Sweet, Sweet Honey

Whenever I move to a new place there's one thing I've come to pretty much count on: When Spring comes so does an allergy attack. I remember the first time I moved to New York I spent the entire first summer in a haze of sneezes and tissues. Turns out I had allergies. This I learned is apparently not uncommon when you move to a new geographical location.

So I went to the doctor and he gave me allergy meds. Now, I'm not a big fan of taking medicine of any kind. That said, the allergy attacks were so bad I decided to give it a try. After a few days, I didn't know what was worse, the fuzzy groggy feeling I had on the meds or the sneeze attacks. Ok, I did know what was worse: the fuzzy groggy feeling. So I went back to the doctor to find out if there's another remedy. He suggested I tough out the summer without meds and that would help my body build-up some immunity. So I did. He was right. Eventually, the pollen or whatever caused the allergy attack in the first place disappeared. Although, that did take a few years.

When I moved to Portland I wasn't that surprised to have the same issue. Matt, however, was quite surprised by my daily sneezing attacks and said, "Can you take something for that?"

I explained that it would pass if I just sucked it up and waited it out. A few weeks later I would take a Claritin to deal with it, but I still didn't like it.

So I asked people what they did for allergies and in true Portland fashion they mentioned a home remedy: Eat a spoonful of honey every day for three months. A spoonful of honey? I thought to myself Who are you Mary Poppins? I heard this repeatedly, so I thought, "Why not?" Honey's yummy. But where would I get local honey?

I told Matt of this home remedy and asked, "So how do I get local honey?"

"Look in the pantry," He responded.

I looked in the pantry and didn't see anything that looked a lot like local honey. I did see a jar of yellowish goop without a label. So I pulled it out and asked, "What's this?"

"That's the local honey."

"Huh? How do you have local honey?"

"Oh, I know someone who has bees and makes honey from it."

Of course you do, I thought. This is after all Portland, the home of the front yard farm. It makes sense.

After that, I started my day with a spoonful of honey. Wasn't bad. In fact, it tasted pretty good. A few weeks later I noticed my sneezing calmed down a bit. A year later allergy season has arrived once again and guess who isn't getting any attacks?