Cedar Fever is sexy.

I thought John Travolta was going to be here.

Hmm… DayQuil. Let’s see, it says:

Temporarily relieves common cold/flu symptoms:

  • minor aches
  • headache
  • sore throat pain
  • nasal congestion
  • pains
  • muscular aches
  • fever
  • cough

That’s like five ways to say it helps pain. You know what it doesn’t say on the Dayquil box?

May cause lunacy

If it had, I would have stayed away from it. But I took some yesterday because I was feeling like poo. I don’t know if it was due to the bronchitis, or this ridiculous thing we have here in Austin called Cedar Fever.

It sounds like some kind of festival, I know. Like everyone’s walking around Austin celebrating “Cedar Fever!” I promise you it isn’t fun.

How can I explain Cedar Fever? Hmmm… Imagine looking outside and seeing little bits of stuff floating in the air. It’s kind of like you’re in a sand storm, but when you look higher it kind of looks like smoke all over the town. It’s pollen. It’s all pollen. Now imagine that you are looking at all of that and you know that you have no choice but to go out there and breathe all of that crap. And what’s worse is you know what it’s going to do to you.

They say that everyone who moves to Austin develops allergies. The lucky ones don’t get them for the first three years. But eventually you get them. You wanna live in the second best city in the nation? It’s got a price, buddy. And in this case, the price is your vision. Your sense of smell. Your clarity of mind.

“To the pain!”

First your eyes start to water, not a little, but sort of like someone just broke up with you. You drive around with your eyes streaming tears, trying not to wreck. It’s difficult because you only see the stop signs between sneezes. Not little cute sneezes, either. These are snot-spraying sneezes of doom that make you a bit nauseous. That is if you haven’t already thrown up from the gagging reflex caused by the non-stop coughing. Your throat feels like someone’s dropped a feather back there. The inside of your mouth is itchy, and your tongue is no help at all. You ram a tiny wooden hand in the back of your throat to scratch your soft palate, but it’s no help. Your skin gets red and blotchy, and your lips get all chapped. You can breathe, but it feels like someone is giving your chest a huge hug and won’t let go. You’re pretty much itchy all over and you keep making slurp noises from the constant nasal drip. You can’t taste anything. You can’t smell anything. Your brain is stuck in a bit of a haze.

Sure, it’s eighty degrees. But wouldn’t you rather just be dead?

Cedar Fever.

Anyway, so I took some DayQuil yesterday so I could finish doing my job and I became a complete freak. I’m not kidding. This stuff had my toes numb. Whenever I sneezed, my shins would tingle. I would have sudden panic attacks and just start crying for no reason. I felt like I couldn’t get everything done fast enough. I sent off e-mails all over the place and at one point thought I had just created a brilliant piece of theatre that only involved a Karaoke machine. I made Eric nervous. I made the cats nervous. I think I broke my home computer. All because this medicine wouldn’t let me crash. It kept me up until the wee hours of the night.

Never again, my friends.

But, you know, I might just take it today, because this sinus thing is killing me. I’ve taken my allergy medicine, and I’m still in hell. I’m not even leaving my office. I’m holed up in here thinking the allergens won’t get to me, but I know they already have their hold on me. I look like I’m really depressed or coming off some bad drug. I’m not kidding. People keep looking at me.

Either way I’m going nuts. Either I feel like a prisoner of my own histimines, or I get to feel like I’m a total wacko.

Thank you, Austin.

Thank you for making me so sexy. I am now completely irresistible. Puffy, sweaty, red, blotchy, irritable and prone to crying jags. Who wouldn’t want me? I’m so damn irresistible that Eric had to go and watch a basketball game at a bar last night just because I was so incredible that he was going to lose his mind if he had to be near my electrical magic for a minute more. I am so drop dead fabulous that people are staying away from me because they are worried I might dribble some gorgeous on them. I am that hot. I am that fantastic. I am a Cedar Fever Princess.

You may think I’m just gross and lonely, but inside I know. I know the truth. I am actually so fabulous with my new look that I’m just forced to live the secluded life of a superstar. Fame’s a bitch, you know?

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