My Afflation

After I got out of the shower this morning I noticed a burning sensation on my neck. The only time I have that sensation is when I wear a less than pure or top-quality necklace. However, I did just color my hair. Crap. I lifted my braided bun and ... Irritated skin right at the base of my neck.  Not quite hives You might have to zoom in, but at the base of my neck is the irritated area. No, that is not a dye stain, which I kind of hoped at first. It feels different to the touch from the surrounding skin (patchy and angry, not smooth and soft). I have to wonder if it's the interaction of the dye with my necklace because my hands and scalp feel fine. It's just that little area that burns like the dickens. And this chain is pure silver. I've been wearing it almost everyday since 2010. The Importance of Patch Testing Well, beyond the obvious opportunity to avoid a severe allergic reaction (just google it ), I will now have to take allergy meds until this clears up a...

My daughter is a picky eater. In the last three months she has developed intolerances to wheat, dairy, and soy. Just need nuts and seafood to be complete (knock on wood). Creating menus each week just got more interesting . Luckily, she can eat just about anything from El Pollo Loco, but we have both gotten tired of that in the last month. Cooking from scratch in 30 minutes or less (most nights)... Monday: Beef and Broccoli - minus the soy sauce and water, so I guess it was more of a stir fry, but she had multiple servings. Tuesday:  Avocado Strawberry Spinach Salad with Poppyseed Dressing Wednesday:  Beef & Bean Chile Verde  - I make mine with Fresh and Easy Salsa Verde Thursday:  Chicken Avocado Salad Wraps Friday:  Primal Jambalaya  - minus the cauliflower rice Saturday:  Paleo Avocado Turkey Burgers  - reminds me of the burgers at the District Pub (also much cheaper to make at home). Menu Plan Monday hosted by:

Claritin D (Loratadine and Pseudoephedrine) Drug Information: Uses, Side Effects, Drug Interactions and Warnings at RxList : "Psychiatric: Aggressive reaction, agitation, anxiety, apathy, confusion, decreased libido, depression, emotional lability, euphoria, impaired concentration, irritability, paroniria." Agitation, anxiety, paranoia ... and just plain over-tired possibly. My daughter has allergies and I just moved. Somewhere around here I have children's liquid Claritin, but I couldn't find it. Triaminic Cough and Cold works well for her allergies too but she didn't want to knock out right after dinner (I should have listened to my first instinct)... so I gave her one tab of her brother's generic Claritin (Equate brand from Wal-Mart). Whoa. I don't think I will do that again. She had dinner within an hour of taking it, then bath, and somehow between "wash your hair and if you're itching from grass wash your body again" and "I...

So I'm sitting here at work, noshing on some simply delicious(ly) decorated sugar Christmas cookies when a wave of nostalgia hits me. I used to make batches and batches of Christmas cookies with the kids. One year we made a bunch of care boxes to send overseas. Another I let Josh mix and make all of the sugar crystals. His allergies to red 40 have become so severe that he can't even let it touch his skin without a reaction. No candy canes on the christmas tree for him to eat (or his sister, out of respect). We actually like the Starburst ones more ... (ok, well, my mom got cinnamon candy canes, but there's so much red on them Josh just avoids out of a sense of self-preservation). This whole year has been topsy-turvy. I don't have my own space to continue the few traditions we had. My mom mentioned that I'm sorta neutral about Christmas this year. And I am. Better than last year when I was feeling grinchy  and didn't want to do *anything* Christmas related. A...

Let the allergies begin!!! Along with the beautiful spring like weather (which I am loving, no fear there) comes the scratchy throat, sneezes, and all other manner of feelings of un-wellbeing. All thanks to one of the most beautiful flowering trees you can find. Off to take Allegra (sitting + Benadryl = sleepy Annette) and hope that my throat finally starts to feel better. I'm starting to get one of those sexy raspy voices interrupted occasionally by a cough.

So, this afternoon I went to my doc about the hives and some other weird stuff the WB was doing with my ADD (can we say I was getting stupid, unfocused and really random?) She firmly believes that it was still the sulfa in the bactrim that was causing the hives (saying that the effects could last up to two weeks) and just a REALLY weird coincidence about the timing with the Wellbutrin. And that I was probably just really sensitive to it and “please, Annette, I hope you don’t ever get sick” or something along those lines. She wasn’t too upset that I had stopped taking it, but suggested I start it again, and yes, if I started getting hives again, then we could look at some other anti-depressant. That’s when I brought up the other things that were going on and she offered me a two-week trial of Lexapro , yet another anti-depressant that also treats ADD. I was telling Tim all this and he wonders how much might be environmental since I didn’t really have much mental health issues before I...