Nasal irrigation and more

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Note: The first part of this post is educational and gross; the second part is cute and gross. If you do not like cute, be sure to skip the second half of this post.

I heard on NPR recently of nasal irrigation, a scientifically sound traditional cold treatment that involves squirting water up your nose.

According to the story, people use ear bulbs or squirting machines or simply snort a saline solution. At this point, snot and saline come poring from the nostrils and down the back of the throat. The effect is that, with the sinuses cleared, the immune system is freed to be all it can be; the cilia are reenergized, and voila! health!

Sounded lovely. So now that I am fighting a cold, the last two mornings I have taken eight ounces of warm water and a quarter teaspoon each of salt and baking soda. Unfortunately, I lack the apparatus to send a stream of saline up my nose so I have just been pouring my solution into a ramekin and breathing in.

Following by coughing and hacking and a distressing lack of streaming mucus.

Yesterday I was hocking up stuff the color of burnt caramel. And maybe I got it all out before salining myself. Anyway, streaming snot or not, I could breathe better on my way to work, that was sure. But today I could not get my left nostril to function no matter the snorting technique applied.

The saline solution does dry out my nostrils, so this morning I put in some Neosporin. In record time, every milliounce of Neosporin plopped down on the back of my tongue which was not, I am sorry to say, a pleasant end to the experiment.

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The Big O (23 months less six days) is developing might muscles. I know this because he has taken to carting around a footstool with cast iron legs. He uses it to stand taller and see things. And do things. Like open and close the dvd player. And, new favorite, watch his parents cook.

For his first birthday, we celebrated in grand Korean fashion, including an activity that tells us his future.

On a table we placed certain symbolic objects—a pen (representing the life of a scholar), a knife (life of a chef), a rice cake (government lackey) and others. O picked the knife.

(A butter knife, perfectly safe. Not, for instance, a cleaver. In the first couple years of our marriage, Lady Steed always wanted a cleaver. For reasons she refused to specify. And that therefore made me nervous. I refused to help her get one. We still don’t have once. Not coincidentally, I am still intact.)

He is already living up to his chefly destiny with his new hobby of watching food preparation. Last night I was making French toast.

Eggs from my mother’s chickens. Some real vanilla. Some salt. I let O do some whisking. Then he dipped his finger and tasted the goods.

“Mmmm!”

Again.

“Mmmm!”

Lady Steed called then and I pushed the raw egg mix away from O to protect him from such things as salmonella. We chatted then I hung up the phone. I turned back, only to see the Big O tipping back the eggs and taking a good long draft.

“Mmmmm!”

Such are the epicurean delights of our household.