You guys. It’s allergy season in Portland, Oregon. Between
the gnarly rash on the tops of both shoulders and my swollen left eye socket I
look damn sexy. Or like some sort of lumpy swamp creature with a propensity
towards Brandi Carlile t-shirts and Chacos. Considering I was confined to my
bedroom for nearly 24 hours preceding the plague, I decided to get out of the house.
See, I’m nearly certain this outbreak somehow relates back to That Cat and her
daily traipsing through allergens. So I’m holed up in the back corner of a
coffee shop off of Woodstock, hoping a triple shot espresso drink will counteract
the Benadryl I took.
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[Note: Ok, let’s be
honest. I couldn’t afford Benadryl with a capital “B”. I’m a generic drugs kind
of girl anyway.]
Some of you have seen the effect antihistamines have on me.
My most vivid/least coherent Benadryl memory is of a little event known as Darby Logger Days five years ago. Yeah, “timber sports event” is a real thing. My favorite events
to spectate are the choker race and log rolling (AKA burling). Anyhow, this particular
year the rugby fundraising committee sat down and thought: what’s better than an
obscure sporting event? Another obscure sport fundraising at that obscure
sporting event!
Our master plan: caravan down to Darby, Montana with
lemonade supplies, several handles of Nikolai vodka, face painting materials
and our janky ass scrum machine to raise some funds for the upcoming fall
season. For those of you who don’t know, a scrum machine is essentially a metal
sled with shoulder pads. Forwards like to push it around at practice to show
off their brute strength. And I guess it helps with technique or something? I
don’t know, I was rarely allowed to play with it. Sometimes they let me ride on
it.
We determined the scrum machine would be our big
money-maker. See, brute strength is only half the equation. Turns out you have
to practice proper form to make good distance on a scrum machine. “Good form”
means dropping your ass, flattening your back and looking up through the drive.
The natural impulse to stand up and lock out your legs ends up driving the
machine down instead of forward. Counter-productive and terribly exhausting.
Our plan: challenge hyper-masculine logger men to compete in
“Scrum Offs”, wherein a group of three men would compete against three rugby
girls of their choice to drive the scrum machine a greater distance. Each Scrum
Off cost $5, and if we lost the challengers were rewarded with barely-drinkable
hard lemonades, plus their intact pride. If they lost all they got was humiliated. Either way kept their $5.
[Note: Darby Logger Days is a legitimate
sporting event and all promotion of our “special” lemonade was done under the
radar, word of mouth style because we were young and rebellious. And because we
loved our cheap vodka.]
We started Day 1 pretty strong, got our booth set up and
looked fairly legitimate. A few girls fanned out to spread word of our special
lemonade, while the rest of us promoted legitimate lemonade, face painting and
of course the Scrum Off. Things to keep in mind: Darby Logger Days is a
family-friendly event held (as far as I can recall) in the middle of some
god-forsaken field. Realistically said field is probably the Darby fairgrounds
or something. Additionally, I am allergic to everything. Seriously. Last summer
I finally had an allergy panel done and my doctor said: Well, the good news is you’re not allergic to pine trees! I imagine
this is a nice way of saying: Home girl,
I don’t know how you made it this long. You’re allergic to life.
So there we were in Smalltown, Montana drinking more vodka
than we were selling, pushing around a metal sled which kicked up clouds of dust,
pollen and plant debris. Around sundown when most of the team could no longer
stand let alone push the scrum machine, we called it a day and packed up. The
ensuing swing dancing, beer drinking and general merry-making will always be a
bit fuzzy. What I do remember: settling down at the end of the night and
realizing my breath was rattling through very constricted airways. I spent the
greater part of the night debating whether I should take an allergy pill or
wait it out. Imminent death was less daunting than creeping barefoot through a
stranger’s house to get to my bag, so I decided to wait it out and eventually
drifted off.
Day 2… let’s just say things didn’t start so strong. When I
woke up my throat was still constricted and my inhalations had a disconcerting
whistle/gurgle to them. The little band of ruggers was 100% hungover, filthy
and exhausted. Considering this is the natural state of most ruggers, we
rallied and headed back down to the events. As soon as we stepped out of the
vehicles and back onto the field, my allergic reaction kicked it into
overdrive. This was the first time I considered the potential benefits of carrying
a pocket EpiPen for emergency purposes. Instead I popped a rapid release
Benadryl and hoped for the best.
The drugs hit me almost immediately. I could breathe again,
but I couldn’t keep my eyes open or control my motor function. Determined to
at least resemble a productive team member, I propped myself up in a lawn chair
with my sunglasses on.
Unfortunately for us, children swarmed our booth the second
day demanding face painting. Unlike their adult counterparts, we couldn’t use
cheap vodka to bribe them into being more likable. Since my iron paws can slap relatively
identifiable animal art on a kid’s face, I was somehow nominated leader of the
facepaint brigade. Any kid that didn’t want to be Spiderman
(apparently our only other artistic skill) was subjected to me. This required drifting in and out of my antihistamine coma every 10-15 minutes for several
hours. I’m pretty sure after a bit the vigilant mothers of Darby realized where
their children were flocking and stopped letting their kids within a 20 foot
radius of our booth.
I finally resurfaced from my drug-induced fever dream in the
early afternoon. There was face paint in my hair. Empty vodka bottles were
strewn about, along with ice bags, empty lemonade powder tubs and assorted
articles of clothing. One of the girls was laying facedown under our folding table,
unconscious, one arm draped over the metal leg the other still holding a full
paper cup of Special Drank. Although it was a feat, our little band of
misfits survived their weekend in Darby, Montana.
Needless to say we weren’t invited back to Logger Days the
next year.
Anyhow! I’m still awake, still sitting in a coffee shop. I’m
feeling a little loose around the edges, but otherwise unfazed. Perhaps my days
of drug-induced comas have passed! Also you’ll be glad to hear the swelling in
my eye socket has reduced considerably.
Now to promote something other than myself.
This week I discovered my friends are writers too. Good ones
even! I spent most of my work week reading posts on Conventional Wisdom for anUnconventional Mind. You guys, this is great stuff; funny, poignant and just a touch self-deprecating.
Not to mention it offers words of wisdom from outside the 20-something,
college-educated, angsty poet stuff I subject you to. And there’s a story about
an elf. Look into it.
Also! Also my friend just started this blog,
but I know she is gifted and wonderful and will be worth keeping track of. I
love her, and you probably will too. Not that I’m trying to tell you what to do
or anything.
I love you all.
-b
**Today’s cat photos courtesy of The Mysterious Mind of BlackGargie
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