I planned to do this as a week-long post with each day being a new installment. But one special lesson really made itself known to me today. So . . .
Sneezing inside a COVID mask is the worst. Just absolutely gross. And it's not even the wet mucus inside your mask occasionally touching you, which is completely awful.
It's the smell.
You can't smell your snot while it's inside your nose. I mean, I guess it makes sense that you can't smell anything while it's in your nose, tho I don't want to think about what's in your nose other than snot. Once it's loose, snot stinks. I mean, I know I'm sneezing because of allergies. I'm pretty sure I do not have a sinus infection. But smelling that I have to wonder if maybe I do.
If I do have a sinus infection, I've had it forever. Which would actually explain a lot. But I went through this mask/smelly snot issue last spring and summer. And fall. And those days it was unreasonably (autocorrect is suggesting "unseasonably" but I know what I mean dammit) warm over the winter (before we had that late April snow because why not?) and the damn goldenrod (state flower of Kentucky*) decided to see how much pollen it could emit in January.
Anyway. Welcome to the first installment of "Things I Learned During COVID." Today's mask snot was so bad I actually swapped masks during my lunch break. I'm wearing the emergency spare I keep in my desk for the day I forget to bring a mask. It's handmade, like all of my masks. It's a lovely silk trimmed from a sari wrap skirt that was a little too long, with a dense-weave cotton filter, and lined with a softer looser (tho still fairly densely woven) cotton.
As a skirt it was a very light blue with shapes in beigey pumpkin lines and a spattering of large loosely defined red and blue flowers and splotches of color. The blue one is gorgeous. The one with the big red splotch . . .
On my face it is a bloody bandage, like I took a bullet to the jaw. Looking like a victim of the Crimean War is better than smelling my snot for the rest of the day.
Actually, this pic gives you a bonus "Things I Learned During COVID:" the one where people continually ask me what's wrong with my eye. Because my left eye looks like I have a real shiner developing when I wear a mask. Well, this kind of mask. Hopefully I can rock cool gothic vampire fancy dress ball eyes-only domino style mask without looking like the underdog in every boxing movie ever. I've never been invited to a cool gothic vampire fancy dress ball and I probably wouldn't go because while I like the idea of going to cool parties and meeting interesting (note: this is pronounced "innn-ter-esting" like Bugs Bunny when he's doing a salon stylist impersonation to escape the monster (that looks a lot like WKU's Big Red mascot)) people I've met me and I'm not cool and I don't meet people innnteresting or otherwise at parties mostly because I hang out in a corner then go out for air and just keep walking until I'm in my car or more likely I texted at the last minute that I'm not coming and just stay home in my pjs and feel kinda like a loser but at least a comfortable loser who's wearing pjs and watching The IT Crowd.
Actually now that I think about it, this mask looks like I did go to a gothic vampire party and met an interesting (undead) person and he tried to bite my neck but I did the awkward person thing turning my head at the wrong moment and he ended up sinking his fangs into my lower mandible. Now I'm seeping blood into a scrap of silk I tore off his waistcoat -- not in any kind of struggle but more likely because I caught my ring on his cravat pin or hooked an earring on a button (no, I have no idea how, I just know such things can happen).
*Giant goldenrod, actually. Which I'm pretty sure is just a euphemism for ragweed (which is the pollen of Hell).
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