Today I met my new allergist.  He is very hilarious.  Apparently he also does comedy.  And he went to high school with Woody Allen, now making me TWO degrees from Woody!  Woo!

In addition to my usual allergies, he tested me for food allergies.  I had never been tested for those.  Apparently I am minorly allergic to shellfish.  This is so minor he said I can go on eating it, which is good because shellfish is definitely in my top 5 favorite things to eat.  The food I am most allergic to, tho again, not seriously enough to give up, is canteloupe.

Canteloupe is, to my mind, one of the worst foods ever.  I cannot imagine why people like this fruit.  I have always found it repulsive.  In fact, recently, I tried some in an effort to see if I still find it disgusting.  Oh, and I do.  That whole canteloupe and proscuttio thing?  What a good way to ruin ham.

So I would think it was this allergy that has made me hate canteloupe my whole life, but I love the shellfish so much.  It’s interesting that it happened on foods I have such diametrically opposed feelings about.

Other than that, my trip was mainly (though not wholly) painless.  And I was rightly chastised for going without asthma meds for so long.  And for being a librarian.  Although the allergist did salute my choice to be a digital librarian and not deal with dusty books.  Finally, he thought I was mainly allergic to Illinois and applauded my move. And then he said he’d be my dope pusher.  No, literally, that’s what’s he said.
So I am back on the shots!

I have had allergies for about 16 years now.  There are some great medicines OTC now, but when I was in high school, pseudoephedrine and Benadryl was pretty much all there was.  Both of these can be deadly when drinking, so they kept me off the sauce through high school.  However, I bought about a pack a week of pseudoephedrine which made my face not run uncotrollably, made day to day living bearable, and allowed me to spend a little time at houses with animals without falling asleep.  Benadryl would allow me to do all these things, but usually it would also result in me falling asleep on the closest couch.

Now though there are great non-drowsy antihistamines, and, as such I have not bought pseudoephedrine in years.  Due to not being able to take antihistamines though for the next couple of days (at the request of my allergist), I ran to the pseudoephedrine.  And buying it was like I was trying to get a gun or something.  I was looked at shadily, asked for ID, and I had to give my address.  While I understand meth is bad and all, this is a pretty ridiculous procedure for buying ONE pack of pseudoephedrine.

And it made me realize that the OTC allergy meds that kept me a non-drinker in high school would now be ILLEGAL for me to buy underage.  What a pain that would have been, to not be able to buy allergy medicine when my parents weren’t around.  I honestly would have had to get older kids to buy it for me, or suffer in snotty misery.  Funny that by making a useful, non-recreational drug illegal for underage kids, you could drive them to illegal recreational drugs.  Go war on drugs, go!

My mom’s advice to any of you looking for apartments with roommates in cities:

“Look around for pipes.  I don’t know what they look like, but I don’t want you getting wrapped up in the dope!”

Because surely, city life is a more dope-centric population than the liberal arts college in Oregon that rhymes with WEED.