Nuts!

Hey, guess what! I appear to be allergic to tree nuts! Or, you know, so say the painful red hives covering half my body for the past week.

If you've noticed I haven't blogged more than a couple of sentences this past week, for once it's not because I'm lazy. My hands were swollen and covered in tiny bumps. I wasn't even aware that hands could become incapacitated in such a way. For a while, it gave me great discomfort to type. I even had to call in to work to say, "Uh, I can't type those articles for you because my hands really hurt." I'm just assuming my bosses believed my story because who would be dumb enough to try to pass that off as an excuse unless it were true?

It started with itchy hands. The bumps hadn't even formed yet and I couldn't figure out why I had an unceasing urge to scratch my palms and fingers - parts of my body that I don't usually need to itch. Then a rash appeared on my arm. Then my thighs. Then all over the place. The only experience I could compare it to was when I went for that dream vacation in Hawaii and then got intense heat rash and had to hide from the sun the whole week. Yup, I live a cool life, bros.

In this new case, my best guess was that I had gotten poison ivy on my hands and it spread as I had incidentally touched other parts of my body. Meanwhile, my friends said it looked more like I was experiencing an allergic reaction, a notion I loudly dismissed. I'm not allergic to things! That seems so wimpy!

All the while, as the hives kept mysteriously intensifying long after most rashes would subside, I kept eating this new brand of pesto sauce I had just bought. It was yummy and I ate a generous portion of it every day. As I researched what could aggravate my condition, I was oblivious to the obvious: had I recently changed soaps? Detergent? No, no. Had I introduced a new food to my system? No… well except for that jar of pesto, but… NOOOOO, NOT THAT YUMMY PESTO!

I really hope this is a mistaken diagnosis. Down the road, I'm going to have to test it to be sure because I'm not giving up mixed nuts "just to be safe". For real, you're going to have to pry cashews from my red hive-y hands because I love me some cashews. I mean, they're hella expensive and I still buy them, which should say something.

In addition to being painful, it's been a boring week. Given that I can't help but itch vigorously at my crotch all day, I've had to back out of most social interactions. Plus, when you can't use your hands, you really can't do much of anything. Quick, name three hobbies you can think of that don't involve gripping things with your hands.

It's also been a naked week. Though my penis avoided getting hives, the groin area at large was covered in red splotches. Merely wearing pants further aggravated the already irritated skin around my waist, as did underwear. In an effort to not sit bare-ass on the communal couch, I sometimes wore a loosely tied sarong that Andrew got me in Indonesia years ago. It's been the only good thing to come out of the experience. If societal homophobic masculinity is the only thing keeping men from wearing skirts, it's time guys fight against that because it feels really nice to let your balls dangle free like that. 

Moral of the story? Don't eat nuts, just liberate them.

This has been yet another chapter in "Kevin Babbles: A Pathetic Life." Please don't tell your friends.