As long as there have been advertisements for pharmaceutical drugs, there have been people cracking jokes about the required list of side effects that must accompany them. Whether it's sophomoric giggling over the digestive implications, or wryly pointing out that the side effects are often worse than the original condition being treated, it's an easy target for ridicule. For me, the side effects aren't so funny. I am particularly sensitive to most of the pharmaceuticals I have tried--allergic to some, made miserable by others. I had a doctor refer to me as a "five percenter" a few years back. I've learned to be very careful and pay attention to how my body reacts to prescription meds, and to speak up to my doctors when I'm not happy with how I feel on certain things. It's part of the reason I try so very hard not to take anything at all if I can avoid it by making dietary changes or undergoing physical therapies. A few weeks ago, when we couldn't find any obvious source of my frequent dizzy spells, my doctor asked me to try an antihistamine that has anti-vertigo properties. I wasn't enthused, but I agreed to try. The first time I took one, I slept hard on the couch for two hours on the evening I took it, and the entire next day was a waste. It took me three weeks to be willing to give it a second chance, partly because I had to clear my schedule and guarantee that I had a whole day I could sacrifice. I had the same reaction last night, crashing on the couch, and then having that awful feeling in my chest once I was upstairs in bed, wondering whether I was just going to stop breathing or my heart would just forget to beat. I lost nearly all of today to dizziness, fatigue, confusion, and apathy. All of this from a medication intended to prevent vertigo. I gave it the old college try, and I can say definitively that it was a total failure. I'm not particularly disappointed, though. I didn't want to have to take daily pills. I'm done with that nonsense.
I wanted to be a lot more active outside, but my energy levels and heat tolerance were pretty deep in the crapper too. I did try to rip out more vines, but they are much more deeply entrenched than I believed at first. I will need to go in with large, sharp tools. Just ripping with one gloved hand while holding the phone to my ear with the other was not the most effective method of vine eradication. I had enough concentration to assemble four more containers of flowers from the last trip to the garden center. I'm nearly through all of it, and ready to start searching for more. The selection of herbs has been lacking every time I go. Time to branch out and try different nurseries. I have no intention of missing out on lemon verbena during salad season.
It seems there is always someone on the wrong side of my kitchen door lately. If I had any lizards today, I never saw them. But while I was taking my lunch, a loud buzzing came from the kitchen. I looked up in time to see a large bumblebee get lost, and fly past my head to the window beside my fireplace, and panic when it couldn't get outside that way. For some reason, that rescue was much more exciting than the lizards. I put on a leather jacket and gardening gloves, before I carefully (and slowly, with several misses) trapped it in a plastic pitcher, with a cloth grocery bag as a lid. I took it out to my knockout rose, hoping it would settle on one of the open blooms (there are about to be many more) to calm down. Instead it flew high above my head, toward the thicket. And once I corralled all the cats inside, before finishing my flower containers, I heard several choruses of "Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song." Apparently I am a very mean person. All the little faces in the windows told me so.
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