Summertime

It's summertime in Oregon, sort of. Usually by the second week of June it stops raining and everyday is lovely. This year it's kept on raining. It hasn't been this rainy, this late in the last 6 years. I think it's because we had a mild winter. I don't believe in Karma, unless it's weather karma. If you live in Portland you are owed a certain number of dreary rainy days, you can't avoid them just because it's summertime.
So I've been walking around in the rain quite a bit and it hasn't bothered me that much because the rain keeps the pollen in check. I've got wicked hay fever. It never really bothered me in Texas b/c there just aren't that many pine trees and grass fields. Here I nearly die. I become a snot dripping, runny eyed, sneezing, itching, grumpy, oozing thing.
This year it hasn't been bad, but the pollen is still there. I've been popping Claritin like mad. The bottle says don't take more than one a day, but it doesn't differentiate it's dose between someone like me and a fourteen year old girl. I'm at least two fourteen year old girls big and I need more than one stupid pill a day. I think they should just chocolate coat the little pills. I could eat them like M&Ms. I've seriously considered free basing them to get them into my system faster. Stupid dosage.

I learned an important lesson yesterday. It was one of those instances where Chicano culture collides head on into modern life. I broke my glasses a couple of weeks ago and got new ones and decided to get contact lenses too. The disposable ones are cheap and they'll keep me from being so hard on my glasses. Getting used to them hasn't been too difficult but there are certain times when maybe contacts aren't the best choice for a Chicano. The specific time I'm thinking about is right after making pico de gallo. I decided to go pop out my contacts about a half hour after chopping everything up for some pico. I had chopped up several jalepenos and a habanero, for flavor, for the pico. I touched my eye. I wept. It burned for a few hours and b/c I also touched my contacts I'm afraid to put them back in. On the upside, the burning did keep my eyes from itching.