Thank God For the Rain

In Taxi Driver, psychopathic self-righteous cabbie Travis Bickle says: "Thank God for the rain which has helped wash away the garbage and trash off the sidewalks."

Here in ScrappleDog, handsome and slender self-righteous idiot Michael Holland says "Thank God for the rain which has helped wash away the dust and pollen out of the air."

It is a beautiful Sunday Morning here in Lititz. It is beautiful because it is raining. As you know, we had a really really heavy storm at the end of June. Since then we have had extremely dry weather for about. The aforementioned storm gave all the plants and trees and flowers and other leaf, acorn, and pollen-producing entities all the juice it needed to do their best to agitate my allergies. And they are doing a great job at it. But they are not alone as the culprits in bothering my extraordinarily sensitive sinuses... I am as much to blame as they.

It's an algebra problem, really. A +B <> is the amount of pollen, dust, mold spores, dog hair, etc. B is how much time I voluntarily spend in the pollen, dust, etc. And C is an allergy reaction that will pretty much incapacitate me for the rest of the day.

The big thing here is NOT the amount of things in the air, it is how much time I spend out there. The things in the air are just doing their own thing. Their job is to create new life by spreading their spores all over the place. And the dust, it doesn't really have a job, it is a vacuous non-entity that just goes where it is told to go by the air currents that are it's masters. The big thing here is who on earth I think I can just go out there and work in the dust and pollen and get away with it. Let's look at the case studies, shall we:

The past 3 weekends have been marked by allergy attacks.

August 13: I spend the preceding 2 days and the morning of the 13th at the Buck Hollow Hunting Camp. There is a dirt road in front and near the camp and dump trucks working on the Lyman Run Dam project kick up an ass-load of dust all weekend long. Also, there are a lot of allergens in the air that my body is not used to, so I have very little immunity against those things. Result: After spending a day at Larry Land, riding in a covered wagon on a dirt road, sitting outside in the dusty air, and vacuuming the camp, the ride home was a very very long one with me sneezing and wiping my nose incessantly.

August 20: About 2,000,000 acorns have fallen off our oak tree. I decided it would be the perfect time to rake them. So I did. I over-exerted myself, did a fair amount of heavy breathing that brought in a lot of allergens and spent the next day at Charolotte's baptism and party sneezing and wiping my nose incessantly.

August 26: I replaced a few pieces of wood on the back porch. Again - outside, some physical exertion with heavy breathing, but more importantly: A whole lot of saw dust. I wore a bandana around my nose and mouth, but to no avail. My allergies started bothering me. Fiona and I then went to Mom and Dad's where Jackdog didn't help my allergy situation. I am not "allergic" to Jackdog, but because I am not around him too much, he does have the ability to assist in working my allergies. So I spent the balance of yesterday at my folks's place and up at Cabela's with dad sneezing and wiping my nose incessantly. The nice thing about yesterday was that it was a Saturday and I didn't have to work the next day... Therefore, I was able to treat my allergies not only with Fexofenodrine, but also with my favorite over-the-counter medicinal aide: Maker's Mark Whisky.

If I want to NOT have allergy attacks, then I need to stop over-doing it when I am outside. I can mow the lawn, but I shouldn't follow it by trimming the hedges and turning the compost. If I am going to fix the back porch, I need to subcontract the cutting of the wood to someone else, i.e. Dad, Christo, Jason, Amy, or Fiona. Doing projects is not the problem, the problem is that I am an idiot who needs to be doing projects in order to feel like I have accomplished something. Otherwise it is Monday morning and I get to work and Miranda says to me: "What did you do this weekend?" And I say "Nothing," and I feel like I wasted two days.

So the problem here is this: I do things that I shouldn't do that are going to bother me. But I can't spend the entire summer not mowing the lawn or getting chores done either. So what can I do? I can resign myself to fact that I have some problems that really bother me and I have to live with it. There are people in the world who have it a lot worse than me so I can't really complain too much about it. I think this attitude is the best thing to have because I can either sit around being incapacitate and being really pissed off about it, or I can say "hey, this is my body telling me to sit down and relax for a few hours. Have a tea-party with Fiona, watch Baby Einstein with Fiona, do the crosswords (which is kind of hard because I am sometimes out of it mentally and the crosswords are a lot harder that way), rent a movie, watch the Phillies on TV, play Risk on the computer, or take a nice long nap."

But, I can still be thankful that the rain is here and will hopefully keep some of the nasty allergens out of the air for a few days. And I can count down to November when the hard frost comes and kills off all the pollen producers.

Peace.