Showing posts with label allergies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label allergies. Show all posts

Friday, September 6, 2013

Groceries in Autumn

I try not to shop at Walmart much. True, in my area it wins out on grocery prices, but in terms of employee relations... Well, I'd far and away rather give my shopping dollars to the Commissary (DeCA), Publix, or Winn-Dixie (the first two having better reputations and the third having a neutral reputation from what information I've found and generally better prices/variety in my area) than to Walmart. So I shop at those three places. Please don't email me and ask why I don't shop at grocery chain X. It's probably because it's not available here.

Anyway, there's a problem: I'm allergic to cinnamon. Every September through, I don't know, December sometime, Winn-Dixie, Publix, and a lot of other big grocery chains put out display after display of brooms that reek of cinnamon. A simple trip to the grocery store, should I forget that it's the season or should the grocer jump the gun and put them out in August (!), becomes a minefield, with me avoiding whole sections of the store and just sending Chris off to shop for meat, produce, spices, or whatever else is near yet another display of brooms.

So, with the grocers trying to kill me (no kidding, this is a tongue-swelling, breath-interfering phenomenon), I can (a) time all my shopping trips to coincide with base errands and do all my shopping at the commissary or (b) give up and shop at Walmart, as long as they haven't started with the cinnamon; it's not a thing I've experienced there in the past, though.

Either way, though, you guys with your brooms have lost thousands of dollars of my business. I realize it's a drop in your bucket, and I realize you're just carrying a product to sell, but staging them everywhere to scent the place is a real problem for some customers-couldn't they be isolated to a cabinet like flowers are?

Monday, July 15, 2013

Allergies

So, we have a young kitten named Jellybean. She's about twelve or thirteen weeks old, and we had her spayed today. Poor Jellybean is crated for the night so she doesn't get hurt while she's still groggy from the anesthesia. She's still too groggy to stand straight, and I'm a little surprised they sent her home - when I called the vet at first, they said they wouldn't if she was still very groggy. I guess she must have been very sedated indeed the first time I called to check on her.

Anyhow, we went to the store once I got home from work this evening, and I must have had a terrible allergic reaction to something. Somewhere near the marshmallows and gluten free things, I started to get stuffed up, and by the time we got to the snack food, I was hardly breathing. We decided I needed allergy pills and went to that aisle instead. Chris ripped open a bottle and got me three out and I crunched the darned things because I needed them to work quickly (note to everyone: crunched/chewed diphenhydramine not only tastes like you'd expect but also burns like fire in your probably already-swollen throat).

The only thing I know I react to like that is cinnamon, and I didn't smell any. So now I'm all hopped up on generic pink allergy pills, and I'm not even 100% sure what triggered the reaction. Well, here's hoping it's not an entirely new allergy.