I find this boring, but maybe you won’t

I’ve decided I’m allergic to everything and listen, we people with allergies have had a rough couple of years. You sneeze, you get side eye. You cough, side eye. I AM NOT SICK.

What allergy medicine do you guys like? I take Claritin and as far as I can tell it does little to nothing. Holly takes Xyzal, but it has a drowsiness warning and I can’t be having that. Also it is one million dollars. I mean, Benadryl is the King of the Antihistamines but damn. Coma.

I never even knew Holly had allergies until one day when she was in high school, she got her third cold in three months and we started keeping track and she was getting 1-2 colds a month and I was like THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU. I mean, sure, toddlers and such get colds all the damn time, but by the time you’re a near-adult you should be down to 1-2 a year, right? Aside: I haven’t had a cold in 2 years. I will be wearing a mask forever and ever. Anyway, a nurse practitioner at the urgent care suggested an immunologist so we made an appointment.

The immunologist took some blood and looked at it immediately, which is the damnedest thing I’ve ever experienced, unless you’re half-dead in the ER. She came back and said, “I don’t see any auto immune markers, but I do see an awful lot of cells that occur with allergies.” I do not know what cells those are so don’t ask me, but anyways she asked, “Do you have time to do a scratch test?” And we were both VERY MUCH IN FAVOR because we are both hypochondriacs and lovvvve tests. She did the tests and Holly is allergic to fucking everything. Trees, grass, mold, basically everything outside. The doctor told us something interesting. She said that people with untreated allergies get colds more often because their noses are always mucus-y and warm and moist (AUGH I APOLOGIZE FOR USING THE MOST HATED WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE) and so viruses love it in there and hang around. So anyway she started taking Xyzal and her cold occurrences reduced dramatically. She still gets more colds than normal people, and she managed to get strep throat TWICE while wearing masks and social distancing, but she is much better. So treat your allergies! I will treat mine! We’re in this together!

I feel really rotten these last few days. I am at the actual office today and I did some work and then I looked at the clock and saw that it was only 9:55 am and I literally felt like someone died. I put my head in my hands and sighed, “How can it only be 9:55? How?” I mean, sure we all say stuff like that, but do we all feel grief, like you’ll never recover? I am sick of feeling like this. Bleh.

I have thought of, like, retiring, or going to a part time job or something, but the thing is, if I stay home I won’t hang my head when it’s 9:55 but I’ll sleep every day and never shower and watch tv and play games on my iPad. And let the fucking dogs out.

Hm. It sounds like I have major depression doesn’t it? So what else is new? The worst kind of depression is the one where you feel AWFUL but you absolutely don’t want to die, so you slog your way around and feel happy about twice a year. FUN!

I’ve decided to take a pickleball lesson. One of the ladies I work with plays pickleball and loves it and unfortunately exercise is the ONLY thing that makes me feel better, but it only lasts about five hours after the exercising event, so I guess I’ll see if I can play pickleball with other old people. My Pilates studio is lousy with old people, and since I am about 6 months away from being 60, OLD PEOPLE SPORTS ARE FOR ME!!

The way I got into Pilates: my therapist decided to do it after she got (and still has) Long Covid. She’s young, so she had been doing something else, but Pilates is the ultimate low-to-no impact exercise and it helps with balance. Anyway, Long Covid has not affected her ability to harangue and nag, so after literally 6 months of her asking me if I’d gone to Pilates yet, I broke down and signed up. I hate it, of course, but afterward I feel pretty good. I have learned many things about my body through it and those things are:

I use my lower back for everything. If I pick up a penny off the dining room table, I put my back into it like I’m picking up 50 pounds of cat litter. I also keep my shoulders up around my ears at all times. Just in case I have an emergent need to shrug, I guess. I also apparently have no muscles whatsoever in my “core” or “abs” or whatever it takes to do one (1) sit up. I can’t do it. Not even one. Not even if I throw my back into it. There are little old ladies there that can do a flawless sit up and I’m just lying there grunting until I finally hook my feet under my foot bar and grab the backs of my knees and haul my weak ass up.

But at least I do something, right? That’s what everyone says and I make barfing noises, but I do want to take care of myself at least better than my dad did. He got diabetes and let it run rampant (I don’t have diabetes, but I’m just saying) and he got an enlarged prostate and ignored it until it got so bad that the consequences were very awkward and embarrassing and really ruined his pride and his level of activity. They tried to remove it but by that time he was frail and they couldn’t keep him under anesthesia long enough to get it all. He had something wrong with his back, and went and got those dumb epidural shots, but then never followed up when the pain came back. He developed a tremor in one of his hands and just accepted his doctor’s word that it was nothing to worry about. I refuse to be that way, but actually I will probably never be that way because I love going to doctors.

Okay, I guess this is kind of boring but what else you gotta read today?

4 comments

  1. I take generic zyrtec for generic allergies year round. In the spring and early summer when they are worst I take 1 in the morning and 1 in the evening. It is supposed to be once a day but when it’s bad I take it twice. It helps. I didn’t like claritin either. I think you’re supposed to start pickleball with your husband and then your husband quits. At least that’s what I’ve heard 😉

  2. Wow, it’s Jane! I have no idea why you popped into my head yesterday but you did, and lo and behold you’ve been blogging. I still have your site in my feed reader (does anyone else even use RSS feeds anymore?), but it’s not updating. I’ve been reading you since DamnHell AssKings days but I don’t remember if I was ever a commenter. I can’t remember you bringing up having ADHD before but maybe I wouldn’t have thought anything of it at the time; I just got diagnosed myself in 2020. We do tend to love the internet. I have similar concerns about what I’d do with myself in retirement, but that’s a problem for another decade. Welcome back!

  3. I need to google this Pickleball. I ordered resistance bands last summer (DO NOT START WITH ME) and every weekend I say I’m going to start … and we’re going on about seven months now.

    I get horrid allergies about once every five, seven I DON’T KNOW maybe ten years and am always baffled. The rest of the time I’m perfectly fine so I have no idea why I’m suddenly miserable come early Spring. Then the light bulb goes on and I load up on generic whatever. Hey! I’m cheap!

    1. Girrrrl I buy generic allergy meds too, I just don’t know the generic names. If it’s not off-patent then it can go fuck itself.

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