Coffee heat rising

Angst

Why Didn’t I Think of That Before…

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Ever have one of those why didn’t I think of that before moments, borne out of some altogether irrelevant little challenge? It’s like looking at something askance and spotting a detail you’ve been missing every time you stare straight at the thing.

This morning I set out to soak the vines that grow in mounds along the Funny Farm’s back wall, by way of cutting the likelihood — however slim (or not) — of a fire starting in the dry stuff under it when the local yokels take to the alley to set off their illegal fireworks. My twitly neighbors, as you’ll recall, have dumped so much trash out there that Gerardo figured he couldn’t get it all in his (very large) trailer.

And our legislators, who by tradition indulge in stupidity that far surpasses mere twitliness have set things up like this:

• Confused about the difference between firearms and fireworks, they eliminated all laws and regulations limiting the possession and use of DIY fireworks, except the kind that rocket up in the air and create giant shows.

• When several cities stepped into the breach and banned certain types of especially dangerous fireworks within their city limits, our idiot legislators passed another law stating that cities and towns may not tell retailers that they cannot sell these devices, whether or not they’re illegal to use within the city.

• Thus, bang-bang enthusiasts run down to the local Albertson’s (ours has set up a tent in its parking lot for the sale of such toys) and stock up on fireworks of all kinds, including the ones that are illegal here in lovely uptown Phoenix.

• The enthusiasts, of course, know that if they’re caught shooting off a locally illegal firework, they’ll be cited.

• So, by way of avoiding a citation, they sneak into the alleys to set off their most dangerous toys.

And of course, when you have oleanders or vines along your back lot line, or when someone has dumped a lot of dry trash in your alley, what you then have is a fire hazard. Wow! More than you might imagine: 18,500 fires per year, including 1300 structure fires, 300 vehicle fires, and 16,900 outside and other fires.

Personally, I would prefer not to see my home or yard be included in this year’s $43 million of related property damage.

By way of minimizing that hazard, my plan is to get those damn cat’s-claw vines soaking wet, so that by dark this evening they’ll be too soggy to catch fire.

The prospect of dragging the hose and a sprinkler across the pool and up and down 100 feet of back wall on a 113-degree day does not appeal.

Ugh.

But as I get started along about dawn, it occurs to me that one could take the soaker hose that runs along the base of the plants and lay it over the crown of the hedge. Then turn the timer to run as long as it will go — two hours — and let water drip down over the tops of the plants. This would obviate some hose-drag. At least it would allow me to escape having to haul the hose over and through the pool and physically tie the sprinkler to the top of the wall.

So I start to do that: disentangle the thing from the plants’ stems and lay it over the top of the vines. This looks like it’ll work, except…

Yeah. Except…the hose is so old that it crumbles as I handle it!

Fuck.

I manage to pinch off the broken end and get it to run well enough to see how this scheme will work. And yeah. It sure as hell will work. It delivers a load of water to those vines and it dribbles down into the insides of the vine cover. This means the most flammable parts of those vines get really wet. And they get wet with ONE hose-bib turn, not eight or ten hose-drags.

Not only is this working exceptionally well, it now occurs to me that it would be pretty easy to set this up as a permanent thing: instead of running the soaker hose along the ground…duh!!! Run it over the tops of the vines, where water will flow down over the plants and drip onto the ground where rain would normally drip: to the root area where the vines need to get water.

Those vines are looking a bit peakèd these days, partly because the 15-year-old drip system is failing in places, and partly because you can drip-irrigate until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t get some rain, drip irrigation does not suffice to keep something like that alive forever.

And we haven’t had rain in years.

So…why not add some fake rain?

Needed:

• One short length of regular hose: on hand
• Double-outlet hose bib: on hand
• One 100-foot or two 50-foot lengths of soaker hose: HD is open today
• One hose timer: on hand

Well, hell. Who’d’ve thunk it? Or more to the point, why didn’t I think of it before this?????

So whenever I get around to it, I’m gonna run up to the Depot and pick up the proposed soaker hose.

This is going to be great. It will make watering those damn vines one whole lot easier. Right now it’s a hassle, because I have to climb under eye-poking shrubbery to connect the backyard hose to the soaker that runs around the back of the pool, and that doesn’t reach all the way along the back wall, so a hose-drag is required to reach the whole “hedge” of vines. It’s such a PITA I tend to put it off until it doesn’t get done at all. With the drippers working poorly or not at all, that means the vines are dying back because, lacking any rain, they don’t get enough water.

And with the two-hole hose bib, I can run the short, unused length of hose sitting in the storage shelves over to the soaker hose connection and just leave it there permanently: never have to connect, disconnect, and drag the hose again!

It seems so obvious. Why didn’t I think of this before?

Some Punkins!

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How d’you like this mess?

And this one?

And how would you like to hit this chunk of concrete in your car or truck, while you’re tooling up the alley?

Guaranteed to take out your oil pan!

That crap is the dried-out remains of my former neighbor Sally’s backyard landscaping, which the new young owners have hacked out and dumped, higgledy-piggledy, into the alley. It’s actually less of a mess than it was: at first they just dumped it all over the thoroughfare. After a week or so, they (or someone) went out there and stacked it against the kids’ wall. More or less. Except for the chunks of concrete, which they left there to catch an unwary motorist.

See that thing that looks like a shrub somebody yanked out by the roots and threw on the ground? That’s a juniper. Juniper is one of the most flammable plants you can put in your yard. And all that loose debris? It’s been there a good ten days: drying out in 108-degree heat. It is, in a word, a pile of tinder.

The day after tomorrow is the Fourth of July.

Every July 4, people sneak into the alleys — ours included — to shoot off marginally legal and illegal fireworks. Our idiot legislators, who confuse “fireworks” with “firearms” and so must preserve our right to carry them, did away with all state regulation of consumer fireworks. They did allow a few cities to lay down limits…but their workaround for that was to pass another law stating that cities and counties cannot tell retailers not to sell any fireworks they please — whether or not said fireworks are illegal within the city limits;.

Right. Got that?

City to Morons: You can buy these things that will blow off your hand and blast out your eyes but you can’t set them off.

Morons to City: Sure, boss. Yup yup yup!!!

Phbhphbhthphththt!

So now every July 4 and every New Year’s, we have chuckleheads blasting powerful, dangerous fireworks in every neighborhood. And since some of these things are illegal to shoot off inside the Phoenix city limits, they sneak into the alleys to play, where they think they won’t be seen.

Fun, eh?

Well, my back wall is covered with a vine called cat’s claw. Satan and Proserpine planted it there, and I’ve let it grow because I like a whole lot of privacy around my pool. And everywhere in my backyard, for that matter. The building code forbids a backyard fence higher than six feet, but nowhere is there any law that says ornamental plants growing along a back wall can’t be as high as you like. So one way get around this regulation — other than ignoring the law and stacking block eight or ten feet high — is to plant oleanders, vines, and other plants that will block the curious and the criminal from peering into your backyard.

Cat’s claw can pile up on your fence to make a ten- or twelve-foot high barrier. But of course…it’s a plant. Far as I can tell, it’s no more flammable than any other ordinary plant — nothing that I’ve looked up mentions flammability as a problem, in the way that juniper and eucalyptus and cypress are problems. That notwithstanding, Gerardo keeps it trimmed up about four feet off the ground. Still…it is a plant. And there is a lot of it. And people who sneak into alleys to shoot off their illegal fireworks do not give one thin damn about the safety of your property.

Nor, speaking of thin damns, do the neighbors. Their piles of debris are easily three to four feet deep. If that stuff catches fire, the likelihood that it will jump across the alley and set my landscaping plants alight is extremely high. Not just the cat’s claw, but the palm trees (four of them) and the citrus and the devil-pod tree and the paloverde and the olive and the …yeah: and the roof of the house. All it will take is a stiff breeze — like the one we had late this afternoon — to spread sparks from here to Hell.

So this morning I went over and visited the guy who seems to be in charge. Explained the problem. Would he please have that stuff hauled off, it being illegal to dump in the alley?

He refused. By way of blowing me off, he actually said (can you believe this?) that the City’s bulk trash collection was supposed to come by before July 4.

That’s the day after tomorrow. Did I mention that?

Well, anyway: no. Look it up online, where it’s always posted. They won’t even start bulk collection in this area until July 30.

My insurance agent advises that I should call the city and launch a complaint. He thinks everything possible needs to be done to eliminate risk of a house fire.

My son, who also is in insurance, thinks this would cause neighbor trouble, big time. He suggests making a record to the effect that I asked them to get rid of the flammable debris — like sending them a registered letter! My insurance company would then have a paper trail so as to file a claim against their insurance company.

Heee! This is supposed NOT to cause neighbor trouble?

😀

Even if a registered letter could get there by tomorrow(!), that sounds like an exercise in futility. But I do have a record: my camera dates its pictures. And I’ve just described my exchange with the jerk here in WordPress, which also dates content.

Interestingly, it appears that the guy is staying there. His decrepit truck has been parked on the street day and night — all night — for as long as the landscaping exploit has been going on. After I walked away, I heard the woman come outside and ask him what I wanted. So she does know that I asked him to clean up the mess.

I figure he must be a relative or a friend who agreed to help them with their landscaping project.

Whatever he is, he sure ain’t a landscaper!

What a mess they’ve made of Sally’s formerly dull but pleasant enough backyard. They’ve pulled out all the planting except three or four scrawny cape honeysuckle up against the back wall. And they’re spread some sort of dust-like top cover all over the back yard, with no break or planting or anything.

I don’t know what it is, only that it’s not quarter-minus. It’s like a fine dust. Weird.

These are the people who claim to want four children. They’ve already started toward that goal. Maybe they think they’ve made a giant sandbox???? I wouldn’t let a child play in that stuff on a bet: it’s Valley fever waiting to happen. And Other Daughter’s damned cats habitually used Sally’s gravel — real gravel, the heavy stuff — as their catbox.

Ugh! It won’t take long for those animals to saturate that powdery stuff with cat urine and cat shit. What on earth could they possibly be thinking?????

Anyway, absent certified letters, my plan is to go out there along about four or five p.m. on the Fourth, haul the hose with a sprinkler to the far side of the pool, and soak the bejayzus out of those vines. Get them all very, very wet, like totally drenched.

That way if a moron does get a fire started in that debris, sparks that hit the vines probably won’t set them alight. At least, given that cat’s claw supposedly isn’t extraordinarily flammable, there’ll be a fair chance that they’ll resist burning if they’re already good and wet.

If the wind comes up, though, there will be nothing I can do should sparks or embers reach that damn weeping acacia. Those trees are as flammable as eucalyptus — which is very — and the thing is a good 40 or 50 feet high.

Damn, but I’m tired of dealing with other people’s stupidity.

Budget off the Rails

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Yuck!

Okay, I admit it: I have neglected the budget. Yea verily, I have lost the art of penny-pinching.

Result: I’m running out of money, two months before the start of my next “personal fiscal year,” which starts in September. In 2017, that’s when I took the last Required Minimum Drawdown from the 401K, which was supposed to last a year.

Didn’t.

So next year I have to figure out how to live on 21 grand plus a pittance from Social Security. Since running this house and feeding me and the dogs consume about 2 grand a month, that’s a challenge.

Just now I’m as close to broke as I can get, budget-wise, considering that I have enough cash in the bank to cover about six weeks of expenses, and it’s eight weeks before the start of September.

The other day I mentioned the “envelope method” plan I’d cooked up: fill a Costco cash card with a budgeted amount to spend there during a month, and when it runs out, stop buying. This makes some sense, though nothing is to stop me from streaking out of the Costco over to the nearest Safeway and filling out the shopping list…probably at more expense than just buying everything at whatever CC would cost. Hmmm….

Whilst staring blankly at an unfriendly spreadsheet, a little INSIGHT dawned… Don’t budget by the month. Budget by the year. And instead of using cash cards as “envelopes,” use bank accounts. I already have a checking account, which juggles cash flow; an emergency savings account (containing $4.61); and an account to hold payments from Medigap and Medicare B, preparatory to forwarding that money to the Mayo.

[The Mayo does not “take Medicare assignment.” This is a bureaucratic way of saying they don’t accept direct deposit from Medicare or your Medigap insurer. So, every goddamn time you go to the doctor or an ER or whatEVER, you have to field a blitz of ditzy little annoying checks, deposit them in your bank account, and then pay the Mayo. Right now one has been sitting on my desk for awhile, waiting for me to get around to the hassle of scanning and uploading it: $24.17. The Mayo’s outstanding bill is several hundred dollars… It is, in a word or two, a fuckin’ nuisance.]

Where were we? Yes, staring blankly, dreaming up a fresh scheme…

A little calculation showed that if I were to get a freaking grip on spending, in theory this year’s drawdown should just about cover 2018/19 expenditures, if nothing happens. By “nothing,” we mean no major car repair bills, no appliances having to be replaced, no giant vet bills, no dental work…a very big “nothing,” indeed. But let’s pretend a person could get through 12 months without having to confront any of those.

Right.

What if I kept the drawdown that just hit my checking account in my checking account, but did not keep Social Security income in checking? What if I auto-transferred each Social Security deposit over to the Emergency Savings account…. Said E.S. account is empty just now, putting me at considerable risk of future misery. Twelve hundred a month would, in theory, load that account with some 14 grand over the next year, allowing me not to have to spend crazily to keep up with routine month-to-month costs.

And instead of keeping the entire drawdown in checking, what if I transferred the $8,408 a year demanded by taxes and insurance (!!!!!!) over to the present tax & insurance savings account, now empty because the 2018 T&I bills have all been paid. What if?

What would then remain in checking would be the amount I could spend on living expenses. This would be much truncated by setting all the net Social Security income aside for emergencies. But since I now have approximately $0.00 set aside in emergency savings, the truncation would be very much worth it. And, according to my English-major calculations, if I could cut the Costco bills down from $300 a month to $200 a month, this scheme would be eminently do-able.

Why do I think it would work?

Because the AMEX billing cycle closed yesterday. I charge everything on American Express, mostly including Costco but also racking up bills at various grocery stores and other retailers. This month the tab was only $775. Basically, an AMEX bill reflects all living expenses except utilities, taxes, and insurance.

It’s usually more like $1200. That means I spent some $425 less this month than I usually do.

Well, if I can spend $425 less than normal in June, I can do it all the time, no?

Yeah: probably “no.” But what’s to stop one from trying?

So the money from Fidelity hit the credit union this morning. Here’s what we now have:

$16,644 to live on for the next year (stashed in checking)
$8,408 for taxes & insurance (stashed in T&I savings)
$14,532 incoming from Social Security over the next 12 months (routed to Emergency savings)

So even though Social security will bring the year’s total cash available to something over 31 grand, the plan is to try to live on just $16,644.

That works out to $1,387 a month. So far in the current year, the one that is driving me to the metaphorical poorhouse, I’ve spent an average of $1,750 a month, a difference of $363.

So to live on this proposed new budget, I’ll have to cut spending by about $365 a month.

However, a backup fund will be growing at the rate of about $1200+ a month. If need be, I can draw down from Emergency Savings to make up the difference. So even if I regularly went over budget by some $363 every month, the red ink would only amount to about $4355. That would still leave something like 10 grand in Emergency Savings at the end of a year.

How to cut $363 a month out of normal spending?

Well, obviously:

• Don’t go to dentists.
• Don’t go to vets.
• Don’t drive the car any more than absolutely necessary (so as not to run up repair bills).
• Don’t buy clothes.
• Don’t buy shoes.
• Don’t go out to eat.
• Don’t go to shows or movies or musical events.
• Cling to every goddamn red penny.

It’s going to be a mighty dull year, I’m afraid. But I can’t be running out of cash two months before the end of every 12-month cycle. Something has to be done to get caught up with the spending

Ouch! Ugh! and Whew!!!

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Whew! It’s hotter’n’a three-dollar cookstove. The air conditioning just ran through what it defines as a cooling cycle and shut off. Still frying in here. Need to go out and fall in the pool again.

Ugh! Reports have it that Apple is going, oh (grumpily) hallelujah, to replace our fine defective goddamn keyboards, for freaking FREE!

So. I guess Monday I will have to traipse over to the Biltmore and hand this thing across the counter, there to have it gone for several days, probably the better part of a week. How can I express my annoyance?

Okay, okay, OKAYYYY you’re right! How can anyone complain when a company wants to make one of its fiascos right all by its little self, not being forced to do so by the federal government?

All very nice, I’m sure. But for what this thing cost, shouldn’t we get a keyboard that…well…you know…works? From the git-go?

Having to attach a Microsoft(!) external keyboard is the least of the annoyances. Yesterday this fine expensive little beast experienced not one, not two, but three system crashes. Plus FireFox crashed, apparently overloaded by having too many tabs open. (Is that even possible?)

These crashes occurred while I was working on the Drugging of America book, sweating over a chapter that has, to give you a clue to its complexity, 83 endnotes. Woulda thought I was gonna die, thank you very much, without the damn computer stumbling around all evening long.

So it was 11 p.m. by the time I wrestled that mess into a corner and then posted Friday’s chapter of The Complete Writer.

And finally, ouch! Now we have some direct evidence that stress makes me clench and grind my teeth at night.

Stopped wearing the mouth guard after the burning mouth episode, which hurt quite a lot and took a good three weeks to clear up fully.

Apparently this was ill-advised. Woke at 5 a.m., sat up, and…YOOOWWWWW!!!!!

Worst pain I’ve EVER felt!

It felt like somehow I must have dislocated my jaw.

In my sleep??? HOW???

Whatever…it was just excruciating, and I thought I was going to have to go to the emergency room…A-fuckinGAIN!

Managed to stagger in to the bathroom, heat up a wet washcloth, and apply. Still couldn’t close my mouth, but did contrive to get online and find, at the TMJ site, the advice that less is more. They’d posted a little physical therapy exercise that supposedly would help this phenomenon.

Couldn’t get any worse. So tried it out, and damned if it didn’t help.

These things always, invariably happen to me on the weekends. So calling the dentist was off the table. Oh well.

By 9 a.m. it had calmed down enough to be more or less tolerable. Resuscitated the mouth guard and left it in all day. That also seemed to help. I guess.

What fun.

Unable to chew anything…luckily a very ripe (and delicious!) watermelon was sitting on the kitchen counter. So that was a lot like eating sherbet. But less fattening.

This afternoon it was off to the nearby Sprouts in Crime Central to pick up a cucumber. Developed a craving for xergis, a cold soup perfect for a day like this. And it doesn’t have to be chewed. 😉

Sprouts has a security guard looming at the front door these days. That’s good. I guess. Yeah. I live in a neighborhood where the local grocery store has to post guards to keep its customers from being brained or running off in terror. Ducky.

You’d think Sprouts would have a decent cuke, wouldn’t you?

Not so much.

You had your choice:

Organic…  Armenian-type, wrapped in plastic but wimpy, no longer than a regular old-fashioned cuke, but thinner. Looked pretty puny under the plastic wrap: dented, scratched, verging on wilted.

Inorganic… Encased in wax.

The inorganic cukes were a buck apiece, but a) I hate that wax stuff and b) by the time you peeled off the contaminated skin, not so much would be left. The sickly-looking organic cukes were two bucks apiece(!!!!!).

Wave good-bye to the security guard…jump in the car…head down to AJs.

There the Armenian-style cucumbers also were $2 apiece — but you’d expect to pay that in the Jewel of Richistan. AJ’s is Arizona’s answer to Whole Foods, only it costs more.

Food’s better, too.

While there, picked up a package of overpriced dog food, obviating the need to drive out again on Monday, when the hounds will run out of the batch they’ve got in the fridge. So that was good.

At any rate, I’m pretty sure this jaw/TMJ thing is a direct result of sitting in front of the damn computer tearing my hair until 11 p.m. and then falling straightaway into the sack. It confirms the dentist’s suspicion: stress. And it explains where the stress comes from.

Working on a computer is a constant exercise in low-grade stress, punctuated by moments of frustration, rage, and despair. Last night’s Triple Crown crash-fest was more extreme than usual…but the fact of the matter is that a computer is a box filled with endless aggravation.

That notwithstanding, today I finished another chapter. It’s rather slight — only about 1670 words. But I decided it would be good to insert the “How to Read a Scientific Paper” squib closer to the front than originally planned. Follow that with the NNT chapter, which will require a degree of science-buff sophistication from the reader.

In theory, with chapter 2 I now have enough to put the proposal together and start sending it out. But I think I’d rather have a more solid chapter to include in the proposal, and the NNT rant is it. It will take two or three days to write that, I expect, using the original blog post as the bare-bones draft.

Really, the relevant posts are functioning like preliminary outlines. This stuff grows like algae on the side of the pool. And of course every word of the content has to be rewritten to sound like something a university press would care to publish… Bloggish doesn’t make it.

It’s 7 p.m., I haven’t finished the current chapter of Ella’s Story, which needs to go live on Monday. And I’m too tired to function. To reiterate:

Ouch! Ugh! and Whew!

 

Fighting Uphill through Dystopia

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Wow! This has been One of Those Days. Ever have a day where you felt like every  moment you were fighting uphill…against yourself? 😀

So for the fourth night in a row, I wake up at 2 in the morning and don’t get back to sleep. Along about dawn, I give up and roll out of the sack.

Normally at 5 a.m. I’d take the dogs for a mile-long walk: good for them, good for me. After yet another five-hour night, though, instead I wandered in to the computer to glance at the news. Then drifted over to the chapter I’m writing, which has been going exceptionally well. I’ve been working toward finishing a particularly difficult section of the thing…and when I sat down, got pulled into that.

Come 7:30 a.m., that section was written — we’re now at 62 endnotes, just for that one chapter. (This stuff is astonishing! What has been and still is going on boggles the brain.)

By now it’s getting a bit late for a doggy-walk, but thanks to Hurricane Bud’s outer fringe breezing through a couple days ago, by 7:30 it’s not yet unduly hot. So I decide to shoot out the door, despite the late hour, because the other day we failed to go out and I need not to get back into the no-walk habit.

Foolishly, though, I elect to take the route south from the Funny Farm, which is less shaded than the path through Upper Richistan. This: mistake.

Southward from here is Cassie’s favorite place to take a dump. I do not understand what it is about this particular house, but by damn, Cassie wants more than anything on this earth to dump upon its lawn. Specifically, to take up her position in front of the shack’s huge picture windows so the resident can watch her defiling the yard.

Naturally, I carry blue doggy-bags around with me. But really: every goddam day this dog has to dump on THAT lawn? If I were the homeowner, I’d be irked.

So to minimize the effect, I walk them past the house on the other side of the street and then go south on the sidewalk that passes along the side of the house. That way, when she hunkers down she at least isn’t making a spectacle of herself (and us) through the front-facing windows.

This takes us over a long stretch of fast-heating concrete and asphalt. Meanwhile, Cassie is putting up a fight: she drags  backward while Ruby drags forward. And at this moment, as we’re crossing the street, she decides to sit down in the middle of the goddamn road anbd not budge.

Here we have the flavor of the day: drag me forward, drag me backward.

Finally I cut short the stroll, leave the dogs at the house, and go out to finish the mile-long course.  By the time I get back, it’s starting to get hot.

A-a-a-n-d I haven’t watered the plants in back. In Arizona heat, you either water your potted plants or you watch your plants die. Fly outside to do that job and see the pool walls are draped with moss. Again. Mustard algae: it was cleaned up pretty well yesterday, and now here it is back again.

Feed the dogs. Fly back outside.

Screw on the pressure sprayer, jump in the drink, wash down the steps and seat and walls and walls and walls and walls and walls… Dump in more chlorine.

Notice that I must have slopped olive-oil marinade on the patio while I was entertaining friends Sunday evening. Spray the spots on the concrete and sandstone flags with diluted Dawn, let it sit.

Visit my neighbor, WonderAccountant, to gift her and Mr. WonderAccountant with the remaining half-bottle of wine from the recent shindig. It’s my favorite wine. I, however, am on the wagon and do not want this elixir to be wasted, so figured they might enjoy it. Hang out for awhile, chatting pleasantly.

After the series of sleepless nights, I decide to go back to bed for a short nap. Amazingly, it works: I’m out cold and even enjoying a dream. A fairly involved dream, complete with developed plot and characters…and of course the phone rings:

Hellooo, this is Rachel from Card Services…

Fuck!

Onward to spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning and oiling the kitchen cabinets. Fun job… 😮 But the result is pretty nice.

And speaking of Fuck…

If you are not listening to Rachel Maddow on what that bastard in the White House is doing to the children he has stolen from their parents, you sure as fuck should be. Get it on the Internet: google Rachel Maddow. Or better yet, go straight to the horse’s mouth: Pro Publica: https://www.propublica.org/article/children-separated-from-parents-border-patrol-cbp-trump-immigration-policy

This is simply inexcusable. We put a wannabe Balkan dictator in the White House, funded by multibillionaires who want to change America to fit their perverse tastes, and what we get is a country converted into a wannabe Balkan dictatorship.

If there breathes an American who does not feel shame for this, then that person is not much of an American.

Or maybe we should say this is not America. We have lost our country.

The Ah Hah! Moment: Claritin and Liver Toxicity

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Ever have one of those moments when you wake out of a sound sleep thinking, “Ah Hah! Why didn’t I think of that before?” This morning I enjoyed just such a moment, when along about 4:30 I woke up with one single, crisp thought in mind: I wonder if there’s a connection between all that Claritin I’ve been taking and the elevated liver enzymes?

An hour later, I stumble out of the sack, let the dogs out, trot into the office, turn on the computer, and run a little search: loratidine and liver. And hallelujah, brothers and sisters…wouldn’cha know it?

Loratadine and desloratadine use are associated with a low rate of liver enzyme elevations which are usually asymptomatic, mild and self-limited even without modification of the dose.  In addition, rare instances of clinically apparent liver injury attributed to loratadine and desloratadine use have been reported as isolated case reports….

The mild and asymptomatic elevations in serum aminotransferase that have been observed during loratadine and desloratadine therapy are usually transient and may resolve even without dose modification.  Clinically apparent liver injury due to these second generation antihistamines, however, generally calls for prompt withdrawal of the agent.  Severe injury is uncommon and most cases resolve promptly upon withdrawal. 

Thus saith the National Institutes of Health, hardly a source of woo-woo.

Well…Helle’s Belles. You may recall that the doc at the Mayo decided it would be safe for me to double the normal dose of loratadine for a short time and then continue taking the recommended dosage. We soon discovered that emptying my head of allergic stuffiness caused the light-headedness and heart palpitations to disappear. Completely. Gone. That is even though tachycardia and palpitations are among the drug’s common side effects. Unscientifically, we concluded that the presyncope-like phenomenon likely was affected or even caused by inner-ear congestion. So, we calculated, it would be good to keep on taking the stuff.

Which I’ve done. I did stop taking two a day, at least on a regular basis. But some days I forget whether I’ve dropped one in the morning and so will take one — very probably another one — before bed. And sometimes when the wind has been whipping up the allergens, I’ll take two during the course of a day just to fend off the usual miseries.

Hm. So brought on a new misery. How interesting.

Y’know…if a drug has a rare, weird side effect that appears in 1 in 10,000 people, I am invariably No. 10,000. It never, ever fails.

Given this discovery — why didn’t I think of it before??? — now I feel a lot less neurotic about passing on the liver scan until after the next blood test. God help us.