading and when, and sometimes even where from. (Seriously, when you hang out with a group of writers who code their own sites, it can get that intense.) I honestly would never have thought of this stuff if I hadn't had people fighting over something in the past, and it really did boil down to watching public stats. This is why I love lurkers, and I will always protect lurkers. Some day everything everyone does on internet will be completely transparent just because one day it will legally all boil down to that, but for now, we can still be anons, free to glide through the ether.
Ok, I'm worn out. That was way too much thinking for one post. But you get the gist, no more dancing around stuff. 2017 is about 1- getting back to work, and 2- ripping off bandaids.
All that fun rakey rakey, right? I stayed indoors and watched out a window, but it all dragged in anyway. Time to strip the house again. Even @bonenado is a snot monster, and if *he's* bad...? It's bad.
People who also deal with chronic skin conditions have even more fun during allergy flares, just by systemic histamine spike immune response association. I have a mild 3x4 area on one lower leg for a couple of years that's barely even visible but responds to absolutely nothing but leaving it the hell alone, or it'll look the f* like hell, dammit (srsly, what did I do to piss off those skin cells???) For some reason that's the only spot, but I know a few people who tolerate way more. Psoriasis vs Eczema: What is the difference? View 18 Photos
Anyway, mine flared up into the Itch From Hell last night during The Walking Dead while my eyes melted into this caterpillar in pupal stage goo, so I feel for everyone going into Thanksgiving with this kind of stuff going on. If being infected with the zombie virus would mean living without histamine response, I'd take it in a heartbeat. I'm usually past all this by mid-November, but autumn was late this year, then suddenly arrived like the Biebster, and now the exit flourish is destroying some of us. To people who don't experience allergies-
Take a day off from complaining about other stuff
Go outside and breathe deeply and ENJOY THIS PLANET
Share your joy about this big beautiful space ball we live on
Thank you.
Ok, it's Monday, I have to strip my house and go through another little bottle of eye drops.
I was looking for a Monday before Thanksgiving demotivational theme, wound up in Black Friday parodies, then hit gold with a minecraft parody of "Friday". 2.3M views don't lie. And now I'm stuck in "Friday" parodies. Happy Monday, guys. You're welcome.
4.8M views. Where have I been?
K, back to something that will actually help me go get things done.
Really, I have no idea, but there's such a big health warning all over most of the stuff you look up about them (especially for kids and dogs) that I can only conclude that my house being covered in them for 2 weeks is making me sick, because even though I have a leaf mold allergy, I have never been like this in October. Itchy eyes and scratchy throat, yes, hacking super sticky globs and nearly choking, no.
At any rate, we're going on 18 days now and it's progressed into lungs over the weekend and it's not going away any time soon, so once again I will drag myself up to clinic and see if I qualify for antibiotic now. In years past I've been on antibiotic every other month, but I've gotten so healthy now that my glands barely even get tender for a day and the rest of me always looks really impressive for someone complaining of specific problems at my age.
I remember my parents dragging through chest gunk because they were too stubborn to go to doctors. One year my dad coughed for around 6 weeks and dragged around looking awful. He's still busy, tried calling yesterday and he didn't call back till he got off the tractor. 87 years old.
So all that is kinda quelling the birthday chocolate cake waffle with coffee cream cheese dip thing, I can't smell or taste anything right and nothing sounds good because I'm gunky gross, so I'm putting it off until some of this clears out. If aliens abducted me right now they'd be wowed over what a super productive sticky mucus machine I am.
Brief crabby whine sentence stating that I'm super jealous of people who don't have to live with allergic reactions. You guys suck whining about stuff when you can easily 1- breathe, 2- eat what you want, and 3- not have to live on round the clock antihistamines nearly all year long.
*clear*
Ok, moving on.
I'm going to keep watching The Walking Dead. It's just now getting good. In fact, I can now honestly finally say I respect what they're doing with this show. Watching Rick breaking from his internal point of view, reality blowing apart, not knowing which fear was real or imagined, all his emotional connections blowing apart until he was alone with only death- I hope that ep wins awards galore.
THAT is PTSD, guys. That is exactly what happens to people who go through moments of super anxiety not knowing what to believe or hang onto, moments when you can't make decisions because you can't even trust your own brain to keep giving you stuff to hang onto. Not all of us are in an apocalypse like that, but when you're driving on a highway and have to remind yourself to check whether you're really driving because you can't tell...
That scene was an art form that I thought was exceptionally well done. You need to pick up on what happened in that scene so you will understand Rick's point of view going forward. You might not like a few things Rick does in future. He might be a mess and fall off the hero pedestal. He might wind up a wild dog killing everyone. Or he might wind up psycho enough to take out Negan. But for awhile he might be a very weak unlikable character. Are you a fair weather fan?
Allowing ourselves to be too overwhelmed by our emotions to handle something and shutting down is turning our back on dealing with stuff. I had to learn at a young age to shut those emotions off, or set them aside for later. Human brains are fantastic for survival if we learn how to use our emotions as tools. It's good to process through them, but if they are in the way in time of crisis, especially if freezing up costs you or someone else harm, the best way (for me) to deal with that is step into role playing and then look at what happened later. It's really hard, but if that's the only way you can escape a difficult situation, like domestic abuse or surviving abduction or something, then that's what you do.
Whining about a TV show focusing entirely on how an apocalypse shreds us emotionally for not playing fair showing us something gruesome that hurts our emotions is a little bit antithetical to being a fan. I've been through fandoms full of the staunchest fans booing and hissing because something didn't go their way and they want it refilmed, and some even spend years making life projects out of how unfair a television show was. Seriously not kidding. I watched a lot of people shut down years of friendships over political side taking nonsense the last couple of months. Well, that's how fandoms are, too. It's cool if you don't want to watch a TV show, but going on and on about how unfair something is and you're not going to watch any more is kinda silly. Just stop watching it and move on. It's just a TV show.
The really interesting thing is watching some of the fans go through what Rick did, just bust apart and say no mas. Fans mirroring the scene. That is an incredible amount of power to give a TV show over your life.
Just saying.
From me to you guys. Hang in there. It might be worth watching Rick come back and eat Negan.
Ascospores(ass-co’-spores) – A large category of spores (produced in a sac-like structure) that are found everywhere in nature and include more than 3000 genera. Most Ascospores of health or IAQ importance are identified separately by their genus (e.g. Chaetomium) when possible on a IAQ report, and the Ascospore category is used primarily on these reports for a large group of less important spore types often found in quantity on outdoor air samples. On tape samples, Ascospore is sometimes also used as a general morphological identification (i.e. the ascus or sac structure is present) for certain samples in those cases when the spores do not appear to represent any of the IAQ significant genera.
What I'm finding is that very little is known about this class of molds which is considered to have little effect on human health. However, descending into sore throat hell for 2 full weeks and the doctor clearing me for everything except unidentifiable "upper respiratory infection", I finally looked up the pollen count last night. Surely there can't be that much whatever bothering me now, can it? I do have a documented 'leaf mold' allergy, but the leaves are just drying up on the trees, we're not even getting much of real autumn this year at my house. These snips click to sources.
Ok, so 75K+ on the mold thing is not good. In the last 6 weeks I have tested negative for strep and influenza and I know a snotty virus from 2-week hell came through that everyone got, but it's gone now and I'm the one left with the icky snotty nose and the super raw sore throat. We've had winds kicking up, fluctuating temps, hard rains in between dry spells, dead critters on the highways out of season (whatever that indicates), the wrong infestations happening (caterpillars vs ladybugs), and an autumn that is saying f* the peak thing and dropping leaves going straight from green to brown and crunchy. Ok, we do see the occasional tree here or there that's doing it right, but not anywhere near my house.
I've noticed the sore throat has gotten dramatically worse immediately after a couple of big hospital tests this month, and at first it was easy to think they were the culprits, but now I'm thinking about feeling absolutely miserable through all the extra early morning driving I've been doing this month, the mornings thick with high humidity and probably jillions of mold spores. My head probably looks all gunked up inside the same way clogged drains do, all that nasty thick goo, and the tissues trying to be supportive going down in inflammatory redness and swelling.
I WAS A FOOL TO LOWER MY ZYRTEC DOSE THIS MONTH. *slap!**slap!* That was one side of my head last night slapping the other side of my head. It got so bad through the day yesterday that I felt almost like I was going to choke in my sleep last night, and a few brain cells tore the rest of my brain off of watching the Marvel red carpet Doctor Strange world premier live stream (that goes to the twitter hashtag so you can see all the things) and said LOOK AT THIS MOLD COUNT AND START SCARFING BENADRYL YOU IDIOT.
And that actually worked. It's starting to dry up and my throat is so grateful that I can almost swallow without chloraseptic this morning.
Among my goals today is aggressive round the clock antihistamine vigilance, because I really am tired of this. In years past I've wound up on prednisone in August-September for really bad allergy outbreaks that go anaphylactic trying to eat something, this year I made it past all that and thought I was clear and could starting ramping down for a winter break off zyrtec before I have to start all over again when cedars erupt next February, but I guess I'm not the boss of me and this planet is going to kill me if I don't pay attention.
I am an Ancient Aliens enthusiast, have seen every single show they've ever made, and I have one question- IF humans really are genetically created interspecies hybrids (pleeeease let me be an interspecies hybrid), why in the world have they not fixed our immune systems yet? This is such a miserable planet to breathe on for quite a lot of us, and it seems to me that if we had naturally evolved here, we'd be more adapted to living with all this junk, but our own bodies fight against us just breathing air full of molds and pollens that otherwise never hurt us at all. So what gives? When are they going to fix that???
Side notes.
I still keep getting auto-thanked for being a top interactor for a group tag I very rarely respond to.
I thought I fixed my Java problem with Kaspersky but apparently not, because it still can't update and now blogger is having fits showing me youtubes on my blogs, which Google search says might mean I need Java...
I've been regularly reading other aspie-autie bloggers and discovering my lengthy posts got nuthin on them being singularly focused on their self discoveries on spectrum with all its ups and downs, and while they're very well written and spot on, that's just a LOT of time spent on introspection, which makes my mold post today kinda funny to me.
I'm learning the Amazon review ropes, which I hope to expand on at SyfyDesigns, so plenty to keep me busier.
This is the most important tweet in the history of twitter. Well, ok, everyone's tweeting it and you can even get video and gifs in the hashtag stream.
Oh, and this. Lovedit. Loooove Frankenfurter's red outfit, looooove the new choreography, the Eddie scene is fantastic, adore Columbia's new look, I could go on. They totally nailed it. I'll hafta go back and watch again, Benny C distraction kinda bombed everything. Thrilled to see Tim Curry in it. Way before I was a Lexx fan, I was a huge Curry fan and did Curry Toons.
Guess I need to pull my snotty head together. Srsly, most Pinkyween month EVER between the glue in my hair and weeks of snot and I don't even care any more how crap I look. It's been an excellent month, however, for pulling together a few sacks of stuff for Good Will, getting my holiday greeting cards all lined out and ready to go, and even got popcorn balls made already (and going to make more!). It's been epic fail for menu planning, but high five for EOB and other paperwork organization, fail for keeping my floors done but awesome for actually losing a few pounds. Anyway, need to get moving again. My strategies yesterday WORKED and I'm mobile again, yay!!! Assess back into physical therapy on Nov. 3rd.
Still fighting with Kaspersky over trusted applications, but here you go. I can at least see it on my phone. This all started suddenly yesterday, so maybe I bumped a setting or something, who knows. Well, actually, I can see it in my Torch browser, so it's definitely a Chrome problem. Whatever. I prefer youtube through Torch, anyway. I'm rambling, ta-ta.
So SW MO totally beat out Iowa in the ragweed competition yesterday.
And I know this because I looked ours up.
And then I went on to look through the entire count history and discovered this is the first time we've ever gotten an official above 300s number.
So I think we win the prize and everyone should be getting free zyrtec and "I survived Ragweednado 2016" shirts or something. But while I see tweets to news links about 'extreme bloom' in other parts of the country (bless their hearts, still in 300s), complete with pix, what do we get? A BLURB at the very bottom of a weather page. That's right, one sentence- "Allergy sufferers today is a horrible day as the ragweed count is over 500 and considered very high!"
That exclamation point says it all. See, in the Ozarks, nothing surprises us. A body was recovered from a conservation area recently, guy in his 80s, could've been someone that someone I know knows, and first thought among us is 'families with kids could have been camping around there over Labor Day weekend, imagine stumbling across the rotting body in this heat', well, wasn't exactly said like that but you guys know I'm a Syfy fan. Anyway, if this isn't proof that ragweed kills, I don't know what is.
So I've totally got this song in my head.
Wait, this just in. I found a local meteorologist's facebook page sharing 'very high' 'weed count' without sourcing, so you can see we really don't make a big deal about it in a national news kind of way.
I thought about searching 'highest ragweed count for september 2016', which is pretty specific, but it so quickly got bombed with everything pollen (did I even mention pollen, guys), spring moaning and groaning (that's why I spelled september, doi), and years past news flashes about most miserable (omg does typing 2016 even count), so I just shut the search page and dropped it. Apparently no one out there besides Springfield MO and an Iowa twitter account publish actual ragweed pollen counts, and my area was really easy to find. Those of you still thinking you lived through a "pollen tsunami" or something similar in the past, y'all wouldn't survive the Ozarks. Just saying.
Aspienado obsession achievement unlocked and it's just now 5 a.m. I should probably get some coffee.
And this is me with coffee. I did a 'ragweed count over 500' search. I'm getting more pertinent info now, like this allergen count level of symptoms chart guide from a TV station in Utah.
Notice that 'very high' for ragweed STOPS at 500 on this chart. People, southwest MO is officially past 'very high', and you don't hear us calling this a pollen tsunami. I wish, though, that they'd say we've gone to plaid. (Look that up.) (Yes, click it!) (That page alone will tell you so much about aspienado's mind palace in easy speak.)
I'm going to add some vital info to the 'pollen is the highest in the morning' thing. When you live in a high humidity area, like 80% (which sucks enough on its own), the pollen doesn't settle, it hangs in the air all day long, collecting on everything that goes through the air. You can't see it, but you come home so saturated with it that you drag it all over your house. If you wake up sneezing and think you're allergic to dust mites and it's raging ragweed outside, you're dumb. If you are absolutely miserable, here are a few things you can do to make your home a haven from the evil outdoors.
Get a HEPA. Get 2 or 3. I have two in my house, one in the livingroom, one in my bedroom.
Change your duct, AC, furnace and whatever filters to the most super fine you can find. Yes, they're expensive, but so is going to the doctor for the crud during allergy season.
TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF as soon as you get into the house. Your shoes track more pollen in than anything you can imagine. All shoes.
Strip at the door if you've been doing yard work (extra points if your washing machine is right by the door), or strip next to a clothing hamper if you've been out of the house around town for several hours. Do this stripping within the first minute of entering your house and do NOT sit on the couch first. You will be surprised how much this single act lowers your amount of misery in your home.
Everything else from there is common sense- don't hang your wash outside on humid high pollen days. If you don't have a dryer, use racks and hangers around the house. I did this for a few years, it really does help. Don't open windows during humid high pollen days. If you need to freshen the house, open a few windows to 1/2 inch slits through the afternoons and don't forget to close them before nightfall.
Ragweed season makes snoring and sleep apnea a million times worse, so it's vital to stay on regular antihistamines and keep hydrating. Sleep disturbances that interrupt breathing are dangerous and deteriorate health over time.
If you have pets that go outside regularly, you're screwed. Embrace your thug life and stop whining about it. That's all I have to say about pets. Ok, I'll say more about pets. I choose not to have pets for actual health reasons. I'm not against pets. I grew up with lots of pets. Keep in mind, though, that pets can have a very big impact on the control you have over your health, and that breathing is your body's number one priority. If you are having difficulty breathing, use inhalers, are on oxygen, etc, you need to go the extra steps keeping your pets brushed (even vacuumed) daily, or at least do a quick wipe down over their fur with a damp cloth when they come back in the house. You can't see it, but that wet cloth will pick up most of the pollen coming in, then just toss it into the washer for the next load. Believe me, that will help a LOT. By the way, don't save and reuse a damp cloth (or towel for big pets), it's kind of like spreading stuff from the cloth (which dries out and poofs dust) back onto the pet. It's not that big a deal to wash a bunch of cloths after one time use. You spend way more money on pet supplies than you do on laundry soap and water, and you're washing stuff anyway.
And if you're still really miserable, like I was one really super bad year to the point of salivary gland infections (those suck so bad) and one nasty ear infection after another, not to mention the sinus infections and bronchitis, you can make a plan to prioritize your spending and 1- shampoo your carpeting, and 2- buy a new couch that is NOT cloth covered. Seems expensive, but then so is moving to another state to breathe easier, which people have been known to do. I will totally vouch for throwing out an old couch working as well as anything I've ever done. Also doesn't hurt to change out your pillows and maybe even an old mattress.
If you are one of the unlucky miserable ragweed sufferers, now is the time to start planning for next year. Get your goals in order, make a plan, and execute step by step. This really works. I was on daily inhaled steroid through most of 2010. I barely touch an inhaler nowadays.
You know you obsess about minecraft when you wake up from a 3-hour #napclub dream that includes looking up a help page on how to make the latest fashion design from the #safari16 collection, and I had decided I like the 'diamond dust' white and sky blue striated blouse, which requires 4 blocks of white wool (you can get other colors of wool on Mo Creatures) around a diamond. And then the dream continued onward and I found myself thumbing through memes, and there was this funny one I had to grab about #Oreprah...
Srsly, guys.
Finally caught up with Riv, who was changing all the signs in the shop. I think if we have a shop on the new server we should start out silly. I really like this. You might run across an old sign here or there, before everything went on sale for a penny.
If you're a minecrafter, see if you can figure out what you'd be buying in this warp store. If you're not a minecrafter, there are over 30 pix here, just scroll real fast to the next day and then cue the music.
Totally dig the feral grandmothers, lol.
Caught this in the middle of conversion.
My fave.
We had a slave trade going, sold villagers.
~Today~
Remember my realization yesterday that my pain spikes might be histamine spike related? Imagine my validation when I looked up the actual pollen count in our area.
I had also been concerned about several different weird 'dizzy' rushes last couple days and was trying not to think everything bad about nerve disorder causes when it hit me it was probably just sinus infection and/or super fluid filled ears. I'm so used to the ridiculous amounts of pain I'm having that I could be experiencing a raging ear infection and never even know it. Oh, you know, ice picks stabbing through my ears into my brain happen all the time, no big deal... Hey, who ate the last brownie?
Back to watching blood pressure because I've been taking my pain med lots more in the last couple of weeks. Mobic is notorious for pumping up blood pressure, and I used to take it only 2-3 days a week, and lately it's 3-4 days in a row and then a day off. Yesterday morning was 150/89, so I made sure to skip it, and this morning I'm at 128/82, yay! I may have to take one today, but I'm going to try to get away with skipping tomorrow and get back to my every other day thing. It's just ragweed sex, just look away and keep minecrafting...
I live in the heart of International Ragweed Productions. People looking up Native American history around here are always surprised to find there really weren't that many people around this particular area through history, and I'd lay odds it had a lot to do with allergy season being nearly unlivable here. I know so many people doing the allergy shots, living on handfuls of antihistamines, wading through the crud turning into pneumonia every single ragweed season, and some people go through nasty anxiety spikes on top of all that, well, their poor bodies are revving engines pumping adrenaline and stuff up to keep powering through this onslaught of alien sex invasion. Here you go, my other ragweed posts from years past. I was more fun and entertaining back then out of sheer need for distraction because I didn't have minecraft to hide in.
