Complex Numbers

Run, Nose, Run!

No, I do not have a hangover; thanks for asking so loudly.

PROMPT November 4th

Details, details, details... Pick something in your view and describe it in as precise detail as possible without naming what the object is. See if you can get your readers to guess what object you're describing.

I did, however, wake up with a runny nose. This happens to me from time to time; while I'm not technically allergic to anything (except maybe an obscure ingredient in some protein bars), dust or pollen can irritate my sinuses just like with many actual humans.

But, of course, these days, a runny nose can be a death sentence, or worse, so my mind immediately leaped to: Could it be Trump-mumps? It feels just like every other time Nature has a good laugh at the expense of my mustache (it's hard to catch all the drips), but my best friend tested positive for Covfefe-19 the other day. Fortunately, she's basically on the other side of the country and I haven't seen her in person for months, so I couldn't have caught it from her. Still, that's where my mind went; it's 2020 and part of me would welcome the sweet release of death, but I'd prefer it not to take two weeks on a ventilator to get there. Anyway, I even took my temperature and, if anything, it's a bit low, I'm guessing from all the ethanol from last night that my system is currently frantically trying to process.

And yet, my nose is running like Niagara Falls, and it's annoying as hell.

All of this is to not only kvetch about it -- my blog, I can kvetch if I want -- but make the object from the prompt maybe easier to guess.

Its basic shape is a rectangular parallelepiped, which I can spell just fine but don't ask me to pronounce it. Wait, that won't help much, will it? It's a right rectangular prism, a rectangular cuboid... oh hell, it's a three-dimensional object with six rectangular faces, the parallel planes of which are congruent. The regularity of the container is broken by a large oval cutout in its cardboard. This morning, it was completely full of soft white pieces of flimsy paper, half of which are gone now because, at the risk of repeating myself, my nose absolutely will not stop running and no antihistamine or decongestant has ever done a goddamn thing for me.

The box is printed with artwork: stylized flowers. I'm pretty damn sure this is to make it so that people will buy more of these things faster, because we're highly suggestible, and what is one thing that triggers people with allergies? Flowers. That's what. It doesn't matter if the flowers are real or just pictures; hell, people have gone into sneezing fits just looking at oil paintings of flowers.

And the ones that don't have flowers on them? Grass. Ugh.

I guess they don't print them with pictures of ragweed because that would be too obvious.

So this thing's in my field of view, within easy arm's reach, and will remain so until Nature decides to stop messing with my head. Literally.

To make matters worse, I use a CPAP machine to sleep. If I don't use it, I don't sleep well, and I invariably wake up with a headache and a scratchy throat, not to mention everyone within five counties can hear me snoring. But if I do use it, it goes over only my nose. And right now, what's in my nose is desperately trying to escape, which makes wearing the damn mask that much more of a pain in the tuchis.

And yes, I know full well that lots of people have it worse than I do right now. That doesn't stop me from being irritated with the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (his name is Minor Inconvenience; Famine, War, Death and Pestilence don't talk about him very much).

Chances are I'll do tomorrow's entry just after midnight, as usual. I couldn't do it last night because I was entirely drunk (as you have probably already intuited). But if I had, I would have missed the opportunity to describe this object and kvetch about my sinuses.