Allergy Season?

I had a tough time of it last week. Each morning I woke up feeling like a forced recipient of collagen injections. But it wasn’t just my swollen lips. The inside of my mouth was raw and itchy. Brushing my teeth was agony, and I skipped it a few mornings, thanking The Universe for the fact I work at home.

This was Monday:

As luck would have it, I had just started this online diet thing and I made a lot of little changes in my diet over the past month. Trying to pinpoint exactly which one was causing the problem was tricky. I tried to revert back to my old diet without returning to ALL the calories, but by Wednesday my face was swollen, too.

I was miserable. My sister reminded me of the time this happened when I was a kid. That time, the culprit was Sunny Delight. I pulled up the website and looked at the ingredients and noticed grapefruit. I just finished off a 12 pack of generic grapefruit seltzer and purchased a second box. The have zero calories and I had been drinking 4 a day.

I stopped drinking those right away. I also cut out all citrus fruit, and now I’m mostly back to normal. My gums are still a little sensitive but my head is it’s normal deflated size.

I am bummed, though. I love grapefruit. I love all citrus fruit! I love the smell, I love the taste. I love cooking with citrus. I named my blog after lemons, for one thing. I really don’t want to cut it out of my diet.

I’m hoping that it was a reaction to the fake flavoring in the seltzer that did it. Or even that it was just a result of an overdose. Maybe I can have the real thing in small amounts? Moderation is the key, they say. Meanwhile, I have a grapefruit in my fruit basket but I’m afraid to try my luck and eat it to test the theory.

The really annoying thing is that I was trying to get healthier and find alternatives to… say… vodka. Or wine. So I drink a bunch of fruit seltzer and I get punished for good behavior. Thanks a lot, Universe. You are an asshole.

Things are nearly back to normal now. I haven’t binged on booze as a reaction, though it has certainly crossed my mind. I’ve made some ice tea and I’ve drank a lot of plain old tap water (without so much as a damn lemon slice, like a goddamned savage). I’m trying to keep it all in perspective. Two steps forward, one step back…

But if cutting out citrus completely gives me a case of scurvy I’m buying vodka and making myself a screwdriver. I’m only human, even if it looks like my lips are made of polyurethane.