Invention

Someone needs to be enterprising and solve one of my winter health problems.

I bundle up in layers of cotton and wool and something vaguely plasticky - in the form of a pair of old warmup pants that double as snowpants when I have to dig my car out in the office parking lot. I wind a scarf around my neck and jam a hat on my hair, flattening it for the rest of the day. What I cannot seem to stop is my nose from running.

It doesn't do you any good to blow it. It's not that kind of 'run'. Just a drip, drip, drip, so that you're either sniffling repeatedly and obnoxiously, or you're digging in your pocket (with gloves on so you can't feel a damn thing) to find a Kleenex.

Somebody ought to invent the nose tampon.

Why not? You ever had a cold so bad that you actually rolled up two pieces of tissue and rammed one up each nostril to catch the drips? Come on, you know you have. I know I have. If you have a cold, after a while each nostril is so sore from blowing that you don't want to touch it anymore, but medication doesn't stop your eyes from watering and thus the tears from heading into your nasal passages. Then you end up looking like poor Steve in that episode of 'Sex and the City' where he had half a tampon jammed up each nostril to stop his nose from bleeding. The string hung out one side. He looked mortified. Might have been because he caught his ex sleeping with the hot doctor and then walked into a wall and banged up his sniffer, but I'm guessing it was the Tampax decorating his schnozz.

Look, I know it wouldn't be pretty. But it might be safer than trying to dig out a tissue while driving along a snowy Michigan road, right? And you wouldn't have to sniff, annoying your cubicle mates the entire day.

Think I'd get a patent on this one?