I’m a sneezer.

Ask any of my coworkers, especially after they have “blessed me” for the twentieth time in as many minutes. (Good thing I work for a religious organization!)

My sneezing flares up when the weather changes, and considering the winter we’ve had, it’s been particularly bad lately. And if I do some dusting around the house, forget about it. I’ll be red-eyed and sneezing for hours. (Fortunately, I’m not a huge fan of dusting, so that’s not as big of a problem as the weather.)

This rose? It’s beautiful. But the fragrance is likely to bring on a fit worthy of Sneezy.

Bring on the Similasan Nasal Allergy Relief.

My usual method of combating my nasal allergies is some over-the-counter, non-drowsy antihistamine. But they don’t always work, and they’re expensive. When I was given the opportunity to try this Swiss-made, natural, homeopathic product, I jumped at the chance.

So what does this nasal mist do? Well, it’s not going to cure my allergies, but I don’t expect anything to do that. All I want is to manage the symptoms. The itchy nose, the incessant sneezing, the post-nasal drip and the sore throat that goes with it.

And Similasan Nasal Allergy Relief did that beautifully, with all-natural ingredients and without the preservatives found in other nasal sprays.

You know the ones. I used to have to use one every night just to sleep. It would open up my sneeze-swollen nasal passages…for about an hour. And then I’d wake up, gasping for breath, dreaming I was suffocating. And squirt in another dose, and then continue the awful cycle all night long. My doctor prescribed me a truly disgusting-tasting spray to wean me off the over-the-counter decongestant sprays I was using, but I don’t know what was worse–being unable to breathe or the taste of that medication.

Fortunately, Similasan has an herbal scent and taste that is not at all off-putting. It’s kind of refreshing, actually. But here’s the beauty of Similasan Nasal Allergy Relief: it makes me stop sneezing so much that whole nightmarish cycle never even begins. That’s a win-win situation right there! It manages my symptoms so well that I don’t need that other nasal spray.

Similasan is easy to find. In fact, it’s sold at my (and the boys’) favorite store – Walgreens! (Seriously, they love Walgreens.) So from now on, I

Time to recap my trip to New York City last week! It was so awesome, and I don’t want to leave out any of it, so expect it to be long. With lots of pictures. Including none of my children. No children at all!

I left on Tuesday afternoon and flew to DC, where Kristina lives (the boys call her Kiki). We went to dinner at this yummy restaurant in Arlington, and I proceeded to officially take myself off of the Dukan diet for the next few days. Just getting that out of the way now. There will be plenty of references to non-Dukan-friendly foods coming up.

The next morning, we got up and made our way to Union Station to take a train to New York. (It would have been easier and cheaper for me to fly directly to NYC from New Orleans, but where’s the fun in that??) I was excited to see a Pret a Manger in the train station in DC. We used to get sandwiches quite a bit when we lived in London.

Eventually, we got on the train and were on our way. About three hours later, we arrived in NYC and we walked about 20 blocks to our hotel. It was…okay. Kind of old and worn. The location was good, so whatever. It’s not like we were going to be spending a lot of time there. One funny thing was that the room we got had two twin beds. I think I’m too tall for twin beds.

After getting settled in, we decided to go find something to eat. Pizza! Thanks to a Trip Advisor app on my phone, we found a highly rated pizza place not too far away. It was v good, and the two glasses of wine we had didn’t hurt, either.

We walked around a bit more, just taking in the sights. Near Rockefeller Center, we even saw these Dutch girls that we’d been behind in line at Union Station. Weird.

I may have mentioned before that the main purpose of our trip was to see one of our favorite bands, Pulp. They were big in England when we lived there, and the concert we saw them play in 1998 was the best show either of us had ever seen. So we were extremely excited to see them later that night!

Finally, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the show.

Two old broads all dressed up:

We left the hotel with time to spare, so we went to a bar near Radio City Music Hall for a drink. And then it was time to go! We did some people-watching in the lobby before we went into the show and took our fourth row seats. That’s right, fourth row. We had incredible seats, thanks to Kiki.

The band came on at nine, and the show lasted two hours. Two hours of bliss. We jumped up and down pretty much the whole time. Look how close we were!

They played my favorite song!

After the show, in a daze, we set off to find somewhere to eat. We wandered through Times Square, and eventually just ended up back at the coffee shop at our hotel, which was surprisingly good.

We were pretty exhausted after a long day, so we fell asleep pretty fast.

Thursday morning we got up and walked a million blocks (okay, maybe it was just 35 or so) to have these amazing doughnuts. (See, I told you this wasn’t a Dukan-friendly trip!)

Then we went to find Chelsea Market, but got a little lost and ended up seeing a bit of the High Line (an elevated park).

Finally, we found Chelsea Market (home of the Food Network studios) where we wandered around and shared a grilled cheese sandwich. A v fancy one, of course.

After we left there, we just walked and walked. We stopped at Loehmann’s so I could get a scarf, and then found a tapas restaurant for a little snack and wine. And there was a little more shopping, a lot more walking, lots of famous sights, and an Irish pub in there.

As it got later, we decided we wanted one more drink before going back to the hotel. I really wanted to go to the mothership Dylan’s Candy Bar, because George and I had missed it on our last trip in 2010. So imagine our utter delight when we realized that this candy shop HAS A BAR! Awesome.

We had a, um, few drinks there. Mine were all based around sour peach gummy candies, and Kiki had one that was Strawberry Nerds-themed. My kinda bar.

We felt really good after we left.

But our day wasn’t over yet! We still had dinner. We had reservations at 8:30, so we went back to the hotel, changed, relaxed our sore feet a bit, and then went back down to Chelsea (this time via subway) for dinner. Dinner was delicious, but I didn’t take any pictures. Shocking!

We were utterly wiped out after dinner, so it was back to the hotel and into bed and we pretty much passed out immediately. We got up the next morning, had breakfast, and then headed to Penn Station to catch the train back to DC. And back to reality…