The incredibly talented Tanya Michaels joins us this week for a gripe that's near and dear to my heart ... or, should I say, my sinuses!!

I am thrilled to be guest-blogging here and for my topic, I was leaning toward the restaurateur who first thought it was a good idea to bring small children helium balloons--at the beginning of a meal, no less. As if taking my preschooler and toddler out to eat for a civilized dinner isn't already fraught with potential disaster, I get to spend the next hour trying to anchor the darn things (the balloons, not my children; well, mostly the balloons) and referee fights over who wants which color. Even if dinner goes smoothly, there's always the delight of someone letting go of the string or slipping it off his wrist in the parking lot and having their new favorite toy in the universe float away, or someone popping it in the minivan on the way home and startling Mom into a ditch. So, I was all set to go with my rant against helium balloons. Until I got a sinus headache.

I am a headache wuss. I get bad ones, particularly with the storm fronts that have blown in this summer, and I don't tolerate pain well. Or at all. None of this gritting my teeth and bearing it nonsense that my husband relies on. So small children in tow and skull splitting, I made my way to the nearest grocery store, near being a relative term since we live out in the pastureland boonies. I staggered toward the aisle with the appropriate "allergy and sinus medication" banner, which turned out to be a dirty lie. There were only allergy meds--not a single sinus headache remedy as far as the eye could see. Because of the weather and the fact that practically everyone I know has been dealing with sinus pressure lately, my first thought was that they'd sold out their stock, so I swung into a drug store that was more or less on the way home. No luck there, either. Granted, a right thinking person would probably have grabbed an employee and asked for help, but my head was throbbing waaay past "right thinking." Besides, there was one teenage employee visible and he seemed stumped by a customer's asking if they carried milk, so I went home. That night, when my husband came home and found me with the Mother of All Sinus Headaches, he asked "why didn't you take something for it?" Gee, that never occurred to me. I told him the pain-relieving choices we had around the house had done nothing for it, and he reminded me that apparently, over the counter sinus medications are now kept locked safely in the pharmacy. In retrospect, I recall a fellow author mentioning a grocery store incident where she'd been told at check-out that she couldn't buy her combination of over the counter medications because the ingredients can be used to make drugs. (Okay, so the meds are technically drugs already, but I guess you can whip up some sort of crack or suburban meth from Sudafed and other medicine cabinet ingredients.)

This was news to me, but then again, I know nothing about crack or meth. I'm not even sure whether they're the same thing or two different ones. Personally, I think it's pretty pitiful that people are actually taking the time to formulate household narcotics (barbiturates? hallucinogens?) and snort them. (Shoot them? Smoke them? I'm freaking clueless.) But I'm over my pity and have moved on to being ticked off, because once I discovered that sinus meds were being hoarded in the pharmacy and returned to the store. . .pharmacy hours were, of course, over. The icing on this particular cake was the store manager locking up the pharmacy "gate" as I arrived, leaving me to peer through at the sinus medication two feet away. She told me she wasn't authorized to sell me the over-the-counter pain reliever, even though she conceded that I did not look like a crack-head so desperate for a fix that I'd whipped up my own home lab.

As annoyed as I am with any enterprising druggies who have figured out a way to get their hits while inconveniencing me, I'm also irritated with the people who thought it best to move the dangerous goods to their new semi-secret location. The store manager I cornered also said something about baby formula (?!) getting moved back there and I can just imagine how well that's going to go over with a sleep-deprived mother who doesn't realize until midnight that she forgot to buy more formula for her infant. I'm not sure if people are making drugs or car bombs or whatever from the formula, but the store manager thought it was somehow relevant to my plight. The thing is, people who are determined to be self-destructive and stupid are not going to be stopped by relocating the Benadryl Sinus or Tavist D. Without even trying, I could list a dozen common household items people could use to harm themselves (or others) or try to get a cheap high off of. . .but I won't. Because then they'll only be sold during pharmacy hours and under licensed supervision, and who needs that hassle?

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Most of the year, RITA-nominated author Tanya Michaels writes romantic comedies (Spicing It Up, Harlequin Flipside, June 05) and women's fiction (Dating the Mrs. Smiths, A NEXT Novel, November 05). During the summer, she squeezes in as much writing as she can between complaining about the weather and her head. One day she will find a place to live where neither the heat nor barometric pressure are conspiring against her, but she can always be found at www.tanyamichaels.com