worldmegan

It’s actually just a little bit hard to write (or think) coherently when my sinuses are squirming to escape my head. Don’t I have a tasklist around here somewhere…?

Today I met again with Dave Jones of Austin Healing Herbs & Acupuncture at the AH!HA Clinic, a nom I desperately adore. We talked last week about my allergies and arthritis, having received a tip from Ragen that Dave was all that and could probably help me out. Ragen knows the awesomest people.

This week we meant to start acupuncture treatment, but a sinus infection stepped in early this morning so we decided to treat that first. I left Dave’s office with three paper bags full of fantastic-looking dried plants that smelled… like herbs! (Obviously.)

So, let me give you some background: Herbs excite me. The idea of treating myself with plant concoctions instead of chemicals with confusing, complicated origins gives me a thrill, and it’s probably just the thrill of experimenting on myself. But even so, when at my request Dave went down through the list of things he’d put into those little paper bags, and explained the effect each of them typically had, it was suddenly the best day I’d had in a week! (Maybe two weeks! Maybe more!) Because although I’m not learning in-depth about the application of traditional Chinese medicine, I am getting to brush shoulders with it. And for this reason, I have glee!

On my way home, I managed to squeeze enough energy out of my tired, illness-vexed body to pick up an herb pot from White Crane, plus a strainer and a juice container from Zinger on Anderson. The juice container turned out to be a mixed purchase—I’m not sure how useful it will be in this case, but oh well, we have another pitcher. That’s fine. The strainer—well, let’s just say that spaghetti dinners will be a hell of a lot easier now…

The herb pot is nuts, and by that I mean awesome. It’s very odd looking (being that I’ve never actually seen anything like it) but very neat to use. If I weren’t sick as a dog, I’d be showering you with pretty pictures of my new herbs and herbal accoutrements, but you’ll have to wait for me to feel better. My three bags of herbs are set to last me about five days, counting the batch I just made for the next 24 hours, so talk to me Monday. ;}

My apartment smells—Vixen concurred—a bit like a barn, minus the horse poo. Dry and boiled through, the herbs smell just like rolling around in a hayloft, and although the resulting tea is quite bitter and not what you would call tasty, the entire experience does give me strange deja va for riding days gone by. The last time I was on a horse… oh, six or seven years ago? But the smell of hay, it sticks with you, and you don’t stop loving it for lack of proximity. Of course, I have plenty of other reasons to love this experiment, but no harm enumerating the ones at hand. My head feels like crap, but I am having a ball!

I may or may not continue to update as the week goes on; I seem to recall that I left my tasklist on my desk, and I have some work to do…