Allergens

I never really had a problem with milk.

When I was in high school it was this big thing—careful about milk, careful about chocolate, it’ll gum you up and inphleminate you and everything will just suck, don’t do it, not worth it, keep it away. A lot of fuss. And the theater teacher, she said, she never had a problem with it either. And the most exciting, fabulous thing I could think of then was to scarf a couple bites of chocolate before singing, as long as there was a mirror handy because chocolate on my face? Not cool for performances. And this was never a big deal.

Of course, later on I discovered the beauty of green grapes, but milk-related items still aren’t a big deal for me. You know what is a big deal for me?

Allergies.

And because I’m very clever, and believe in meeting my obstacles head-on, face-to-face, and lookin’ em in the eye… I moved to Austin TX, grand royalty of allergen locations! Because, why settle for less, you know?

I lived for eight months with friends who had a dog and a cat; that obviously wasn’t going to be my long-term plan, though we managed all right. When we moved into the new apartment a few months ago, it was gleefully petless. I am a big fan of house pets and when I lived with my parents we always had between 4 and 13 animals available at any one time… but the sneezing and the itching, eh. So no pets. And no dust—it was fabulously clean! In fact, when we moved in, it felt like my allergies had completely disappeared.

Over the course of the next month or so, they came back very gradually. Dust mites! I saw this thing on Oprah… yeah. (Oprah.) We ordered a vacuum cleaner with super special allergen functionality! I vacuumed like a crazy person. (Hurt my back. Ow.) But it’s getting into springtime in Austin in early March, and the cedar trees are going to be in bloom. So what do I need? Zyrtek!

Okay, so this is really funny… I used to get my zyrtek from Canada. It was cheaper and I didn’t need a prescription. I’m not going to preach to you about crossing the border to obtain prescription meds, but I’m a starving artist. A doctor’s appointment and a heftily-priced month’s worth of zyrtek is not in my budget. I save those spots for things like food and rehearsals. (Sometimes gas for the car, and occasionally the rent.) So when I discovered that zyrtek from Canada was not deliverable to Texas… I told you this was funny! I had to think of a new strategy. I had been discovered. Hand slapped by the government!

Has this happened to anybody else?

Oh, well, anyway. My zyrtek comes through other channels, these days, but I thought it was pretty entertaining when I competed overseas last year to return home to a hand-addressed envelope and a badly xeroxed picture of a prescription bottle embraced by a cobra. A very menacing, condescending, gleefully chastising cobra. (It was funny.) And I guess I don’t expect it to happen again, but every time my allergies kick up and I put in a new order, I think about it. I feel like there’s something really valuable about the experience… a missing link to some macrocosmic understanding, about the bad xerox or maybe something else.

I just hope my zyrtek gets here so I can quit snifflin’ and sing already!