Day cheese for night cheese.

Sleep was the pits last night. You know how sometimes if your throat is itchy, you'll involuntarily scratch it with the back of your tongue? I kept waking myself up doing that. When I got up for real, I felt horrible and I started having the worst allergy attack. I took a Zyrtec, followed by a Benadryl, but nothing helped. For hours, I was sneezing and generally irritated. AND drowsy, thanks to fucking Benadryl. It seemed to get worse whenever I went upstairs at the Dolly house, which is where we were shooting all day, because today was Dolly's bedroom scenes. Maybe there's some kinda dust or mold or ghost upstairs that my body is not genetically equipped to deal with. I was forced to sit out basically everything that was shot today, as the allergy attack lasted for the rest of the day, including right now. Right now, I feel like crapola.

While trying to relax (and hopefully prompt the allergies to go away), I was able to observe Chris watching Phoebe for a while. He told me this job is way more difficult than acting in the movie. We found simple ways to entertain her and when she started fussing and crying over bullshit, Chris would set her down and we would wait it out. After a bit, we noticed she was catching on, and she wasn't crying as much. If we could condition her to wield greater control over her emotions, she could one day develop superhuman charisma. This would allow her to become a secret agent, or just a really controlling, manipulative person. Either way, lots of excitement and drama would follow. Then for dinner, we had chicken, mac & cheese, and green beans. I would say this was my favorite dinner so far. I even started to feel better afterward, but it didn't take. That's why I now still feel like crapola.

Chris pointed out that something like this happens to me every time we shoot a feature together. On WSTEC, I came down with strep throat during one of our hell weekends. On The Comedian at The Friday, I came down with a cold. Not such a big deal, except I was playing a character who specifically does NOT have a cold, because a plot point in the movie is that I catch a cold from the main character. If you watch Comedian, you can see me with a cold, valiantly playing someone who does not have a cold. Then, when the character catches a cold, I still have a cold, but it's very mild, so I'm essentially ACTING the cold. The one scene I did in that movie where my real life cold made sense had to be redubbed months later when I didn't have a cold at all. More acting. But this allergy attack is bad in a very different way, which is that I have no idea how to fight it. Strep throat and the common cold are simple fixes. You just take the medicine and wait it out. But I have no idea how to stop these allergies. The Zyrtec was my only line of defense, and it did nothing. The enemy is all around me, and I don't know how to kill it. It's like mini terrorist cells living in my flawed, allergic body.

-Diego