HR Puffin-up

I went to visit a friend who moved to Texas over the weekend. She's a city girl, but has found herself out at the edge of Hill Country. She's got a cute house on a small place (2.5 acres is small to tiny in that part of the world) out in the hills. Really a gorgeous area.

A gorgeous area covered with mountain cedar. I am so allergic to mountain cedar I can't even tell you. Usually, in Dallas, we just get some of the mountain cedar blowing in from the south when there's warm weather in the late summer/early fall. And I'll get a little scratchy throat-itchy eyes-snotty sinus action. But out in the Hill Country, it was the difference between sticking your big toe in the pool, or doing a canon ball. And down there, I was in way over my head. Zyrtec helps, but it's no match for the full on for

So, I'm sitting around the kitchen table with my friend and her family. We're having this really nice conversation, just catching up on everything that's happened in the last 8 years, and I can feel my entire head just grinding to a halt. My sinuses are blowing up like car airbags. Bloof! And, okay sorry this is gross, but there is all this "fluid" up there that's trying to get out past my swollen nasal cavity. And it's just building and building. Then all the sudden there's a breach, and I've got snot running out of my nose like I'm 3 or something. Really cool. And a such an attractive quality in a house guest. So, of course, my ability to hold up my end of the conversation goes down to about nothing. Because all I'm able to think about is whether there's going to be a bio-flash flood pouring out of my face in the next two seconds.

I'm back home, and still recovering. Ugh. What a day.