allergy season

I took an allergy test two years ago due to a cough that never ended (it was bronchitis), but somehow the results weren’t communicated as well as I’d hoped, and I left the next day vaguely understanding that I was allergic to “some tree.” And bereft some lump sum of money from the test.

Well, that “some tree” is apparently very alive and thriving and ABUNDANT, because last week one morning, I felt like tiny little dwarves were simultaneously mining and tickling my sinus cavities while singing an aggressive version of Heigh-Ho. I frantically searched up “allergens, Baltimore/allergy forecast/trees Baltimore,” while texting all my friends at the same time to see if they had available allergy medication. Since most of their allergies are related to actual flower pollen, not weird tree spores, almost all replied with no, sorry, not that time of year yet. Luckily, one of them did (thank you, Grace!), and I gulped down the gigantic Claritin pill in the middle of my physics class just as I started to look — and feel —  like Ebenezer Scrooge.

I also remember that time I took Zyrtec last year, and I was as-if-I-had-been-pumped-with-horse-tranquilizer-drowsy.  We were going to Flour Bakery Joanne Chang, adopt me as your apprentice, please, and I had been looking forward to that trip for months. Months! But the entire time I felt like I was swimming underwater, and I was so angry at not being able to revel in the food but I couldn’t even be properly mad because I was so off-kilter. When I grew up, I didn’t feel exactly “allergic” to anything, because I didn’t carry around an Epi-Pen and I could eat peanuts and shellfish and didn’t break out into hives but pollen is just … not enough to make you keel over and die, but way more than enough to make you impaired. (I think there might be some dust allergy there too. If only I knew what my test results were.)

In short, the moral of the story is to not leave the doctor’s office confused.

We had a model come into our class, and we drew his face with red, black and white conte. I originally started with just red, but adding another colour really changes the value scale (!). I probably will fix this later.