WTF Allergies

Growing up, I wasn't allergic to anything. Not even poison ivy. I would literally play in the woods with all of the kids in the neighborhood all day long and wake up the next day the ONLY one without a rash. This made my life significantly easier.

And then I moved to NC and developed some pretty serious seasonal allergies. It's the pollen. It is just awful down there. And according to my research, a LOT of people who didn't grow up in the Carolinas have the exact same problem when they move there. But it's only for a few weeks about twice a year, and it's nothing that eye drops and the generic OTC version of Claritin can't fix.

Recently, I've been discovering some new and interesting allergies. For example, I'm definitely allergic to something involving the bedding in certain hotels. I have a pretty good hunch it's down pillows and comforters. Because when I stay at the cheaper chains where they only have fake down pillows, nothing ever goes wrong. But when I stayed at the Richmond Marriott for DLo's wedding in January, when I woke up each morning, whichever eye was laying on the pillow would be crazy swollen until after I showered (thank god Katie was staying with me, because I definitely felt like I needed a doctor). And this week, we've been staying at a Radisson, and there are down pillows on the bed as well as a down comforter, and the other night I woke up with an itchy rash over all parts of my body that were touching the pillow/comforter region. Fortunately, I always travel with Benadryl, Claritin, and Hydracortizone cream. So I was able to do something about it. But I've noticed that in the subsequent nights, as long as I remove the down pillows from the bed and make sure that the sheet is shielding my skin from coming into direct contact with the down comforter, I seem to be ok. But I mean seriously, WTF? How did this never happen until I was 26 years old? And further, I used to have a down comforter inside of a duvet cover ON MY BED that never affected me. I guess the duvet cover was a more adequate shield? Or am I just allergic to the detergent that they use here or something??????

I guess I travel a lot more now, and recently as a result of the recession, we can't always stay at Marriotts, where I have all sorts of loyalty perks and therefore always receive my requested down-free rooms (something I had requested not because I thought I was allergic, but because I HATE down pillows). But it is really annoying. Like REALLY. I don't care for having to sleep in a restricted manner and waking up itchy. It stinks. I'm ready to go back to my home bed now.

End Rant.

In other news, last night we saw Austin's famous bats. There's this big bridge over the river downtown that our hotel is right next to, and apparently over 1.5 million bats live in a cave underneath it, which is totally gross. But as soon as the sun goes down every night, people gather on the bridge and watch as the bats all fly out and disburse to look for their food. While I don't particularly care for bats, because they are filthy flying rodents, it was actually pretty cool. And sweet jesus, there were a lot of them.

Today we went to the outlet mall, which was AWESOME. Thank god we went at 10am though, because by the time we left at 2 it was crowded and effing hot outside. I even got out of there spending only $100, which was awesome. I got a pair of shoes, a shirt, a skirt, and a dress. Pretty successful I think. There was a bag I loved at Coach, but I'm trying to conserve money and it was $250, which I did not want to spend. Also, the store had about 1000 people in it and I was TOTALLY OVER IT as soon as I walked in (I was both hungry and hot at that point, which is a potentially lethal combination).

Tomorrow after brunch I think we're just going to hang by the pool. We had wanted to explore the trails around the lake, but it's over 100 degrees out during the day...and I just don't think I can do that. We need to start coming here in November or something to make this more tolerable.