Cimorene

I have been sneezing on average about once per day the last week or so, so there must really be something around that's irritating my nose, just not that badly anymore. It could be the tree, I guess. I took the ornaments off on the 6th per Finnish tradition, but Wax has yet to carry it outside.

I seem to have estimated the socks wrong again. Wax is now wearing the original leftovers socks (from Daddy's hat) and I knitted one sock with the leftovers from them, but it did not use enough of the leftover yarn (too many stripes of Arwetta in between). I am making the second sock mismatched in the hope of using as much of the yarn as possible. I can't bear to waste it because it's really lovely soft and silky merino sock yarn (Scheepjes Downtown).

I should have made a hooded sweater before now, though. My neck and ears are always cold. But I can't promote another project ahead of the next Fair Isle vest I've been planning, so I'll have to get by tying shawls around my head and neck a bit longer.

Actually I've been so focused on knitting lately that it's almost my fandom. I'm not even watching tv at the same time, lately, just listening to David Mitchell's radio show. (I got a bit further in my Star Trek rewatch before getting stuck on the episode where Starfleet tries to order Data to be dissected and Picard has to sue. It causes too much anxiety, but I didn't want to skip ahead.)

I picked three old fandoms that I hadn't reread in a while by flipping through my old bookmarks and looking for ones that I could no longer remember reading that looked interesting; then I downloaded all the fic in those three fandoms (pairings, bc they're all single-pairing fandoms for me) in my bookmarks (except the ones I've reread so much that I remember the whole thing), and then I went to the pairing tags and downloaded like... ten to twenty fics per pairing so I'd have a roughly equal quantity of each fandom.

Then I sorted the ereader library alphabetically by title, which has the effect of shuffling up the authors and fandoms. And I've been reading (gulping down), skipping forward in the alphabet as necessary to avoid reading the same fandom twice in a row, for the past week. I've gone back to download more fic several times, obviously, but the basic pattern is holding up well.

I've got nine new bookmarks, a very tiring week, Anubis yelling his head off and standing up running on the door like it's a treadmill because Wax is on the late shift and it's not time for cat dinner, a needy dog to dogsit until Sunday, and Snookums snoozing on my lap. The dog is like a footstool-sized wookie and her shaggy coat has absorbed and stored a TON of perfume from my sister-in-law. I'm sensitive to perfumes, but my sister-in-law herself doesn't make me sneeze; she doesn't bathe in it or anything. The dog wants to cuddle, or sit on my feet, or lick my face, though, and the accumulated perfume from her coat is a torment to my nose. 😩

We bought a really nice squishy new long rag rug, but unfortunately it has a faint but perceptible mildew stink clinging to it (one I didn't notice until we got it home because it doesn't emerge until my face is right up next to it like lying on the floor close), which maybe I should have expected since it seems to be made of recycled fabric. Mildew seems to be a smell that most people are way less sensitive to than I am - possibly a mild allergy, although it doesn't make my sinuses burn or hurt or anything (YET?). Not fun when frequently attics and basements are full of the smell and nobody else even seems to notice it, but anyway...

I just washed it at 60° with ordinary detergent, which didn't help at all, so I googled it and it seems I should soak it, perhaps as long as overnight, in vinegar water. I have plenty of white vinegar, but we don't own anything big enough to submerge this rug in except the actual washing machine, which is front-loading. So here I go to figure out how to set it to fill and soak things.

The first time I became aware of being allergic to anything except metal (infection after ear piercing at age 7), I was in college and I accidentally got a smear of Bath'n'Bodyworks juniper-scented hand sanitizer on my face. Half a day later, my throat had swollen so nearly closed that I felt it rubbing against itself on the inside whenever I swallowed. It lasted almost a week, I think.

The next time that happened was years later, but it's become more frequent with time. Today's reaction is at least 2nd since the start of 2013, for example, but I'm pretty sure it hasn't even happened a total of 10 times in the last 12 years. The severity varies, presumably depending on how much of the allergen is involved. It's never been worse than the first time or caused any trouble breathing, but it is about equally painful to the sore throat portion of a cold, sometimes worse. It's constant for a few days and varies from slightly less irritating than a typical PMS headache to "AUGH I HATE EVERYTHING".

The only time it's happened that didn't involve a scented product actually in contact with my face, it was from drinking a lavender herbal infusion. Even though using lavender-scented soaps have never irritated me to my knowledge, lavender oil is my prime suspect for that reason. I'm aware that it is often used as an ingredient in other scented products, without necessarily being represented on the label, and it was also the second ingredient in the second-to-last product that caused an outbreak (a tea tree oil mask from the Body Shop in June).

I've also noticed my nose becoming way more sensitive to odors as I get older: not that they smell stronger, but that they're physically irritating, with like a kinda burning sensation or instant sneezing; and then I panic, fearing another one of these throat-swelling reactions. This is usually due to somebody near me, or in the elevator before me, wearing too much perfume.

Among other things, this has engendered a burning hatred of the way products everywhere are scented, both from second-hand contact and because I now prefer to buy unscented things JUST IN CASE, even though the vast majority of scented toiletries don't cause any problems, but finding unscented toiletries varies from impossible to difficult. And also it has led to me probably glaring at strangers in public who have obviously been bathing in perfume.

I know people take stuff like Claritin daily if they're allergic to dust or pollen or w/e and I know people take some other something if they're, say, allergic to cats and coming to our place for a party. But is there an OTC medication you can take *after* your allergic reaction? Because I can't see taking preventive measures for such an unpredicatable and infrequent occurrence.