I’m hiding out down here in the fallout shelter this week. I’m safe here, since we’re so deep underground and we filter our air. I can’t go outside anymore, since I seem to have developed terrible seasonal allergies, all of a sudden. Twice this spring I’ve been hit with weeks of a sore throat, major congestion, coughing. It’s not a cold, I feel fine underneath it all, and I’m convinced that it’s related to climate change. I never had any allergies before, so why now? I think there are invasive species, or native species going nuts from all the extra carbon dioxide in the air. It’s happening now, people, the earth is becoming uninhabitable. Better build your spaceships or dig your bunkers, ‘cause terrestrial life on the surface is coming to an end. And even though a few years ago my doctor gave me a full allergy test panel, and declared me allergic to “nothing”, things seem to have changed. Or, she can’t read results.

I know using the word assault is a bit dramatic, and also diminishes the weight of the word, as assault isn’t to be taken lightly, and certainly not just thrown around as a term. There are other, much more serious and horrible ways to be assaulted, than by pollen. And two of my friends have been violently assaulted just in the last month, right here in post-Giuliani Manhattan.

So I’m going to retract my use of the word assault, and instead use the term pollen-whacked, ok? When I go outside, I feel like I’m getting pollen-whacked. Right in the face, and the nose, and throat.

And after being sick from this garbage for a week, I finally returned to the gym, where I took a Burn class, taught by a crazy person called Eagle. (Not her real name)

And Eagle is ALL about juice, and juicing, and wheatgrass, and her own wack-job theories of digestion and health, and I swear if it’s not one assault it’s another, because she really can’t just shut up about her stupid juice and I really just can’t stop coughing and nose-blowing and I just want it all to STOP! Unless she’s really onto something…? Nah. Who am I kidding?

So today, on Let’s Get Real, we talk trees, grass, shrubs, and juice. And stupidity. My favorite topic.