Allergies

Allergies have never had that much of an effect on me, which is great since I can't take Pseudoephedrine without my heart racing as though there was a prize available for spontaneous explosion. However, coming to Florida has slightly altered that.

Behold the face of evil.

Now every so often, I've had to deal with some sort of nasal deficiency. My household kleenex bill has nearly tripled, to be honest. On the one hand, I appreciate that allergies lend themselves to clear mucus as opposed to the really nasty bits that accompany a cold. On the other hand, I'd just prefer for my nose to stick to its main function of air flow and filtration.

Currently, this round of allergies is manifesting with this wonderful sensation where every so often, it feels like I got punched in the eye. My body is kind enough to switch between my eyes so neither feels left out in any way.

This leads quite naturally into my other random health complaint. I recently learned that I suck at blinking.

See, I've worn glasses since I was in elementary school, so when I reached my teenage years, I was all over the chance to wear contacts and not wear glasses. But no matter what kind of contact I tried, I had trouble wearing them for more than 8 hours without feeling like I was losing a few layers of eye-skin when I removed them later. Let me assure you, this was not ideal.

Quickly I went back to full time glasses with contacts set aside for cosplaying at conventions and then a few years later, I took the final step of just taking my glasses off when people asked for my picture at a convention.

And also just cosplaying people who wore glasses, like Quistis from Final Fantasy 8

But even wearing glasses, I was always aware of how dry my eyes felt during the day. Oh, I'd use the occasional eye drop, but the fear of never producing my own tears again kept me from using them more than once a month, which was great for that one day but kind of sucked for the others.

I was reading an article online about how people who sit at a computer all day blink less and it was one of those horribly cheesy "aha!" moments. I kid you not - I sat there for a minute and then out of curiosity, closed my eyes slowly and opened them in what one might refer to as a blinking motion. Then I did it again.

I blinked a third time and held my eyes closed for a few seconds, marveling at the tears that came rushing forward to do their job in moistening my eyes. Actually, it kind of hurt because my eyes were so dry. So then more tears came and I felt my face starting to turn red as it does the moment I even think about crying. I opened my eyes.

Now that I'm aware of the cause of my dry eyes, I'm thinking about trying contacts again. But I'll be honest. Despite my best efforts to learn to blink more, I don't think I'm making much progress. And during allergy season? Forget it. My body doesn't feel like it has any more moisture to spare, thanks to my selfish nose hoarding it all for mucus.