I normally don’t write about work here. I like to keep work at work, but something happened that is far too hilarious for me to pass up.
On Tuesday evening I mowed our lawn for the first time after the seasonal break due to winter. Naturally the first things that begin to grow are weeds. The grass is still browned and dry and will need a few weeks of weed and feed, coercion, and watering to change to a normal green color. We had a lawn service maintaining our lawn for the majority of last year but decided the $100 monthly fee could be better spent on pretty much anything, so we canceled in the off season. In my new excitement to maintain my own lawn I decided I needed/wanted a gas-powered edger/weed eater. Faced with a non-stop 8 months of lawn care, I thought it would be okay to spend $100 or so on a nice gas-powered one so I don’t have to keep replacing spools and messing with the cord on our electric whacker. My inspiration was a 2-stroke weed eater my parents had given us that after 10 years of use didn’t seem to work. I couldn’t get it to work either. Lowe’s and back again, I opened and began using my foliage flagellator after scalping and bagging the grass with the lawn-mower.
I didn’t wear a mask.
I didn’t wear a mask.
I’m a moron.
My wife told me to wear one and I believed her to be too fastidious in her fear for my frail resistance to pollen and life in general. Usually I can take a benadryl afterwards and be dandy by the time it wears off. It wore off at about 4:00am. At which point I could only breathe in short gasps, and had a layer of phlegm blocking my airway. Chest wracking coughs weren’t possible because I couldn’t draw in the air or spare the breath. After about 15 minutes of deterioration and struggle with breathing I decided this situation needed drastic measures. Either I drink a bunch of benadryl or I go to the hospital. I decided to slam some children’s benadryl like I was a parachuting snowboarder playing halo drinking mountain dew. I drank about 80-100 ml of it. It took about 5-10 minutes to kick in and did it ever kick in. I was able to breathe. I don’t remember falling back asleep, I just remembered looking at the clock every minute or so but each time I looked an hour had passed. I turned my alarm off but don’t remember it sounding.
At 9:00am I get a call from my boss on my cell. “Are you in today or not?” he asks. “Outh,” I reply in my best non-slurring voice. I then explain what had happened while wobbling on my feet, at least this is what my brain remembers. “Well, the meeting on the zone project database is today.” “Uh, oh,” I had missed the first meeting in Austin due to an extremely sick rest of the family, and really didn’t want to miss this one. I had remembered the meeting and even set my alarm for the appropriate time to show up with plenty of time to spare. You know, the alarm I had turned off in an anti-histamine stupor. In the middle of a benadryl bender I had completely forgotten. My boss and another associate from the Austin office had flown in to Dallas just to make this meeting. I didn’t want to skip out a second time when the company had paid airfare for some others to be in my home office. I thought for a heartbeat, I’ll just shower then drive there. Um, yeah. Heather drove me to work. I could hardly walk straight. I sat in the meeting and actually contributed, even though it was against my own better judgment, cause I honestly can’t keep my mouth shut in design/planning meetings.
The meeting went well and I managed to not look like too big of an idiot. The benadryl started to wear off at about 12:30 and was completely gone about 3 hours later… although I have a rash on my neck now. There’s something in my yard that hates me and I return the sentiment. Next time I wear a mask.
Tags: benadryl,hunter s. thompson,work,work work,yard work
Categories: BJ, Entertainment
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