Episode 131: You're not allergic to mushrooms

As a child and later a pre-teen/ teenager, I have always been plagued by allergies. I had inhalers, nose sprays, pills and syrups. I always had a runny nose and just about every January from the ages of 7-17 I would get a sinus infection, complete with green mucus. As many of you can imagine, I was not exactly ruling school at that point in my life anyway, and being the kid with allergies and a perpetual runny nose did nothing to help me.

At or around the age of 15 my parents finally sent me to an allergy specific doctor and I underwent a test. I am not sure if anyone out there has ever had an allergy test before, but it is rough. They essentially take needles and inject a small sampling of everything you can imagine in to your arms and back. You get something like 30 shots, which makes for 30 track marks all over your arms and back. Once the shots are given, you go home, don't shower for two days and come back. If an injection area is irritated after two days you are allergic to that thing. Well, my test results came back positive. For, like, all of them. Trees, grass, pollen, dust, dogs, cats, leaves... pretty much whatever I was tested for I was allergic to. I am pretty sure that I am allergic to air. The good news was that I managed to avoid any food allergies, with the exception of one. Because I tested positive for a fungus allergy, the doctor said it was best not to eat mushrooms. Fine, cool. I hate mushrooms anyway. Well, at the time of the test my mother was very skeptical. Since we had both a dog and a cat and I spent most of my childhood outdoors amongst the trees and grass she assumed that the test was bogus, not keeping in mind that through all of this I have been suffering from horrible allergies.

Also during this time I was waging a war against broccoli. As a child, and still for the most part today, I hated broccoli. It is just a shitty vegetable, hands down. As a result, I would often lie to people who tried to feed me broccoli and tell them I was allergic to it. I was not. My mother knew I was lying but never really tried to get me to eat it because it was futile anyway. Anyway, because of the broccoli incident no one believed that I was also allergic to mushrooms. No one really tried to get me to eat them, but whenever I pointed it out I would get an eye roll. I tell you all for a reason.

My mother and sister made the annual pilgrimage to my apartment from Western Mass over the weekend. Monica put together a homemade chicken pot pie for the occasion, one of my favorites. I mean, really, who doesn't like chicken pot pie? I was eating the pie when I found what I believed to be a mushroom and calmly asked Monica if there were any in the pie. Now, I have not actually knowingly consumed a mushroom since finding out I was allergic. On a few occasions I ended up getting sick after eating some things that my or may not have had mushrooms in them, but it was unconfirmed as to whether or not that was the cause. When I asked about the mushroom at the table I was, like always, ridiculed and made to look like a faker which, admittedly, is kind of my own fault because of the multi-decade broccoli scam. Monica said there were no mushrooms and wee moved on. Long story short, I killed like three more pieces of pot pie and finished my day normal.

The next morning I woke up and wondered why the hell I was so itchy. A brief examination determined that I had hives covering my arms. It quickly spread throughout my body until I was almost completely covered. I was the itchiest person alive and I didn't feel all that well.
I started to think about what it could be and got all sorts of paranoid. At one point I was positive that a spider had laid eggs in my wrist that eventually hatched and were now eating my skin from the inside out. Another time I got out of the shower and started to fear that my eyes were swelling shut. In reality, I just had some sort of dust particle in my eye and it was twitching. As the hives continued to get worse I went to CVS and got some Benadryl in the hopes that it would do the job. I don't know if any of you have ever taken Benadryl before, but it isn't pretty. It zonks you out and makes you jittery at the same time. Because nothing is more fun that being uncontrollably tired and shaking with cold sweats at the same time. This must be what it is like doing meth.

I again asked Monica about the mushrooms and she again denied it, although she was not very convincing the second time around.

"If there were, I picked them out." Great. I totally ate a mushroom. Sure enough, when I made her read the ingredients there were mushrooms in the veggie mix she used. Now does everyone believe me?

The best part of my whole experience was that yesterday afternoon was the day that Monica and I were forced to take three giant loads of laundry to the laundromat because out washing machine has broken. Per usual, our California slumlord is not getting back to us regarding the situation, just like with the fire alarms, so we have to go mingle with college kids, single people and struggling old people again. Just like the old days. Great. Standing in a crowded laundromat for two hours when it is 28 degrees out and your entire body is covered in hives may be one of the worst experiences of my life. happy 2011. I can see nothing is going to change here.

Speaking of 2011, I hope that all of you had a lovely, festive New Years Eve. When you have a kid your party options are pretty much nonexistent so I decided that I would work the night and try to make a little money. The night at work was uneventful and there were only three people still in the restaurant when Dick Clark's paralyzed, wax-looking face counted us down from midnight. At least they didn't make the poor bastard start at 20 like they did last year.

A coworker of mine and myself were stuck at work late putting away new stuff that we were adding to the menu for 2011 and left around 2. I waled in the parking garage with my friend, hit my remote to unlock my doors and heard someone yell "Oh, fuck, dude."

I turned the corner to find three dudes standing in front of my car and a girl who looked like she was about to die slumped against the wall. " I told you someone was going to show up!"

We walked up to the car kind of half ready for a fight and one of the panicked kids explained that he and his friends were "Just going to blow a couple of lines and get out of the way." I looked at my hood- my dirty, dust, snow, salt, sand and parking garage roof drip-covered hood and saw a pile of cocaine. "You want some?" The kid asked.

"Dude, no. I don't want any."

"Are you pissed? We'll get out of here.

"No, dude, I'm not pissed. You already have your cocaine out on my hood. Just do it and get the hell out of here so I can go home, OK?"

"Dude, that's so awesome!"

Yeah, I'm awesome. happy new year. I hope that road salt is easy on your nostrils. Like, seriously? It is New Years Eve and your partying, I get that. If you want to do cocaine all night, get no sleep and feel like you want to kill yourself in about 8 hours go for it. More power to you. I don't care, but at least have enough dignity to do it indoors. Or maybe off the hood of your own car. Thanks. Again, happy 2011. It really isn't shaping up to be the greatest year. At least not judging from the broken appliances, hives and potential arrests for being an accessory to elicit drug use in a parking garage. Go team!

As for the baby, she has a house full of toys and continues to be spoiled by someone on a weekly basis. My New Years resolution is to update the blog more. Stick with me.

This is the baby's favorite song. Completely inexplicable, yet hilarious. It is a decent song, but nothing about it stands out. It is pretty much on my iPod by mistake. If you saw the dance she does in the back seat you would never delete it, either.