M. Giant's
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Wednesday, May 22, 2002  

Life isn’t like The Brady Bunch, a fact that is amply demonstrated by the fact that I haven’t killed myself. Although, it would be kind of cool to live next door to Michael McKean. Maybe I could jam with Spinal Tap every once in a while. And if the suicidal urges became irresistible, I could just get behind their drum kit.

But I digress. You’d think I’d have figured out a lot quicker that just because Marcia’s sensitive schnozz almost got Tiger sent to the landfill that time, it didn’t mean that my new allergies would force me to choose between my cats and, you know, air. It’s three decades later, and Marcia didn’t have the benefit of five dozen drug commercials a day to sit through like I do.

With that in mind, I went to the clinic the other morning to get loaded up on the latest in anti-allergy pharmacology. I explained the situation to my nurse practitioner, and she basically agreed with my self-diagnosis after listening to my breathing and peering inside every hole in my head. Then she brought the force and majesty of Western medicine to bear on the situation, and solved my entire problem with seven little words:

Keep the cats out of the bedroom.

Excuse me? Helleew? WTF? Is this the Third Millennium of the Common Era or what? I can deal with the fact that we’re stuck with self-propelled hand trucks instead of jetpacks. I’ve accepted the fact that revolutionary advances in filmmaking technology have only ensured that Star Wars movies suck now. I can even get my brain around the fact that the Middle East is going to take years to produce a decent apocalypse at this rate. But it’s 2002, for crying to Jesus, and not only are we irredeemably behind schedule for a manned mission to Jupiter and psychotic A.I., I can’t even snuggle my little furballs without involuntarily metamorphosing into a wheezing, half-blind snot-beastie. What the hell are we waiting for? The future is HERE, people, and right now it’s so bright I gotta wear infrared goggles.

Okay, she also prescribed some antihistamine that’s supposed to be not quite as strong as OTC Benadryl. If that doesn’t work, I’m supposed to let her know. Jeez, if I’d known that was all I was going to be getting, I would have just gone to Walgreen’s myself and saved the copay. Two months from now, when I’m moonlighting as a mob enforcer so I can afford black-market Claritin, she’s going to feel pretty stupid. Meanwhile, I’m already feeling stupid, now that I’ve realized that the phrase “Western medicine,” which for me conjures images of Curly biting down on a leather strop while the town barber pours cheap whisky on the shoulder where Black Bart done shot ‘im up, is even more accurate than I imagined.

You think I’m taking this poorly? Try explaining it to the cats. After eleven years of sharing our bed with us, I really don’t think they’re going to be happy about suddenly getting locked out. Now I have to weigh my risk of anaphylactic shock against the likelihood of having to clean up dozens of foul-smelling messes. These are cats who take the phrase “pissed off” very, very literally, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.

The upside? Well, at least Kleenex is cheap.

posted by M. Giant 3:48 PM 0 comments

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