As of Saturday morning, there is one less hole in my head.

I finally removed my nose piercing. I’ve had it since August of 1998, but it’s never been anything that I felt defined who I am. People don’t tend to remember me because my nose is pierced; there are a thousand other aspects of my appearance or personality that jump out first, if at all. The wee piece of metal in my nose was always just there – it existed, sometimes it hurt, most of the time it didn’t. It just .. was.

This spring has been a particularly brutal one. There are a lot more trees in this area compared to our place in East Vancouver; I’m sure that has a lot to do with my ongoing hay fever (or as I like to call it, “nose herpes”). The extra pollen in the air coupled with my regular everyday allergies have made a mockery of my defense systems, and no amount of medication I can take is making any of my orifii leak any less. I’m a walking bag of mucous. Who wants to make out!

I think I’ve been rubbing my nose in my sleep, because there’s a very painful scabby thing on the inside of my nose that directly corresponds to where the post of my nose stud lands if I were to smoosh my nose inward. After spending most of Friday afternoon trying to hide the tissue I had stuffed up my nostril in an attempt to stop the bleeding, I finally had enough. I removed the stud to give my face a good scrubbin’, then .. just didn’t put it back in. I’m done. I want my nose to heal. I’m tired of mystery scabs that hurt when I wiggle my nose while trying to see if I have powers like Samantha in Bewitched. I’m sure I’ll miss having a pierced nose at some point – hell, I still regret removing my tongue bar, 5 years later – but for now, I’m going to enjoy being able to scratch my nose and not being jabbed and also being able to exfoliate ALL my face without having to scrub around that side of my nose. It will be awesome.

I am going to try to have a No Plastic Bag week. As of 11:15am on Monday morning, I am totally winning the race.