Harper's Bazaar: August 2012

It’s that time of year. Animals are fornicating and plants are procreating and nature’s debauchery that is called spring is fucking with my allergies. Each year for a full six weeks I walk around wishing that gasmasks were in fashion and that I could wear one everywhere I go. But this would not be socially acceptable and would most probably freak people out, so I have to settle for antihistamines, a nose spray and eye drops. I now know how drug addicts must feel, instead of getting withdrawals if I don’t take my drugs I get blood shot eyes, sinus and persistent sneezing which I am convinced kills brain cells. Mother Nature can be such a bitch and this is why I hate spring.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that spring hails a farewell to winter, the fact that my garden seem to come alive with new flowers and that the dullness of winter is replaced with vibrant new greenery. I also love the sweet perfume of jasmine and purple rain that permeates the air in my garden and watching bees gorge themselves on pollen and nectar. But what I love about spring is also the things that literally make me feel like I want to die. You see I have severe allergies. The kind of allergies that could justify me being encased in a bubble filled with purified air and that is medically sterile. I am allergic to just about everything except cats. Ok, so I lie. I am a little allergic to cats too and we have five.

Spring is the one time of year that my medical aid must think that I am a total hypochondriac, with on average about 3-5 doctor visit during this time every year. You see when my allergies flare up it does so epically. I look and feel like death warmed up with eyes so red it looks like I partied hard the previous night and that I smoked a whole case load of marijuana. My voice goes and my nose start running like it’s preparing for a marathon. It also usually doesn’t stop there. Every year I get an eye infection which is referred to as chronic allergy related pinkeye and when I am really lucky I will also get an ear infection. This year I had both twice and spring is not even really in full swing yet.

In an effort to at least try and make our house on the inside tolerable for me I bought an air purifier. It’s a machine that sucks in air then takes out all the impurities such as dust and pollen and also kills any germs and bacteria that floats around and then blows out the clean air. You can also add special concentrated extracts into the water that smells nice and helps you to relax. I guess it is doing its job because neither hubby nor I have been sick since I bought it, but I suspect I need an industrial sized one to completely get rid of my allergies and make our house on the inside 100% pollen free. Things have gotten so bad that if you stand outside in the garden you can physically see the pollen floating around in the air and it is making my bronchi and corneas shit themselves.

When we were house hunting we had very specific requirements, one of them being that the property should have no grass. You see I am allergic to grass and we didn’t want to spend our weekends having to mow the lawn. Life is too short the waste it behind a lawnmower where as you could rather spend it with a cocktail in the pool. We also had a list of trees and plants, which we at that time, knew I was allergic too. So when we found our house it “semi” fit the bill and we then proceeded to address the “semi” part and did some renovations. The one thing we however neglected to research was some of the plants that were already in our garden and some of the trees and hedges of our neighbors. So came spring, that first year we lived in the house, and I was unpleasantly caught off guard and found myself to be a whimpering snot filled ruby red eyed hot mess. I was at ground zero of a pollen explosion of mammoth proportions. It was like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki of allergy and pollen hell, and I was trapped in the middle!

It’s embarrassing having to go to work looking like you washed your eyes out with acid, having sneezing attacks that last longer than 45 seconds and having been blessed by more people in one day than a visitor to Vatican City. It’s embarrassing having to stand nervously in line at the pharmacy looking like a meth addict waiting to get your allergy alleviating drugs. But I have no choice. I love our house and we still owe a shit load of money on the bond so we need to stay. It’s also not like I can tell my neighbors to cut down their trees and remove certain hedges just because I am seriously allergic to them. So, I do the only thing I can. For six weeks every year I curse Mother Nature and call her things that’s not becoming of a lady. But the bitch doesn’t listen and clearly she doesn’t care. If only rapid weight loss was also a side effect of severe allergies, maybe all this suffering would be worth something. But instead I have to diet AND suffer from allergies. Gawd I hate spring!

Till next time.

DELTONE!

Old School

XS Bobber

Buon Lunedì

Panic Attack!

It may come as a surprise to some people but I actually have a real job. You know the kind that pays the bills. Seeing as I have never made any money from blogging and probably never will, I do need something that can sustain my and hubby’s “lavish” lifestyle. But in the real world all is not always sunshine and roses and of late things have been rather (how should I put it) stressful in my work environment. The fact that I also had to visit the dentist once a week for the last three weeks and having had to get two filling and a root canal also did not contribute to alleviate my stress levels. All of this then also contributed to me having my first serious panic attack on Monday and it was not pretty. It was not pretty at all!

Those who know me well understand that August is never a good month for me. It seems that each year shit goes down in the month of August and bad things happen. Being a professional sailor down the river of denial, I usually ignore unpleasant things until it goes away (I have learned this skill from my cats, they are fucking good at it.) But denial can only work up to a point. You see even when I am under a fuck load of stress I usually have the ability to suppress it and I also don’t really ever get seriously angry about anything. I call this having excellent coping mechanisms and vodka. Unfortunately, the human body is a mean bitch and sometimes when you try and lie to yourself, particularly about stress, the bitch gives you a reality check and it’s normally not pleasant. And this is exactly what happened to me.

On Monday our new security company’s representative came to my office in order for me to sign some papers. I fired our previous security company and it’s a long story. While in this meeting all was going well up on to five minutes into it. As unexpectedly as a crack whore appearing in a dark alley it hit me. I started feeling woozy, my heart began beating rapidly, I could not breath, I started shaking like a Parkinson patient, sweating and I literally felt like I was going to die. All this in front of a complete stranger who sat there looking at me horrified. I was having a full blown panic attack and I was desperately trying to keep things together and look normal. “Are you ok?” the guy asked me looking all concerned. “Yes… I am fine” I lied. After about three minutes I realized there was no use trying to fight the panic attack and I eventually said “I’m having a panic attack, I need a few minutes. Don’t judge me!”

The panic attack lasted a good ten minutes and it was terrifying. Having one in the privacy of your own office, house or car is fine, but having one in front of a complete stranger in the voyeur of your office with people walking past rates right up there on the embarrassment scale with shitting your own pants. So, I phoned my doctor and scheduled an appointment. This guy has been my on-and-off physician for well over ten years and he knows me and some of my embarrassing medical issues well, and I trust him. Sitting in his consulting room I remember thinking “What. The. Fuck?! I have worked undercover where I almost got killed and I didn’t have panic attacks then. Why the hell is this happening to me now?!” The doctor then proceed to explain that if you suppress stress for too long eventually your body will rebel and it does this normally by stomach ulcers and panic attacks. With my blood pressure having been 173/135 I could have had a heart attack. Or like I like to call it - a myocardial infarction due to bullshit overload.

The doctor proceeded to tell me that having panic attacks while under extreme stress is nothing to be ashamed off and he prescribed me some “happy” and “don’t give a fuck” pills. So the next day I was as chilled out as a stoner at a Bob Marley concert. It was nice working at the office all mellowed out, having the world seem like I was a couple seconds behind it and driving to work thinking that all taxi drivers are such great drivers. But, unfortunately my little piece of medicated nirvana was not to last long. Timing is everything and never let anyone tell you any different. This counts for both good and bad things. You see after what can be described as a rather uneventful day I arrived home and went about my normal routine of being a domestic diva. I fed the cats and tortoise, began with the laundry and prepared dinner. Then it happened, some asshole on Facebook told me that I should slit my wrists.

Being quite use to receiving hate mail I am not normally too phased by it. Mostly they have strong religious undertones to them, tell me that I am going to hell and even that they wish that I would get AIDS and die. Surprisingly, I have also received my fair share of hate mails from disgruntled queer folks, so I really thought that I have seen it all. I was wrong. This fucktard took hate mail to a whole other level. This sad queen wrote I should slit my wrists, or if I don’t want to do that he will give me a toaster to throw into my bath because he would love to see me drown in my own piss and shit. How fucked up must one person be to say or write something like that to another person? Suicide is no fucking laughing matter and if this is the type of fantasies this guy is having there must be something seriously wrong in his pathetic little head. It really upset me and this psycho’s timing really sucked. All I have to say to that man is FUCK YOU! (Clearly my happy pills are not strong enough to deal with certain fuckwads)

As that was not enough, today I am going for my second round of my root canal and this time around I am less panicked about it than the first time around. My dentist did a fantastic job the previous time and I know I am in excellent hands. But that being said this week have sucked donkey balls. Starting my week off with a panic attack and then receiving the most disturbing hate mail to date, I can honestly say this has been the worst week of this whole year. But, fortunately there’s medication for that and it is fabulous. I know this is not a permanent solution but for the interim this will have to do. Bitch be chilled.

Till next time.