In successful target marketing news, Doc Martens emailed me to say they were opening up a new store in Scottsdale. Unrelatedly, how much do I want these: [link] A: A lot.

I'm gonna go with yay, Theo.

My doc recommended keeping children's Benadryl with me in the dissolving table form - they are half the dosage of adult, so if I need to I can take two, and the dissolvey nature is great. Also why I prefer to take Claritin over Allegra or Zyrtex, they all work okay but Claritin's dissolve-y tabs were what I bought in my initial panicky rampage for allergy medicines at the drug store, the other two are pills.

My system is a constant stream of Nasalcrom throughout allergy season (Feb-May, Fall allergy season I am less sure of), daily Nasalcort, Claritin if my eyes are bothering me or the inside of my ears itch after I've had the daily meds, Allegra if I get to work without taking Claritin and then more symptoms hit, and Benadryl at night if it's been a rough day symptom-wise or I happen to know the pollen count is high. And I carry around an epipen and the children's Benadryl in case another severe attack hits me. So far have not needed, knock wood.

Hooray for the all-clear, Theo!

Those boots are almost too awesome for me to comprehend.

I live with cats, to whom I am allergic, so I take 2 Benadryl and 1 Claritin every single night. I added Flonase over the winter when it seemed that working from home and being cooped up with the cats was making things much worse (versus previously being out of the house for 10 hours a day, 4 days a week).

I feel like adding Flonase has helped stave off the worst of the pollen vortex effects (SO FAR), but my sinuses are pissed today. (I think that mostly the rapid change in barometric pressure, not allergies.)

Yay for all clear.

I have been out surveying the damage. I didn't do it yesterday because after two doctor appointments in one day, I retreated to the land of not coping. What happened was that the top half of a tree that I had noticed might be ailing snapped off. My neighbors (bless them) cleared away the smaller branches, but the rest of the tree was too big, so I'm going to have to hire someone to do it. I hate hiring people. It squashed a nice bench (sob); a so-so table; two small but moderately expensive trees (I was trying to grow paw-paws.); and a bush that will probably come back from the root. On the bright side, it missed the fence and any buildings, and freakishly missed a glass gazing ball by about a foot. The gazing ball and its terracotta stand reminded me of pictures of tornado damage in which one chimney is standing in a sea of ruins. The potentially really expensive thing is that it gashed the bark of a huge oak that could squash half my house, and cutting that down will cost $1,000 plus.

Home ownership is so much fun.

yay Theo for TCB with the dermatologist.

And you are a hero, Ginger, for facing down the tree damage. I've done that before and it isn't pretty.

Not coping is so the correct step at times. Maybe check Angie's List to see if there's some sort of special on tree work?

Aww, Ginger, that's no fun to deal with. But good on you for doing it.

Those boots are almost too awesome for me to comprehend.

Are they not? And they're on sale. And in my size. And I have clothing budget at the moment. But the problem is, I really really need to spend the clothing budget on actual clothing, like, to wear this summer. Woes.

Oh, Liese, so close to being inevitable.

I forget how treacherous trees can be, Ginger. Glad it wasn't worse, and I hope it doesn't end up as bad as it could be.

I mean, just the other day, I was thinking about plaid Docs. And these are plaid with spikes! Come on!