Pickles & Dimes

To start 2007 on an auspicious note, I’d like to talk to you about nasal passages.

Yes. Nasal passages. The narrow canals through which life-giving oxygen travels at the speed of light. Or, in the case of Jason and I, the speed of Sunday drivers in the hammer lane.

Our noses are continually stuffed up, whether due to colds or allergies or sinus infections or invisible gnomes or possibly, the blue crayon I crammed up my nose when I was four. Bottom line? Stuffed Up. All The Time.

Sometime last year, when Jason finally rolled his eyes in exasperation at my continued insistence that his 4-month sinus infection wasn’t going away despite his habit of continually ignoring it, he went to the doctor, who carefully examined his nose and all its intricacies and pronounced that the reason he was having trouble breathing was because he had “extremely narrow nasal passages.”

To which Jason pointed to his large nose and said, “Are you kidding me?!?”

Ha, irony. We are fans.

Anyway, last week we stumbled across some Breathe Right® strips at the store. We looked at the box, shrugged and said, “What the heck. We’ll try it.”

After we got home, Jason immediately put one on and proclaimed triumphantly, “I can breathe!!!”

I wanted in on the whole “breathing” phenomenon too, especially since I had been dependent on mouth-breathing as my sole source of life support. But it turned out that the large strips were too big for my nose. According to Breathe Right, I have a small/medium nose. Ha!

We made another trip to get the smaller size, which I tried last night, just in time to prevent my right nostril from permanently sealing shut for the next 8 hours. Instantly, both of my nasal cavities were open and clear. The first deep breath I took was so full of oxygen, I almost passed out – it felt that wonderful. And I slept great.

Let’s just say that we are big fans. Large fans, even. Well, at least Jason is. I’m more of a Small/Medium fan myself.