Monday, January 20, 2014

Allergies & Morphing into Spouse



I love animals, I grew up with dogs.  But in recent years I have become extremely sensitive to pet hair.  Jeff (the hubs) has always had severe allergies to everything!!  I had no idea what sinus headaches, sinus infections and general sinus misery was all about for the first few years of our marriage.  Then when you throw kids into the mix you get those with and those without allergies.  Having four children, we pretty much ended up with two with allergies and two without. 

Having two kiddo’s with severe allergies (blame Dad) we have not had pets in our household.  We LOVE pets, but they can’t live at our house without having red eyed, sneezy, wheezy, congested, coughing, hacking humans.  Both old (Dad) and young were affected by the animal presence.  I could always tell when the kids came home from a friend’s house who had a well-loved pet.  I’d see all of the signs listed above and it would take a couple of days to get the kid back to breathing normal.

We’ve now been married 27 years and I am convinced that I am going through a morphing process as I sleep with the hubs at night.  All of his not so wonderful attributes and habits I am now seeing in my daily routine and life and now I have allergies!  Not just allergies, but those sinus things that can make a person down right miserable!!

I finished a quilt yesterday that now has me sneezing, hacking and miserable.  I knew there was pet hair on it, but since the quilt was from out of state and came with others that did not have pet hair I sucked it up and loaded it.  Now there is a certain amount of touching, shaking, arranging that goes on while a quilt is on the frame and the general vibration of the quilt top shaking as the machine does it’s work.  All of this sends the pet hair and dander into the room and I am never more than 3 feet away from the machine at any time while it’s running.

I know a huge percentage of my customers have pets.  I've seen them on facebook, on their blogs or in their homes.  I can deal with the majority of the quilt tops that come my way without any problems.  But every now and then it seems I get a top that I know will make me wish I had no idea about allergies and those sinus thingies.  I’m still snorting, sniffling, and rubbing my nose and eyes today.  I’ll need to do a good vacuuming of my room to attempt to pick up remnants of yesterday’s work.

I feel like I’m in the minority when it comes to having pets and dealing with the allergy thing.  And I hate it!   I wish I could bury my face in some sweet little puppy fur without suffering, but I can’t.  I’m posting this today and plan on placing this under a tab on my blog at some point.   

thanks for listening…
hugs,
joanne


love to hear what you've got to say……………

5 comments:

WoolenSails said...

I have that problem to, never did before and now I feel like I have it all year from one thing or another. I do notice that it got worse after I started quilting and rug hooking, have you ever shaken your fabric in sunlight and seen the particles that come off of it? Unfortunately it is there and we have to live with it, but now I have taken to shaking out my fabrics, outdoors to remove what I can, then I use them.

Debbie

Terry said...

Well that's now fun! Thank goodness we don't have allergies here! But you needn't worry about any quilts I send...we're a pet free home, at least on the inside! :0)

Rhonda said...

Aaaaachew! Hi there. I hear you with all the sinus and what have you. No pets here....been suffering with allergies for-ever!!!
Take care my friend!!

Barb said...

So sorry that you are having to deal with allergies.

We just got a dog but he goes outside...whohooooo

Karen said...

I've got a couple of tops that will be coming your way soon and I do have dogs. What would you suggest before I send them to you to help you avoid the sneezing fits? I would hate to make you stuffy if I can help avoid it.