Oh, humidity!
Go back from whence you came
Take this sinus pain
July 24, 2015
Category: Out of Spoons
Renaissance Faire
This is me with a Peregrine Falcon. I had to take my hat off in order to have this photo taken – because the bird wanted to play with a string on my hat.
The Renaissance Faire was so much fun!
I have severe allergies and other health issues. So, here’s what I had to do in order to be able to attend this event:
June Gloom
June was not an easy month for me. I have a tendency to write haiku of frustration on Twitter when something is annoying me. In June, once again, most of my haiku were about my bad health. I keep struggling, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to change that.
I’ve always been sick with severe allergies, but 2015 has been the worst year so far. I’m not ready to accept this very limited state of being as my “new normal”, and my haiku reflect it.
Dandelion Monster
The photo at the top of this blog is of the “Dandelion Monster”. It was growing out of a planter that held a rose bush and that was located in the neighbor’s space. Homes sit rather close together in this mobile home park, and what started out as a little dandelion was able to grow into the monster you see in the photo.
I can’t really blame the neighbors for letting the Dandelion Monster edge closer, and closer, to my window. They are in the process of moving in. Shawn was able to slay the Dandelion Monster before it overtook our home, so everything turned out ok.
Allergy Agony
There are times when my allergies are bothering me, and I don’t mention it (or write about it). There are also times when my severe allergies / chronic illness becomes overwhelming. I’m struggling to cope with the worst allergy season I’ve experienced in years and it is draining the life out of me.
Spring arrived here in sunny California in the middle of February. The pollen count started hitting 7 around then. A pollen count of 7 is considered “medium-high”, but it is enough to make me very sick. Since then, I’ve been dealing with pollen counts of 8, 9, and 10.
Fighting With Flowers
Years ago, I started expressing my frustration in the form of haiku. It was a coping mechanism for when I worked in “retail hell”. Later, I discovered that Twitter is an excellent place to post haiku (especially after Twitter added line breaks). If you’re going to complain online, you may as well find a creative way to do it.
February turned out to be an unexpectedly difficult month from a physical health standpoint. Spring has started here in sunny California, and all the little flowers are spewing pollen into the air as hard as they can. The pollen count has been “medium-high” for days in a row, and that is high enough to make me sick.
Measles Outbreak – Just the Facts
You may have noticed that a lot of the people whom you are connected to through social media have started talking about measles. This is not entirely unexpected, considering that there is measles outbreak happening in the United States (as well as several other countries). Measles is a topic that people tend to have very strong feelings about. As a result, the information you’ve come across online could be a mixture of facts, emotional outbursts, and misinformation.
The internet is an excellent resource for finding information about a specific topic. Unfortunately, the very nature of the internet also makes it extremely easy for people to pass around misinformation (often without the person realizing that the information is incorrect).
The facts end up scattered across the internet, on a bunch of different websites, that are not directly connected to each other. In this blog, I will provide the facts about measles and the MMR vaccine (from credible sources). I will also update the blog with new information about confirmed cases. My goal is to have a “one-stop” resource for people who are seeking facts about the measles outbreak.
Benadryl for Breakfast
There was a time when I posted random haiku about my day on my Twitter account. Each month, I gathered up those haiku and stuck them together in a post on my old blog. What you see here is a diary of what my health was like in January of 2015.
Chronic Illness Inspired Haiku from 2014
There was a time when I filled my Twitter account with haiku poetry. Some of those haiku made it onto my old blog, in monthly installments of random poetry about whatever was on my mind.
In 2014, I wrote a lot of haiku about being sick and struggling to recover from whatever was making me sick. It seemed more than appropriate to move those haiku over here. Consider this a “snapshot” of what that year was like for me.
It’s Not Just Celiac Disease!
There’s been a bunch of news articles and blogs posted that state that unless you have celiac disease you cannot possibly be harmed by foods that contain gluten. This concept is factually incorrect and completely irresponsible to spread around.
It’s time for people who are not scientists, who are not doctors specializing in allergies and/or auto-immune diseases, and who have no physical issues with food themselves, to stop writing insensitive blogs that suggest that people who can’t digest gluten are lying about it. It is dangerous to spread false information about food allergies. Your misinformed words could wind up making someone severely sick.
Continue Reading “It’s Not Just Celiac Disease!”