02/03/2025
nasal spray
Clearing a stuffy nose feels like a Sisyphean task. That is, without Nasal Decongestant Oxymetazoline HCI 0.05%, a Herculean hero, clad in a spray bottle with a child proof lock. My nasal spray, like me, is an NYC transplant, exposed by its Publix generic brand logo. I access my nasal spray through a hole poked in the bottle, created with a push pin one night in the middle of an I-can-only-breathe-through-my-mouth-and-this-child-lock-won’t-open -anymore crash out.
If you are a nasal spray user, you are aware that you are only meant to use it for a few days. This is because it can cause ‘rebound congestion’. The nasal spray shrinks your blood vessels, but they slowly adapt, with each use shrinking less but still swelling back when the medicine wears off. This leaves a user having to use nasal spray continuously just to keep their nose from doing something the nasal spray itself is causing. We become a much less metaphorical Sisyphus, nasal spray becoming our boulder.
To prevent this personally feared phenomenon, I only turn to nasal spray when it's time to sleep, and only as a last resort. I will only use it on one nostril, the one currently blocked up, and try to fall asleep as quickly as possible before the stuffiness switches to the other nostril. The following night, I will make sure to only use it on the other nostril. The stuffiness phases of my colds never last more than a few days anyways but this method keeps me thinking that I am for sure one hundred percent safe from that impending cycle of doom.
Interestingly, this past cold, after using the nasal spray for just one day, I convinced myself that to an even further extent I should spare using it, so I discovered an unusual backup. In the comments of a YouTube video teaching you how to unblock your nose (neither of the eager instructors' methods featured in the video worked), someone said to just do about 5 pushups. Out of sheer curiosity, I tried it. It worked. My nose was clear long enough for me to fall asleep. Pushups. Who knew. I was always good at those.
ginger candy/aquaphor
Trader Joe’s, my cost-friendly grocery store, my handling standing in long lines simulator, my oasis full of Guys Who Look A Little Bit Like Jake Gyllenhaal But Not Enough To Matter. My favorite item from Trader Joe’s when I have a cold is their candied ginger. A sinus clearing must-have. So imagine my disappointment at Trader Joe dearest when I stepped into the dried fruit aisle and saw the candied ginger nowhere to be found, its labeled spot on the shelf chock full of impostors: bags of candied orange peels. An empty afternoon ahead, I took it upon myself to be resourceful. This Trader Joe’s did have ginger, and I had at home sugar, water, and a stove. So the rest of my day was spent making candied ginger from scratch.
My ginger looked great, but had to sit overnight to dry. I was particularly excited about the bottles worth of ginger syrup I got as a byproduct of making the ginger. I drank a delicious ginger peach tea that night. The drying ginger sat on a tray on the table.
My roommate brought a friend over that night. An unfortunate (or secretly fortunate for a person who likes to be Kept In The Loop) element of our apartment is the ability for the sound of conversations to travel through doors. From my room I could hear my roommate's friend, assumedly upon noticing the ginger, ask what it was. After inspecting closely they figured out that it was ginger. My roommate offhandedly to the friend: Maybe it's edible. He replies: Yeah or bro maybe there’s acid on it.
For some reason upon overhearing this I felt a certain sort of weirdness. A joke that I would usually not think twice about, felt different. The subject was my ginger. My candied ginger I spent hours making with virtue and sincerity. My pride and joy reduced to Maybe It’s An Edible. I was not in on the joke. I guess I will carry on like I never heard it.
The next morning, my ginger was still not dry. The recipe said it’s supposed to dry overnight, was what I said to my roommate (the same one I overheard the last night). I think it's just particularly moist in this apartment was her response. I nodded in agreement but in my head I was confused. A moist apartment? I have never experienced this said humidity in our apartment. Some mornings, my hair floats full of static when I brush it. The skin on my face and hands, brutalized by the winter dryness, never improves in condition. I bought a giant tube of Aquaphor earlier in the season, anticipating its usefulness. I slather it on multiple times a day, praying from some kind of relief from the cracking of my hands and the flecks of dry skin appearing on my face.
I am particularly self conscious about the dry skin on my face. I have never seen anyone else with flecks of dry skin on their face, which makes me fear there is some solution I am missing. I worry that people will assume I do not care about my appearance if I have flecks of dry skin on my face. I do not want to become a Person With Flecks Of Dry Skin On Their Face, in the way I sometimes awfully categorize people I know but am not close with: Girl With The Ghastly Eyebrows, Guy With The Horrible Voice. I am scared of things like this.
My candied ginger finally dried two days later. I am out of my snack sized food storage bags, so I put them in a half finished bag of Trader Joe’s dried blueberries. They taste lovely. The crunchy medallion shapes are perhaps superior to the Trader Joe’s chewy chunks.
glass of water
When I’m sick I remember even more to drink water.
I always keep a glass of water by my bed.
I love the slender and minimal look of my water glass from Ikea.
We bought 6 and broke 2 and then bought 6 more and broke 1.
When i’m sick I just heat up my water sometimes because I don’t want to waste my tea.
I listen to Water by Alex G before I go to bed sometimes and drink my glass of water and smile because it's like a lullaby to me.
3ds
I am thinking about modding my 3DS. I have always considered it but now I am Considering it. Lots of people have, after the eShop was discontinued two years ago. I bought my 3ds five years ago, far past its prime but a little while before the 3ds prices skyrocketed out of control on eBay. It didn’t have much, besides some Mario games, a Zelda game I’ve played on occasion, and a gallery of pictures taken by its previous owner, a child, back in 2010.
I was a kid who never had a 3DS growing up so I have been trying to make up for this staple of childhood that I never experienced. I originally bought the 3ds so I could play Pokemon Soulsilver, loaned to me by a dance studio friend. I forgot to return it, she forgot to ask for it back, I moved states away for college, and I still play the game to this day.
I thought about modding my 3DS right after I bought a copy of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days on eBay, a game which I have recently decided to finally play out of my affinity for Roxas. I have no interest in emulating DS games on my laptop, because I believe form follows function. I really should mod my 3DS. Buying game cartridges is expensive. The eShop doesn’t work. There is little ethical guilt for pirating games on a console whose mega-corporation creator no longer sells games for. I could customize my 3DS with an awesome theme.
Jailbreaking a 3DS is said to be a very easy process if you just follow the directions. It’s so easy that “you’d have to be genuinely stupid or trying to on purpose” to brick your device. I’m quite adept at electronics so it should be no issue for me. Still, I hesitate and just keep Considering. The long list of instructions looms over me.
My 3DS has a history, a camera roll full of campy concert videos from myself and unintentionally campy photos taken by its previous owner. A friends list full of people that have not played in years and I will never meet. I am still just thinking about modding my 3DS. Maybe after I beat Days.