Nevertheless, after two decades of suffering with all sorts of environmental and indoor allergies I finally decided to do something about it. Sure I’d been taking nasal steroids and antihistamines but this time I was going to get serious. So I got an allergy panel done. This is the sort of test where they “scratch” you with 60+ allergens and then inject you with 20 different things just to see what your body doesn’t like. In my case it was just about everything they injected me with except for shellfish. Apparently I’m not allergic to shellfish, which would be helpful if I actually ate seafood.

Long story short, the allergies were severe enough to warrant allergy shots and so this past Friday I embarked on my first round of injections. On my right arm were the indoor allergies (which I’d shown to be highly sensitive to) and on my left were the outdoor seasonal type allergies which were less severe. The appointment and the shots themselves went by fine. I showed up, they stuck me with needles and I was on my way. However just two hours after the shots I started to experience numbness in my right arm just below the injection site. I took a look and had a huge black and blue mark. A few hours later my right elbow was inflamed and by that evening my face and hands were numb.

Obviously I called the doctor’s office since I really wasn’t interested in sticking myself with one of those epipens and wasn’t all that interested in dying. Trouble is the doctors were pretty sure it was all in my head. Apparently you can’t have a reaction to such a low dose. What I was experiencing wasn’t a result of mold being injected into my body but instead an anxiety attack -complete with black and blue marks and joint pain. The recommendation was to get more shots. So if there’s no comic next week then it probably means I’m dead (or just really, really anxious).

That’s exactly the case here when just three days ago the property just two houses down from me had a little incident with a mobile home that was haphazardly placed at the end of their yard. I won’t ask why the home was there to begin with, I’m assuming it was either a rental or a meth lab, but I do know that not all mobile homes are actually mobile. Therefore tying a rope to the front end of the home and hooking the other up to your fifteen year old pickup truck is bound to end in disaster.

And of course the ratio for disaster in such circumstances increases exponentially when the parties involved:

1. are drunk

2. are listening to rap music blaring so loud that the distorted rhymes sound as if the artist suffered a stroke

3. have mullets

Clearly then this was the perfect storm of residential catastrophes. And it didn’t disappoint. The old truck revved its engine a few times, purportedly to loosen the home off its foundation, and then the driver gunned it. At this point, had the home had wheels, it likely would have jostled loose and slid out onto the street. However as cinderblocks have terrible mobility, the house just sort of ripped in half instead. This of course was followed by a hodgepodge of expletives and head scratching on their part and more than a little snickering on mine.

Nevertheless, now where a neighboring home once stood, there lays a yard full of aluminum and rotted wood permeated by the effervescent smell of cat urine. I wish I had a firm grasp over enough adjectives to properly describe what aluminum, rotted wood and cat urine combined smells like but I suppose, “not good” gives you a general idea.

It goes without saying that after reading all this you might assume that someone in my position would feel inclined to complain about this incident or at least report the debris left behind. But truthfully I’m pretty happy that there’s now one less house on my street to worry about. So unless the neighbors suddenly start living in tents (which is certainly possible), I consider myself a pretty fortunate guy right now.