Tag Pt 2

4) The slight itch in the crook of my elbow has turned into little red bumps that have spread to an alarmingly large portion of my body. I used to be severely allergic to poison oak and would have huge, oozing rashes most of the spring/summer, but as it's been years since I've had a reaction, and I'm really careful, I was really hoping that maybe I'd grown out of it, or had been exposed so much that it just didn't generate that much of a reaction anymore. Also, during a training exercise at Ft. Drum, we were punished with the infamous "Incoming 100 meters, that way!" drill, which involves sprinting around in a field and diving into the grass at prescribed intervals, and after twenty minutes or so I realized that it wasn't just grass and harmless bushes we were flopping around on, but huge swaths of poison ivy. When I didn't have any sign of a reaction, I thought maybe it was over. But perhaps poison ivy just isn't the same, cuz this stuff is looking familiar. Ick. Plus, my other allergies (the sneezing, wheezing kind) are bugging me. I may have to resort to taking medicine.

5) I HATE taking drugs. I have to be in some seriously high levels of discomfort before I'll down any chemicals. For one, I'm kinda scared as to what they're actually doing to me. For two, I can't drink booze with any of them, for fear of causing some sort of horrible reaction and having my insides melt. (I at least am aware of what alcohol does to my system. Long, latinized chemical names, not so much.)

6) Speaking of "seriously high", FIFA recently banned high altitude, international soccer matches. I wasn't aware that there even were soccer stadiums in the 11,000 - 14,000 foot range. Two experiences tell me this is a good idea: For about a two month period in Afghanistan I lived at 8,000 feet. It's not like I was in bad shape when I arrived, either; I was used to running 3-5 days a week for 3-6 miles at a time. I had been at this firebase about two weeks before I attempted to run, as was suggested by the people that had been there longer. I had sort of noticed the thin air while carrying a couple cases of water out to the truck when I had to pause to catch my breath. Even still, when I did get around to running, I only lasted a half a mile and I really thought I was going to die. My vision got dark around the edges and blurry in the middle, I had to lean up against a wall to keep from falling on my face, and no matter how many breaths I took or how deep they were, I could not get enough air. At the end of the two months, my buddy and I attempted a slightly faster pace, but still slower than what we'd do at home, and made it a whole mile, and then I REALLY thought I was going to die. Same symptoms as before, just worse. I even felt funny the rest of the day, like nutrients weren't traveling to my brain like they should.
The second experience was a high school soccer game in Sister, OR. Sisters is only 5,000 feet or so, but I still felt like I was running in slow motion. It didn't help that the ref decided that if we were to wear long sleeves under our jerseys that everyone's on the team needed to be the same color (normally, the undergarments just have to be either white or black, there's no requirement for uniformity throughout the team). Of course the kids from the poor logging town at sea level didn't have matching attire that the rich kids in the ski resort did, so we played in the snow flurries in shorts and t-shirts. The presence of a huge mountain just on the other side of a valley directly down from us combined with the lack of oxygen to make me feel like I was falling off the field.

7) When I was little, I would have dreams about falling off the Earth. These may have spawned from the revelation that people didn't live INSIDE the earth, but rather on TOP of it, something my little mind couldn't quite wrap itself around. In any case, the dreams started out with me in some very grassy, hilly location in the far north, near the top of the planet. The scenery looked suspiciously similar to that of Scotland and Ireland. I'd be running south down a huge hill, and as I picked up speed and the curvature of the earth kicked in, I'd run myself right off the edge of the planet and fall down - really, it seemed like flying, because the earth was getting further away from me - all along the ocean and other continents and then I'd wake up with a start like in most normal falling dreams. At least the scenery was pretty! Odd, especially considering at that age I'd never been to the places that resembled the ones in this dream.

8) EXTRA CREDIT! I hate bugs. The world would be a much better place if all arthropods and arachnids - with the exception of honey bees, daddy long-legs, and small hermit crabs - were eliminated. Hornets, wasps and spiders because they sting/bite and they're HORRIFIC looking (really, have you ever gotten a close look at one? *shudder*). Lobsters because of Stephen King's The Gunslinger and crabs because of the scene in Winged Migration when the battalion of crabs descend upon the wounded bird and drag it off while it's still alive. Oh, and ants. I won't ever forgive those awful creatures for the damage - physical and mental - they inflicted on me and my sensitive skin in Texas and Alabama. They're nasty, they bite, and scarily enough, they COMMUNICATE. Get rid of them, NOW!!!