How I Deal with Allergies and New Episode of the Lesbian Tea Basket

Getting to be in touch with my body and listening to it means remembering its cycles. When I was about 26 I started getting horrible headaches every Spring that were not affected by my use of ibuprophin or tylenol! It kept happening until I realized they were sinus headaches and took the right stuff (Tylenol Sinus, my savior) which would alleviate them. I went through this cycle of “What’s happening with my body” until I finally realized that these headaches would occur every Spring and were likely developing allergies.

Riding the Coney Island Wonder Wheel with my pal Leo. It was their first time!

Slowing down and paying attention to your body is really important for self-care. In the last few years I’ve learned how to notice what’s going on with my body. I also know how to anticipate what is coming based on this whole paying attention thing. Spring and Fall my allergies flare up. So, my allergy regime is this, which I typically start before the allergies come in full bloom:

1. Morning nasal irrigation with this Neilmed Nasal Rinse bottle situation.

2. A prescription nasal spray (I think it’s a steroid but not sure). For those of you who are uninsured like me, Walgreens is now offering this discount prescription card where my normally $78 generic spray is now only $15 per refill. This is the same price I was paying for the spray using my erstwhile $350 a month COBRA insurance.

3. Since congestion is a huge problem for me, I also don’t eat dairy or citrus (both congestants) during allergy season.

4. A daily cup of my allergy tea. Suggested by my accupuncturist when I was seeing them during the Spring, it is a combination of Nettles, Goldenrod, Rooibus and Lavender. (The former two are the allergy formula, the latter two are what I added to make it taste awesome.) I bought this tea at a great Herb Shoppe in Brooklyn that has tons of jars of herbs and allows you to make your own blends. Genius!

In general this works, and when it doesn’t I take the sinus headache medicine. It’s not perfect and I’m always adding to it, like trying acupuncture last season (it really worked!) and I am going to try an herbal remedy offered by the Herb Shoppe in Brooklyn I went to for my allergy tea. I’m sure one day when I am monied I will go to an allergist to find out if there’s a better medicine I could be taking but in the meantime this whole shebang is the least expensive way I can figure to go about relieving the allergies.

The night I sent an all-call out to my pals to watch the Blue Moon and the Coney Island fireworks on the beach and what started as five folks turned into thirty in under an hour. Blankets and blankets of queers!

Of course, since there’s a tea involved, I definitely needed to do a Lesbian Tea Basket episode to rate and review the tea! I also asked my friend Emma Dilemma to guest star so I could ask them about their life as a cis white jewish vagabond punk femme in between jobs and homes.

On this episode we get down with some allergy tea and Emma and I discuss how they became more portable, as a lifestyle and with their personal style. We discuss insinuating yourself into San Francisco Queer Life, the sanitization of Dolores Park and some of the mysteries of Brooklyn. And Emma’s gel manicure!

And congratulations to the winner of the Gaga Feminism giveaway! I used the Random.org number generator and the winner was comment 14, Elusis. Elusis I emailed you to get your info for Beacon to send the book.