Allergies

My allergies have been working me over the past couple of days (mostly nights).  They're normally not bad enough to justify the expense of medicine, especially since they allowed it to be sold over the counter so my health insurance won't help pay for it any more.  But this week hasn't been quite normal.

Two nights ago I took some sinus headache medicine and that kept me awake most of the night, then last night, thinking I'd better not do that again, I cleaned my head out with a rinse with the Neti Pot which lasted long enough to get to sleep but not for long enough to get me through the night.  I was up at 3:00 and didn't get back to sleep until six.  I managed to sleep until the phone rang at eleven and have been lying around nursing a headache ever since.

I really don't know what I'm allergic to.  It usually begins around the end of February so it is probably the elms which begin to bloom so early.  Then it is usually done by the time the Purple Mustard (Chorispora Tinella) quits covering the desert meadows with their Eastery carpet.  In about another week I'm going to have to head South and East, maybe out on the Old Bonanza Highway so I can enjoy that pastel delight.  Acres and acres will be blanketed with mustard.  It stinks, but I think it's one of the prettiest Springtime delights.  I'll suffer for it.  But most nice things come at a price.  Purple mustard has a tiny little flower.

And would hardly be noticed if there weren't billions of them.  I love that notion - strength in numbers.  I guess the same is true of pollen.  Cough, cough.

 I get another little allergy spell in the Fall and that's about it.

As allergies go.  Mine aren't so bad.  I have acquaintance who suffers horribly for months and months.  Another friend claims to be allergic to alcohol.  "Every time I drink, I break out in handcuffs," he complains.  A nephew is allergic to peanuts, dangerously so.  What's a lost night's sleep compared with anaphylactic shock!

So, I'll ache and wheeze a little, enjoy the return of spring and flora and then celebrate the day when my swollen membranes shrink, relax and inhale the breath of life quite freely again.