Good Drugs

I've been sneezing an awful lot lately.  And I can feel fluid in my ear, the ear itself itching terribly.  My nose has been runny.  And I've been coughing.

I've always been smug that so many in Davis complain about seasonal allergies and I really didn't have many symptoms.  I know people who had never had any signs of allergies whatsoever, who get them within a year of moving here.  

It never occurred to me that my occasional sneezing and sniffles might be because of allergies.

I've been ignoring the symptoms for several days now, not really minding the sneezing, and kind of enjoying it, actually.  But the itchy ear was driving me bonkers.  Fortunately we have no qtips in the house or I would have poked a hole in my ear drum by now.  

But this morning I felt like I had the world's worst cold.  It was one of those "curl into a ball, moan, and tell everybody to go away and leave me alone."  

Allergies?  Could this possibly be allergies?

We don't have a lot of things like cold remedies in the house, but I searched and found an old box of Allerest and, without much hope of it doing anything, I took two.

Within 10 minutes, the fluid in my ear wasn't noticeable, I had stopped sneezing, and I was able to put away the box of tissues because I didn't need them.

The box says to take 2 pills every 4 hours.  I didn't need to watch the clock because in 4 hours, my ear started itching a bit, no fluid yet, but just a slight reminder to take my medicine.  Two pills, 10 minutes, all symptoms were gone again.  The same thing happened 4 hours after that.

So I've decided it is not a cold I have but that after 40+ years here in Davis, I finally am having a full-fledged case of hay fever.

Thanks goodness for good drugs!

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We are approaching the end of our theater orgy.  Last night we attended a show by a brand new theater group in town, The Art Theater of Davis, which was presenting Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters.  I had not seen a Chekhov play before and was a bit nervous about it, it being the sort of thing that "theater people" know well, but not having studied theater or anything else in college, it was new to me, and could I understand it?

Well, it was as good production, not a great production, but definitely enjoyable.   I had major complaints, not with the production, but with the program which seemed to assume that you knew the play before coming to see it.  While the program gives the names of the characters and the actor who plays which character, Chekhov rarely uses the actual name of the character in his script. Other than the three sisters, their brother and his wife, nobody else is called by his or her program name.

Baki Tezcan, for example, gives an excellent performance as Vershinin, the Lieutenant-colonel commanding the artillery battery in town, who enters into an affair with sister Masha, but it was not until I got home that I realized which character he was because he is only referred to by his military title in the script.

Steve Buchanan plays Tuzenbach, in love with youngest sister Irina, but is only ever called "Baron" in the play. 

The only reason I knew that the servant they call "Nanny" is named Anfisa was because I had met the actress at a book club meeting, when she was passing out cards inviting us to come to see her in the play.

So I took them to task for that, but otherwise gave it good, if not high, marks.   What I loved about this new theater is that they have created a theater space in a big warehouse, where there are shops and the local flea market.  They have set off a corner of the building and created a 40-some seat theater, which is a little gem. Folding chairs for now, which get hard to sit on after a couple of hours, but this is just their first production and I'm sure that as they evolve, the theater itself will evolve as well.

Tonight there is nothing to review and I hardly know what to do with myself.  Tomorrow night we see Blue Man Group in Sacramento, but then my theater orgy is coming to an end and I will go back to the kind of schedule I've had for the past 14 years.