Maybe being a mouth breather isn't so bad.

We were fully intending on going to see Date Night on Sunday night. Really. We were going to get up off of the couch and go forth into the world. But somewhere between dinner and the gastrointestinal gymnastics that are usually required for me to digest food, my throat started hurting. And it wasn't just a little tickle. It was as though I had had a side of acid with my salad and then made sure it was REALLY in there by scraping away at the flesh of my esophagus with a dull fork. It was a sudden onset - one moment I was trying to wrestle the remote away from Marc and then the next it hurt to swallow. Or breathe.

We decided to stay in.

"Allergies!" yelled Marc, who is a constant sufferer. His religion is the neti pot and some sort of nasal spray that he jams up his nose each morning and night. That ritual is followed by a hefty, "hhhhhhhhnnccccccCH!" into a tissue which usually results in the deposit of some matter which he then views and comments upon. "Wow! You should see this!"

I've never had allergies that were not food related. And then two years ago I started having a lingering sore throat whenever the pine trees out back were full of pollen. But even then it was more of an annoyance. The two times a year it happened, Marc would say, "NETI POT! YOU SHOULD USE THE NETI POT!" I always declined. My friends, do you know what this is? It masquerades as a charming, miniature tea kettle that you actually force up one nostril (after filling it with a saline solution) then allowing the salt water to flow into one side of the nose and out of the other washing out any lingering debris, pollen, spare change, what have you. Marc always seemed remarkably refreshed and buoyant after his sessions. They proceed like this:

Prologue: Enthusiasm! "Honey! I'm going to go and use the neti pot!"
Stage 1: Deployment!
Stage 2: Euphoria!
Stage 3: VICTORY!

Despite my love of a natural and home remedy, I remained unconvinced. It had problems written all over it, starting with drowning and ending with loss of sex appeal. Then my niece Heidi wrote this about it and I told Marc to stop wielding the stupid thing at me each time I had a sniffle as it wasn't going to happen.

Exh. A - Sudden Loss of Sex Appeal

I can still see that photo when I close my eyes.

But by last night, my congestion had taken a turn for the worse. Marc, unable to stand the thought of spending another night next to his sniveling wife dragged me into the guest bathroom and said, "Look. You're going to do this. I'll do a demonstration first. You are not going to drown. It's not hard. It won't hurt. It will give you tremendous relief." So he showed me. Of course, I knew what was involved, but he was talking to me the whole time while his nose drained, so I thought - ok, this can't be all that bad. And I was sick of breathing through my mouth. He went through his above steps, ended with a flourish and then prepared a pot for me.

My own experience went something like this:

Prologue: Trepidation! Suspicion! Horror!
Step 1: Excitement! Perhaps I'd be able to breathe again! Perhaps some voluminous amount of snot would pour forth and I'll be healed! Sort of like fishing a large clump of wax out of your ears - gross, but so satisfying.
Step 2: Quiet contemplation. Hm. The water just poured out one side, and then half way through, I switched nostrils. Marc watched in fascination despite my demands that he GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT.
Steph 3: THE BURNING! What they don't tell you is that if you tilt your head back just a small amount, the salt water goes cascading down your throat. Which, in my case, was completely RAW. After much sputtering and expulsion of water and snot and other random bits and some unprintable language, I put the damned pot down and blew what felt like a gallon of water from my nose.

I didn't feel much better. But I didn't feel worse. I was more shocked over the fact that I had survived the ordeal even though the outcome - the lack of joie de vivre or even a new pony - was disappointing at best. Instead, I just really wanted to lie down and kept worrying that my head would leak if I leaned over too quickly.

Today, things were worse. Not from the neti pot but just because my "allergies" had blossomed into a full blown cold. I always hate it when a formerly compliant body part suddenly goes rogue on me, and the fact that I use my nose with some frequency and suddenly couldn't made this whole thing pretty disconcerting. I look resplendent, let me tell you...like something that feeds on the flesh of the innocent. I spent the morning at work shouting instructions at my clients from across the room and willing the minutes to move quickly so that I could get home. Despite last nights lukewarm performance, I was holding out hope for the neti pot. Perhaps it was an experience that improved with practice?

I dashed upstairs, prepared the pot and stuck it up my nose and tilted. And waited. And waited. So profound was my congestion that only after a good 30 seconds did a small drip make it's way out of the opposite nostril and into the sink. This was not the progress I had been hoping for and so thought I would speed things along a little bit by taking in a short breath and then forcing it out of my nose quickly. Which did nothing to help my nose.

But my left eye. SWEET TAP-DANCING H MOSES.

I may have some sort of degree in Biology, but even I'm not sure exactly what happened. When I exhaled, the water that was supposed to come out of my nose instead shot out of my left tear duct and splattered all over the mirror which was a good two feet in front of me. I looked on in horror as the liquid gently dripped down towards the counter and wondered if that had actually just happened. A quick survey of my face showed it to be true, and I immediately put down the pot and called Marc at work to ask, "What does it mean if it shoots out of your EYE?"

There was silence on the other end...I think while Marc wondered if he had passed the stage where an annulment might be an option. "It came out of your EYE?" he said in a stage whisper. I relayed the story again in greater detail. He remained silent. He had no answers. I had waded into unknown territory.

I hung up the phone, neither comforted or feeling any modicum of relief. My eye still oozed and I couldn't breathe out of the center of my face. I rinsed the pot and set it back on Marc's prescribed towel and decided that perhaps my relationship with it, though brief, had been turbulent enough to warrant backing away from the device forever. Perhaps, my work here was done.

Perhaps, I'll rely on modern science instead. Perhaps I don't always need to seek out a home, natural remedy first. Perhaps a poultice and twirly dance won't cure the itching. Which is why I immediately went to CVS and purchased some Tylenol Cold & Sinus and have taken to my bed for the rest of the day.

There is still salt water leaking out of my left eye. This is the opposite of rad.