What is the opposite... of the canary in the mineshaft? ‘Cause I think that is me. I am the least allergic of all my family members. Maybe even of my most of my friends and close acquaintances. When the cottonwood starts making me sneeze and wheeze, I know we’re in for a miserable stretch. (I had hoped that one upside to the constant downpours over the past week or so would be that the cottonwood ‘fluff’ would be knocked off the trees and straight into the storm drains to do the last of its dreadful damage - bypassing the naso-pharynx thing. No such luck)

That - combined with some old pink Peeps as a bedtime snack led to a night of very bad dreams. I am more tired now than I was ten hours ago. The best - or worst - was the dream in which I had babies with three different men. Two of the men looked just like Rick. Maybe one was Rick. Neither objected to the presence of the other man’s child. The third man was Coolio. OK, he looked like Coolio. but he was a nameless instructor of fixed prosthedontics at Marquette University Dental School. This must have been caused by the hip-hop discussion with Martha followed by a stale marshmallow bedtime snack, exaccerbated by the fact that I forgot to buy more dental floss on my way home from work where I had spent time with a co-worker recuperating from major dental surgery.

Where is this going? Nowhere. Time for a decent breakfast and some caffeine. Lots of caffeine.