Oh, what a weekend we had over here.
Mimi and Bops picked up Caroline on Friday afternoon and I headed straight to the mall because my birthday money was burning a hole in my pocket. Oh sure, I could save it, but why would I do that?
I was halfway to the mall when I remembered that it was tax-free weekend in Texas which translates to MASS CHAOS.
But because I am a fool for shopping, I decided to brave the crowds and take advantage of tax-free savings. I’m not going to lie, I barely made it out alive.
I limped out of the mall in need of fresh air and a weapon of mass destruction. The good news is that my foray into the bowels of hell paid off because I found a really cute pea coat, which is hard to get excited about in the dead of August but will be delightful in January.
Earlier that afternoon, I noticed I had a small rash on my chest. It was slightly itchy and red, but I decided it was a heat rash from all of our beach fun. No big deal.
P and I picked up barbecue for dinner that evening because everyone knows that pork ribs are the traditional celebratory meal for an eleventh wedding anniversary. As we sat at the coffee table, eating our dinner and watching the Olympics, (who says romance is dead?) I began to feel a little itchy behind my knees. And on my arms. And on my back.
I went to look at myself in the mirror and I screamed in horror. Actually, I’m not sure I screamed, but I did mumble a quiet, “What the heck?”
It was not pretty, my friends. Not pretty at all.
So I popped a Zyrtec or six and went to bed in the hopes of sleeping off my rash.
I woke up Saturday morning at 11:00 with a major antihistamine hangover. I kept splashing my face with water and trying to rub my eyes, but everything remained foggy. It was just like I was back in college after a night of too much Zima.
The irony is that I sold Zyrtec for years and always assured physicians that it shouldn’t make their patients sleepy and that it was much more tolerable than Benadryl. And, technically, that is true for 87% of the population.
However, I fall into the other 13%. It knocks girlfriend STRAIGHT OUT.
In fact, when P and I used to take 75 high school kids skiing every Spring Break and had to ride a bus for 17 hours, I would always take a Zyrtec so that I could sleep the entire way.
And then I’d take several more throughout the trip to drown out all the teen angst.
If you are the parent of someone who went on one of these trips, I’m sure someone else was watching your kid. I’m also 87% sure that none of them ever snuck out at night while I was in a comatose state.
Anyway, about my rash.
It continued to spread. I spent most of Saturday coating myself with hydrocortisone and popping any antihistamine I could find in the medicine cabinet.
I’m here to tell you that there is not a more romantic way to spend your eleventh wedding anniversary than all drugged up and slathered in hydrocortisone. That is HOT with a capital H.
I’d use my most alluring voice to say, “Hey baby, why don’t you come over here and put some of that Benadryl lotion on the backs of my knees?”
And for some reason, probably fear of contamination, he turned me down.
I believe the vows say IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH.
I finally decided that I contracted some sort of beach rash from all that moat-digging. P thought maybe I was allergic to something I used to clean the house earlier that day.
Later, I was talking to Sophie on the phone, telling her about my rash and our theories as to its origin and she said, “Well, it couldn’t be Mrs. Meyers cleaning spray because it’s all-natural and organic.”
I told P what Sophie said and he replied, “Well, so is the Gulf of Mexico so that doesn’t mean much.”
He makes an excellent point.
If there is any place in the world where a person is likely to contract a rash, it would stand to reason it might be a place where it’s a common practice to carry your Marlboro Lights in your cleavage.