The night before last I had a bizarre reaction to an over-the-counter nasal spray. When I bought it at the grocery store it was in amongst all the saline nasal sprays and was called "Moisture" something or other. I didn't bother to read the small print. Heck, I would have had to get my glasses out anyway. 

That night I squirted a dose in each nostril like I would my normal saline spray. It's been really dry in the house and I thought my nasal passageways could use the "moisture." How wrong I was.

Within a minute the back of my throat between my nose and my mouth was on fire. It felt like it does only when I have a really bad cold and have had lots and lots of post-nasal-drip discharge. Burning. Raw. Awful. If only that was the worst of it. 

I laid down in bed to read and had to sit up because all of a sudden a huge amount of phlegm was collecting in the back of my throat. I got up to spit it out, but the minute I did I had more forming. It was foamy and stringy all at the same time and it just would not stop coming. I kept gagging and spitting non-stop for about ten minutes. I blew my nose and the same stuff came out of my nose.  I thought I was going to die. It was verging on me not being able to breathe. Rick asked if we needed to go to the hospital ER (we have no 24 hour/urgent care close to us) and I think I might have yelled back something like I don't know. I didn't want to get in the car and drive for 40 minutes only to find my symptoms go away.

So I went downstairs, drank some milk (which did not help), ate a teaspoon full of honey (sort of felt better) and took some aspirin for the rawness. The discharge had slowed down but was not completely stopped. I was spent, shaking, and worn out from constantly coughing that stuff out. Rick suggested a honey licorice cough drop might help so I popped one of those into my mouth and the vapors from the menthol in the cough drop did ease the discomfort in the back of my throat some. 

Finally after about 20 minutes or so the discharge had almost stopped and I was feeling good enough that I thought I could actually lay down and go to sleep.

Hey folks, they don't call them mucous membranes for nothing!

It turned out that the spray was not a saline spray, but a nasal decongestant. Still, I don't think it should have done that to my nasal passages, congested or not. On the back of the box it says " temporary discomfit such as burning, stinging, sneezing or an increase in nasal discharge may occur."  Uhm, yeah, no kidding. I plan on calling them since it says on their box "you may report side effects to this phone number." I think I had a more serious reaction than a 'temporary discomfort'. I would call it more a severe allergic reaction. So, I won't be buying Mucinex Moisture Smart Nasal Spray anytime soon. How about you? Care to try it out?

(photo: Course Bark [kind of like my throat] )

Over the weekend we "gobbled" up the rest of the first season of Downton Abbey and took a small bite out of the second season. We are loving this series! The costumes, the acting--everything makes it a top-notch production.

We have also been gobbling up the food from this cookbook:

This is the cookbook I've talked about in another post that is British, but with American measurements and vocabulary as well as the British. (Remember: take one Swede …?) Not only is it a beautiful book to just browse through, but everything we've made so far has been a big hit: Chicken Pot Pie with Tarragon and Leeks (simple and delicious); Tamale Pie, that you top with a cornbread mixture that has green chiles mixed in; and this delicious lunch yesterday, Creamy Pancetta and Onion Tart. Yum!

Rick has declared the Chicken Pot Pie to be the best he's ever tasted! Unfortunately I don't have these recipes entered in to our recipe book just yet. But soon!

We didn't do much else over the weekend, it was too cold for most outdoor activities since we are below freezing again. We had a little skiff of snow, maybe an inch, on Saturday night. Just enough that Rick felt he had to clear the driveway. Nuisance snow. And we're supposed to get more of those in the coming week.

We managed to take the dogs for a walk and split some more wood for the wood stove and fireplace.

Other than that, Rick worked on our web sites--getting us running under new software and fine tuning things. Some of you may have experienced difficulty leaving a comment, or possibly searching the archives. We think it's working properly now, but please let us know if you encounter anything odd or can't leave a comment. (Use the Contact Me button at the top.)

P.S. The cookbook is available on Amazon.com.

I know some people think I over-reacted to this whole thing. So someone took a photo of yours and posted it somewhere because they were just wanting to share a cute dog photo with others.You should be flattered. Big deal. Get over it. That may be, and for a short while after the first encounter I was coming around to that idea.

But … it’s more the way the whole thing went down with the person (after being asked nicely) to take the photo down and them refusing. Said person kind of threatened me at one point and said (I’ll paraphrase here since their English was so poor and lapsed into what I think was Dutch) “you know well where it comes from, so secure it, delete it or ...”. In other words they were admitting that they took it directly from my blog.

FaceBook was very quick to remove the first photo. Thank You, FaceBook!

But … when I went back to their site to check, what did I see but two more photos taken directly from the same blog entry—posted after the other photo was removed. I left a comment again regarding taking down the photos, but when I went back in a few minutes later that person had posted the same two photos again (first time the photos had the date stamp of being posted 15 hours ago; the second time the date stamp was having been posted 8 minutes ago) and had banned me from commenting. Now they were on there twice. So in essence this person was poking fingers at me. On purpose. A pay-back I guess for reporting them to FB. Kind of like haha I know where you are and I can do whatever I like, so there. Just plain nasty.

I have to tell you I felt violated. Just like when I had my wallet lifted from my purse in Paris. It’s not like the photos were on Flickr or Tumblr, they were on my blog. They entered my personal space. And they did it not once, but twice.

Finally with the help of Carolyn leaving multiple comments to remove the photos, he did, before FaceBook could remove them. Thank you, Carolyn for your tenacious terrier work!

Again, I know this kind of thing probably happens all the time in these days of “free sharing” but this one felt more like a violation in the way it was done. Like someone came into my home and robbed me and then thumbed their nose at me.

Did I overeact? Maybe. You decide. Either way, it’s over now. At least I hope so.

Thank you for listening.

(photo: Things Aren’t Always Black & White) half-wet tree; Skylands

Unfortunately I have had to close the entry on Hailey’s birthday. The person on FaceBook has now stolen two more photos to put on their FaceBook page from that same blog post and now I know for certain how the first photo ended up there in the first place. It’s disheartening to say the least. Especially since FaceBook did indeed remove the first offending photo. It’s enough to make me cry. Truly.