Darkoshi

As someone else wrote, Spring sprung! Spring sprung! Spring sprung a rung a rung!

Asteroid!
Small asteroid to sweep closer than moon’s distance. It was at its closest a few hours ago. I tried to find out where in the sky it would be, and if it's visible to the naked eye or not, but couldn't find any mention of that. The sky is rather hazy here tonight; can only see the brightest stars anyway.

I've got a boom boom drum. Got it for my birthday a while back. It goes Boom! Boom! Boom boom boom boom...

Last week on the way to work, while stopped at a stoplight, it was breezy and I saw a cloud of yellow pollen pluming outward from the pine trees up ahead. I'm glad pollen doesn't bother me.

Baby got a cold. I accidentally poured the cold "medicine" down the drain, thinking it was water in the bottle (too thin and clear for cold syrup), already rinsed out. Then I saw that it was labelled as a homeopathic brew, and realized my likely mistake. Ooops. I told the niece about my mistake, and also about how homeopathic items aren't proven to work and are diluted and wacky. I probably could have worded it better, but that's how my spur of the moment verbal skills are.

I checked the cold syrups in my medicine cabinet, but all were labelled as not for infant use. Checking online, I read that it's not recommended to give babies any cold medicines. Maybe that's why the niece had bought something homeopathic; maybe that's the only thing available marked as safe for babies. (Because it's basically water!)

Driving to work, I continued feeling slightly bad, thinking the niece would suspect I poured it down the drain on purpose. I decided to stop by the store on the way home to get some replacement, even if the only thing I could find was another homeopathic one. But I did find some non-homeopathic remedies (though I'm not sure that one is really any more effective); they even had ibuprofen drops labelled for infants.

Spring a ding ding.

Grey's Anatomy had a genderqueer character on tonight's show, using the "they" pronouns. I was watching it with Qiao, and was inwardly pleased (they're like me!), yet didn't feel like saying anything out loud about it to Qiao. I wondered if Qiao even remembers that I don't identify as female. What difference does it make, sigh. I have a boom boom drum.

Boom a doom doom.

I spoke to my regular dentist, who thinks the problem with my bite / occlusion may be due to the lateral pterygoid muscles having tensed up. Considering that I can't see any difference when comparing old photos of my teeth to how they look now, and how suddenly this problem came on, that seems reasonable. He prescribed me prescription strength ibuprofen - 800mg 4 times a day (which is the very max recommended amount for an adult), for one week. It may improve things by reducing any inflammation that may be present.

I was afraid that the Rx pills would be too large for me to easily swallow, so I got the OTC ones instead which are 200mg each and small. So I've been taking 4 of those, 4 times a day.

I've been taking them since yesterday, and haven't noticed any difference so far. If anything, my jaw muscles feel more tense/sore, but I think that is from the dentist having pressed on them yesterday to see if I felt any soreness (I didn't yesterday). My shoulder muscles also feel tense now.

If it is tense muscles, maybe it is a side effect of not getting enough sleep. Though I'd have thought the problem would have gotten better during my vacation if that were the case.

Sudden-onset cold. I woke up this morning after 4 hours sleep, feeling a scratchiness in my throat, realized my head wasn't feeling so great either, and pretty much around then, my nose started running.

I was really feeling lousy at that point, but finally fell back asleep for a few more hours. That helped a lot, except for the runny nose. Hopefully this cold will go away as quickly as it arrived.

Usually when I start feeling the inklings of a sore throat, I start taking garlic and vitamin C pills. That way, it generally doesn't go beyond a scratchy throat. I haven't had a runny-nose type of cold in so long that I don't even remember which medication is best. If I recall, all the ones that clear up my nose also make me drowsy.

My mother was right about something. She'd been telling me about how wonderful "facial tissues with lotion" were, when you have a cold. I thought that meant that the tissues were damp, and that it was like rubbing lotion into your skin while using them. That didn't sound good to me. But she gave me 2 boxes anyway - this was a while back. It turns out to be dry tissue like normal, but feels smoother, with less friction. Definitely good to keep your nose from getting sore when you're blowing it all day.

Two other good things about this winter compared to previous years:

1. The skin on my hands has been much less dry and chapped. Probably largely due to the warm, wet weather we had up through the end of December. But I've also been using ShiKai "Borage Therapy" Dry Skin Lotion on my hands before bed when the skin is dry, and it really seems to help. Maybe there really is something special about the borage oil.

2. When I blow my nose, there's not been any dried blood in my snot so far this winter. Again, the warm, wet weather probably kept my nasal passages from drying out and cracking and bleeding like they usually do.

2017/04/29 Update:
As suggested in the comments, the Kleenex "Cool-Touch" tissues feel even better on a sore nose than the regular tissues with lotion do. They are my top choice now for that.
But, (note to myself) - don't get Puffs brand "Plus Lotion" tissues. I have a box of them, and they are fine for normal usage, but when I had a cold, they felt pretty rough on my nose, almost just like regular tissues.

Perhaps it is too early to be certain, but the butterbur capsules I've been taking for the last 2 weeks truly seem to be helping against my allergies. The "thick throat" feeling only happened the first day, and I haven't noticed any other side effects since then. I've been taking 2 a day (50 mg each, certified free of pyrrolizidine alkaloids), one in the morning and one in the evening. I still get a slightly runny nose occasionally, but since the first 2 days of taking the capsules, I haven't had what I call an "allergy attack". Even raking the yard only made my nose run a little bit.

I've been on vacation this last week. In these last few days, I've managed to sleep 8 or more hours per night, even after going to bed at 3am. So I am still capable of getting that much sleep, when given the right opportunity.

It's been so nice outside these last few days and nights that I feel I should be spending time outside enjoying it. If I were at the beach and the weather was nice like this, I'd be sitting outside on the balcony (or on the beach) just enjoying the breeze and sunshine.

But there's stuff indoors that I want to do, and I can't imagine just standing or sitting around outside doing nothing for more than a few minutes. This evening at least, I went outside to mow the grass.

I think I should get some kind of nice outdoor chair in which I could relax. Or maybe a nice swing-bench or swinging chair. Ah, a swinging chair sounds nice. But then it would get rained on. And not sure where I'd put it. If it had wheels, I could wheel it into the garage when I wasn't using it. Hmmm. How often will there be such good weather in conjunction with time off to enjoy it, to make having such a chair worth while? I suppose that after a few minutes of sitting in a comfortable chair outside, I'd still get antsy doing nothing.

I bought a toilet brush today. The price on the shelf said $6, which seemed quite expensive to me. But hey, the handle on my old one had broken, so I needed a new one. Whatcha gonna do? Later, when checking my receipt, I found that I had actually been charged $10 for that brush!

For that price, I expect the brush to take care of cleaning the toilet all on its own-some from now on.

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Last week I came down with a stomach bug. I was so sick the first day, that I didn't even turn on my computer. I didn't even brush my teeth! I felt better after a couple of days, but I've had headaches every day since then. Not sure if it is still due to the virus, or to allergies. I tried Tylenol one day, and Naproxen the next, and neither helped.

So today, I also bought a bottle of Ibuprofen, and Excedrin-type tablets, to see how well they work.

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Wonderful spring weather this week, with blossoms and yellow pollen.

It seems there isn't any marketed drug that specifically relieves a runny nose due to a cold, without potentially making one drowsy. Or is there?

Even more preferable, I'd like one that works for runny noses due to both colds and allergies, in case one isn't sure what the runny nose is due to. The one that I tried in the past against allergies didn't work for a cold.

Sometimes when something does not make sense, I ponder it for a while, and then, not coming to a solution, I stop thinking about it and eventually forget about it. I wonder how often this happens.

Yesterday Q forwarded me an email, actually a joke written as if it were a real story, about an atheist. It was not a funny joke, and was basically implying that atheists are fools. I pondered for a while, as to why he would send me that email. He knows I am agnostic. Or at least, I was pretty sure he did... doesn't he know that agnostics aren't that different from atheists? Or did it really not occur to him that the email could seem offensive to a non-Christian? Anyway, after thinking about it for a few moments, I closed the email and, not having come to an explanation, stopped thinking about it.

Today though, after seeing it still in my inbox, I decided to reply to it, and so I did. I guess part of it, is that today I have time to do so, and yesterday, I did not. But it might also be related to hormones making me feel more argumentative, as it is pre-blood week.

Yesterday and today, I've also noticed myself being annoyingly indecisive. This seems related to hormones too. I can't say how long I spent in the pharmacy store yesterday, first browsing for an acceptable pseudo-ephedrine-containing decongestant, then browsing the cards, and then trying to decide which 2-for-$10 sweat-shirts I wanted to get for myself (which colors, which size, which style). I felt embarrassed at the thought of anyone watching me take so long to decide which things to get.

Today, it took me a long time to decide whether or not to wash the bed-sheets.

It seems odd how hormones could make me indecisive.... or is it not the indecision which is unusual, but my annoyance at the indecision? Perhaps I am always this slow, but it does not normally bother me?

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While I had that cold, I determined that phenylephrine did not seem to clear up my congestion at all. That's why I was shopping for pseudo-ephedrine, so that I'll have it on hand next time. They no longer have the pseudo-ephedrine products out on the regular shelves, so I was browsing the little cards they have on the shelves instead. The cards show the same info as the actual product labels.

When I got to the check-out, I handed the cashier the 2 cards I had selected. It turns out one of them was out of stock. The other one, a children's cold syrup (I prefer sugar syrups to the artificial sweeteners which are in the adult syrups), was available, and the cashier held the bottle in his hands for several moments, turning it and seeming to study the label. That struck me as odd. I was embarrassed at how long it took me to choose my items, and then I felt uncomfortable too at the checkout, wondering if the cashier suspected me of buying the pseudo-ephedrine in order to make illegal drugs.

I seem to have gotten sick. It is interesting how within a small amount of time after taking some cough syrup, I went from being overly cold even with the radiator on high and 3 blankets over me, to being overly warm.

I don't think I really needed the antihistamine and decongestant parts of the cough syrup, but I needed the acetaminophen against my sore throat and headache, and I didn't want to swallow pills which might stick in my throat. I wonder which ingredient did the neat warming me up trick.