Payback is a Sinuses Infected Psycho

A few nights ago, my allergies kicked into Super Nova action, causing my sinuses to become Super Inflamed and Agitated, joined by their good friends,  Sore Throat and Head Pressure.  Both nostrils are completely swollen shut and only peek open to let a flood of mucus come rushing out of my nose like Niagara Falls and then they slam shut again.  Major red itchy eyes and the sweet cough and pressure join in, and make my eyes feel like they are going to burst out of my face and implant themselves in the drywall across from where I am sitting.  Yeah, that’s the stuff.

Two nights ago I woke up and thought “How awesome, my nose was running like a purse snatcher in my sleep”.  So I staggered out of bed and went to the bathroom, flipping on the closet light as I passed to prevent a midnight trip to the ER.  I put the lid down on the toilet, plopped myself down and began unrolling paper to blow my nose.  It was pretty dark in the bathroom, and I am a zombie at night, so I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary until I was thumping my way back to bed when I happened to glance in the mirror next to the closet door and gasped so hard I swallowed some of my hair, gag.  My nose wasn’t running, it was bleeding.  Sweet!  I looked like an extra from Freddy vs. Jason!  I had blown my nose so much that I was probably lucky to have not bled to death!  

Okay, so that was unpleasant to behold and I haven’t had a nose bleed since I gave up on Flonase many years ago, so it was just mostly inconvenient and unsettling, not really a huge deal.  I washed my face and hands and the bleeding stopped on its own.  I’m sure it helped that I stopped trying to leach myself to death by blowing my nose unmercifully.   I went back to bed and there were no more bleeds. 

Fast forward to today.  Sinuses have been more than dissatisfactory over the last two days, to put it mildly.  Irritated, swollen, burning and just plain miserable.  I have sniffled and blown my nose so much I’m positive my co-workers, family and any complete strangers I have come into contact with in the last week, wish me serious harm.

So…. Here comes the fun part where my Super Helpie Helperson Husband comes to my rescue.  He’s special like that.  I’m sitting in bed this evening and I lean over to him and say “Mark, could you be a dear and go to the kitchen and get me a mixing bowl to hold under my nose while I sleep”.   Well, I am OF COURSE being facetious, duh, but my dear spouse says “Okay”.  Sigh.  So after assuring him that I was not serious, he says in his super helpie way “Hey, why don’t you try some of this stuff I use to unclog my sinuses”?    I see Mark use this nose spray all the time so I know he’s not giving me something he wouldn’t use, and after all, it’s been a pretty terrible sinus week so what the heck do I have to lose, right?  WRONG.  I’m pretty stinking sure that Mark must have bought this stuff from some black market stall in Thailand from the guy who wouldn’t sell Gizmo to Billy Peltzer’s dad, because when I squirted a tiny bit of this mystery substance up my unsuspecting clogged nostril,

 I was certain that it actually contained battery acid.  I immediately dropped the bottle back into my darling husband’s hand and declined to spray the second nostril.  By this time I was seeing stars, but I thought surely this is only a temporary burning and it will subside soon and then I’ll be feeling aces in no time.  So I sat on the bed with tears streaming down my face, waiting as patiently as I possibly could for the pain to subside.  After about two minutes I burst out “OH MY DEAR BABY JESUS, WHAT THE HELL WAS IN THAT STUFF? Bleach?  Ammonia?  Ground up Habanero seeds and Hydrochloric Acid????  What’s the freaking VOC count of that stuff???  Is it legal in the US?  Is it secret military experimental waste?  What black market stall in hell did you get that stuff from?????”  

Mark looked at me like I was sprouting a tiny extra arm from my forehead and said “Is it burning?  It doesn’t burn me”.  Oh well that’s just freaking super. 

“NO DEAR, I’M JUST BEING DRAMATIC!  I DON’T FEEL LIKE MY NOSE IS MELTING OFF MY FACE!  MY LIPS ARE NOT NUMB!  I ALWAYS SEE STARS SWIRLING IN FRONT OF MY EYES AT BED TIME AND THESE TEARS?  THEY ARE TEARS OF UTTER JOY THAT I CAN  BREATHE THROUGH ONE SIDE OF MY NOSE!  I JUST DON’T FREAKING WANT TO NOW!!!!  BECAUSE BREATHING FEELS LIKE SOMEONE PUMPED GASOLINE UP THERE AND LIT A BARBEQUE LIGHTER UNDER IT!   OF COURSE IT’S BURNING!!!!”

I leapt out of bed and ran to the kitchen medicine cabinet where I dug around frantically for my Neti Pot, in hopes I could rinse this inferno out of my sinus cavity.  I finally found it buried behind a ton of SINUS and ALLERGY MEDICINE.  I ran the water until it got hot and filled the pot and added the salt solution as quickly as I could with my shaky hands, and began to rinse the side that I didn’t use the spray in first.  It didn’t help.  In fact, the salt seemed to give the lava spray a little boost of super unnecessary energy.  I dumped the water out and filled it with plain water, but in my tear soaked, addlebrained hurry I turned the water all the way to the hot side and filled it.  I’m not even going to go into what I said when I poured scalding hot water into my nostril, where the flames of hell could not even hope to compete, but I’m sure somewhere in Rome, a cloister of nuns fainted.  I dumped that water out and refilled with warm water.  This time I began on the side that I didn’t spray.  Why?  That is a very good question, because that decision led to the remnants of the death spray trickling into the so far, spray free nostril and if you’ve ever used a Neti Pot, you know that some of the water trickles out of your mouth as well…..  yeah.  So now, my entire face and throat has all the heat and power of Mount Vesuvius flowing through it.  I continued to rinse my nose and mouth with warm water for another 15 minutes.  Finally, I had gotten enough of the vile chemical out of my nose that I was somewhat calm.  I blew my nose for another 5 minutes which, surprise surprise, caused another nose bleed. I was actually very surprised that melted and blackened bits of my brain didn’t come out, so I was okay with the nose bleed at this point.  Happy Happy, Joy Joy. 

I made it back to the bedroom and crawled weakly into bed, only to roll over and see my darling helpful spouse, sleeping like a peaceful baby, next to my tear stained and bloody face. 

Then he suddenly jumped out of bed and said he was leaving forever, he wasn’t taking any of his stuff, tools, motorcycle, truck, nothing.   He also said no one should ever go looking for his body, I mean him,  and to never ever dig up the rose garden in the backyard.  Seriously.  That’s exactly what he said.  Oh, but you can bet he took that damn nose spray with him.  

Karma needs a day off ....

There are some days when as soon as you get up, there should be a giant flashing Karma warning directly in front of your bed. Mine would have gone off today. Got up and got a shower, woke James, got him in the shower. Everything was going well so far. Got both of us ready (including blow drying a ridiculous amount of hair, stick straight, which only took 20 minutes. Don't know why I bother, but I do it anyway. ) then headed to the kitchen to pack James's lunch and back pack. His lunch box and backpack are both sitting on the floor so I popped them up on top of the counter and stove top. I packed the lunchbox and shoved it down into the backpack. It's 6:35 in the morning so the fact that his backpack was hot just didn't get past my AM fog at that point but by the time I put his folder into his back pack, it was hot enough to get my attention. The stove burner was on and the backpack was resting on top of it. It burned the zipper pull right off and melted the plastic to my glass top burner. Isn't that awesome. I didn't really have time to properly analyze the OMG factor of my stove top being on at 6:35 am so I turned it off and continued about our morning routine, making a mental note to properly freak out about the fact that it could have been on all night at a more reasonable time of day.  We finished up our pre-work/school routine and headed out to the car.  Oh lookie lookie. Pea soup fog!  Why didn't I just leave my hair in the bride of Frankenstein style this morning instead of wasting precious pre dawn minutes styling it in a way that would take Mother Nature 12 seconds to completely rearrange into a light socket perm?  Oh well. Whatever. It's just hair. At least the house didn't burn down over night with us in it, right?  Right.  Priority check complete. Get in the car and James can't find his cell phone. Holy Crisis Hotline, Batman!  James can't go to school without his cell phone!  The earth with stop turning and gravity will cease to exist and all matter on earth with float off into the galaxy including us. So I call his cell phone from my phone and race back into the house to find it, narrowly escaping a devastating fall on uber smooth, now wet garage floor because fog happened. Im staggering around the dark  bumping into everything in the entire house, listening for his cell phone to ring. Nothing. I go back out to the garage and shout "is the ringer off on your phone"?  James is sitting in the car with the windows up protecting his do from Alfred Hitchcock quality fog so his response through the windshield is "huh"?  So I scream a little louder "is your dang ringer turned off"? Again through the windshield "what"?  I stomp back out to the car,  executing a perfect banana peel worthy slide on the wet garage floor, saving myself by grabbing at the motorcycle (knocking the side mirror cover off, gosh dang it ), and knock on the window hard enough to hurt my knuckles. James.... Opens the door (should have seen that coming) knocking into me and soaking my shirt with the wet door. "Oops, my bad". 

Ten, nine, eight, seven....  I don't have time to finish or we'll be late for school. "Where. Is. Your. Phone"?  "I found it in my pocket".  Six. Five. Four. Three two. One. We're all better off if I just finished the count down.  I finally get in the car, start it up and pull out of the driveway. I'm barely past my driveway when I hear ding ding ding. Crap on a cracker. I forgot I needed gas this morning. I had intended to leave early and stop on the way to school. Well, no time for that. I'll just have to run on fumes and prayers and I'll go get gas on my lunch break. We drive past Java Joe's and I decide that a nice Hot Chocolate will sooth my raw attitude this morning and if I hurry there is just enough to time to squeak through the drive thru and grab one. Except there are four people in line. I decided it was worth it and Java J is pretty quick anyhow.  I actually got my chocolate and somehow managed to get to work without running out of gas and with two whole minutes to spare. Score!  Things were looking up. Oh, well except for the fact that I was juggling too much stuff going into the school and spilled 1/2 of my scalding hot chocolate down my shirt and  directly between my tatas, soaking into my solid red shirt. First degree boob burns and dark brown stains running down my shirt, for the win please Alex. I managed to clock in and get James to his bus waiting for him in front of my school only for him to turn around just before boarding and saying in his best Tippy Hedren panic voice "Mom!!!!  I can't go to school!!!  I left my cell phone in the car".  I can't even be a psycho about this because both of my direct bosses (Principal and Asst. principal) are not just standing within ear shot, but are watching this exchange go down. As James stands in front of the school, I break all the rules by running in the hallways, past numerous students, to my car and retrieve his blasted phone. Phone delivered, kid on bus, bus gone. Breathe in, breathe out. I turn to head back to the teacher lounge to get my half a hot chocolate and purse and water.  The school day actually didn't go too badly except I tripped over a student and almost wiped out hard in the cafeteria at lunch, in front of 100 students and staff. Thank you Karma for sparing me that one humiliating fall, and I totally forgot to get gas at lunch. After school I went to the YMCA (on fumes and prayers again) to work out and wait for James. I had been wearing leggings all day. Nice stretchy comfy leggings. At the gym I changed into my nylon running shorts and hit the treadmill. It only took about 25 seconds to realize that the elastic waist band on my very old undies had long since given up the stretch. Apparently the only thing holding them up all day was my leggings. I spent 55 minutes on the treadmill (I'm no quitter) and I reached inside my running shorts no less that 42 times to pull my underwear back up over my rump.  I am certain that I provided a hefty amount of entertainment to the crowd of folks working out on the machines behind me.  

I'm seriously hoping Karma is exhausted tomorrow from all her stellar work today and stays home, in bed, all day!!!!