As an over-arching rule, I'm against putting things in my nose. Well, fingers sometimes but other than that I try - really try - to keep other things out of my nostrils.

This last cold, however, acted like a frat boy with a stripper, diving for my chest and hanging on despite beatings from the medical bouncers. In the course of this accursed affliction, I noticed that something was up with my sinuses.

I don't have a post nasal drip, the kind that trickles down your throat (although it's so miserably cold here most mornings that I have the pre-nasal drip of am eight year old). It's kind of hard to explain what I noticed.

Here I am with a chest cold but breathing normally through my schnozzola, right? Well I'm down on my hands and knees one day, shooting expand-o-foam in the space around some poopy pipe and my nose is drippy. When I stand up, I can feel the mucous burbling in my left sinus like I have a head cold that wants to clear. I go apart from others and blow my nose. And blow my nose. And blow my nose. And...holy shit there's a ton of snot coming out of my head! Plus, my sinuses are squeaking after I blow like they do when they're filled during a head cold.

This happens twice during this sickness from hell.

So I buy a squirt bottle of saline solution, jam it up my nose, hang my head over the bathroom sink and fire away. Yeeeeuucckk! I get a whole bunch more mucous out.

With my sinuses clear, I notice that I seem to able to smell the mucous - damn it, you know what I mean if you've ever had a really nasty head cold - and that's not a nice smelling.

Squeezing the saline bottle isn't cutting it anymore. A two-pack of store brand nose saline (the kind with Chinese anti-freeze inside) is running me $5 a snoot.

Enter the little teapot, short and stout. There is the handle. There is the spout. When you tip it over, warm salt water runs through your nose and yellow viscous mucous kersplats out of the other nostril.

Neti pot. I'm not into yoga or all of that other stuff but I breathe a little better after I water my nose and getting colored mucous out of my head is a good thing.

So, yeah. I stick it up my nose...