1. Personal obsession: Perhaps the most annoying and important event of the past few weeks was my affliction with poison oak…on my face. I’ve had poison oak before, all over my knee, and it was very irritating. My body was so consumed with agitation that my knee did a weird throbbing twitch for about a week in addition to the all encompassing itching. My knee is still scarred due to my inability to have scratching self-control. I would say it was about an 8/10 with 10 being the worst, in terms of itching. I’m not actually sure what a 10 would be, but I think it would probably involve poison oak in the blood stream. My poison oak facial was not an 8, but rather a 5. Due to its location ON MY FACE, however, I’m going to bump it up to a 10. Luckily, it only lasted, at its worst, for about three days, two on the weekend. It all started on a Wednesday, when I awoke to an engorged and itchy eye. I made two early morning phone calls down my roster of semi-life coaches (dad and Paulina) to inquire about steps to take when having an allergic reaction. I’ve never actually been allergic to anything or had sinus problems. In fact, so foreign are these concepts that I’m not entirely sure if allergies and sinuses are related. Does one cause the other? Do they always happen together? All I know is that I took some antihistamine and it didn’t go away. By Friday it was clear, by the fleshy oozing spots on my chin/face and droopy eye, that I was dealing with a more sinister, medicinally-immune enemy. Saturday night, at its peak, I went bowling with my companion and he cleverly remarked that I looked like a tug boat captain, due to the swelling along my entire jaw bone that distorted the shape of my face. By Sunday, my lymph nodes under my chin and on the “bad side” of my face were completely swollen, enhancing the physical disfiguration. This was also the weekend I decided to plunge into tote bag making, requiring me to go to the local JoAnn craft and fabric store. Thus the transformation into my worst nightmare was complete.
2. Person Obsession: Bruce Springsteen. Say what you will, but the man is a genius. We’ve been listening to the Nebraska album continuously for two weeks, and never have I wanted to go live in a cornfield in Kansas (or Nebraska, whatever) and get drunk every night at my local watering hole while slowly losing myself in the abyss of the American wasteland more than RIGHT NOW. I cry nearly every time Highway Patrolman comes on. The moral of the story: it’s hard to cast judgment on our families. Bruce Springsteen is like the Socrates of the late 20th century. My companion and I have a plan to see him in concert ASAP.
3. Food obsession: Pomelo. It’s like a sweet grapefruit and it grows in Israel, Malaysia and California. According to the internet, a grapefruit is the result of the union between a pomelo and an orange (currently not recognized by the federal government). It’s huge (up to 25 lbs! and the largest citrus) and literally takes about two days to eat. I dressed one up in my helmet (it's roughly head size) and photographed it next to pumpkin for scale. Isn’t she the cutest?
