Tag Archives: allergies

It’s the Hypoallergenic Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

The rock is also suitable for children with lactose intolerance, nut allergies, and chemical sensitivity.

The rock is also suitable for children with lactose intolerance, chemical sensitivity, and peanut allergies. Not recommended for kids with behavior disorders, though. 

There will be no teal pumpkin in front of my house this Halloween; at the rate I’m going this year, there will be no pumpkins at all, let alone jack-o-lanterns, unless we obtain and carve them Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. I feel for kids with allergies. Personally, the list of things I can’t eat anymore is almost as long as the things I like these days, but there are just too many variables, and my budget for candy is pretty small anyway. Plus, we rarely get more than 2 dozen kids, and half the time we take off around 8 to go to a party.

If you haven’t seen It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, it’s worth 21 minutes of your time. I mean, media-wise, the ’60s were a simpler time. There are no explosions, no gore, and nothing the least bit scary, but it’s still a Halloween classic, in its way.

For many months now, I’ve been turning over an idea for another big, serious, depressing comic about my childhood, something that I’ve written about in longer prose work, but couldn’t quite figure out how to frame it in comic format. Today the way in seems to have revealed itself, but there wasn’t a chance to get it started because I went to 6 shoe stores unsuccessfully searching for a pair of minimalist sneakers identical to the pair I’ve been wearing since 2012 instead of drawing a long comic. Maybe tomorrow. Or at least get it started tomorrow, as I now realize that today is only Thursday.

Roots and Branches Mandala

It's alive!

It’s alive! Alive and full of pointy microscopic tree ejaculate.

Do you know what pollen looks like? It looks like this, which may explain why it hurts so freaking much when you get it in your eyes.

Some people say that the desert is dull and colorless, but this is only because some people only visit the desert in the middle of winter. So, yeah, it’s all tawny and dusty in the middle of winter, but who are you to talk? You came here because it’s all white right now where you came from!

Now spring is a very colorful season in Tucson. There are wildflowers galore, and then every single tree explodes into flower. Imagine that: hills dotted with red, orange, purple; blanketed in yellow and chartreuse. And every last one of them spewing microgametophytes in every direction.

It’s sort of perverted if you think about it.

It’s also debilitating if your immune system treats tree pollen like a deadly pathogen and mounts a full scale defense. Which mine does. And then you take every allergy remedy known to man in an effort to simply breathe. Which I do.

It’s only a couple weeks in a year of generally clean air, but it’s been gradually knocking me over for days, but yesterday and today have been the worst. Last night was almost completely sleepless and today has been a near total loss. I’m barely aware of what I’m writing right now.

And that’s all. And that’s why that’s all.