I'm still just on a high that it's spring. I need more azaleas in my life. Maybe I'll take a drive this weekend. Oh, yeah -- I'll be doing a lot of driving this weekend. I avoided telling Lizzy about last weekend's birthday party invite, but this weekend there's another, and I feel too guilty to avoid it. (Since we go to day care in Arlington, we are invited to lots of birthday parties in Arlington. Not a place I'm eager to retrace my steps to on the weekend.) Here's hoping there are azaleas en route.
Back to spring. I love the two or three months of the year that it's pleasant to be outside in the D.C. area, but I work with, and am engaged to, some allergy sufferers, so I feel rather guilty about enjoying it. Hm, two doses of guilt in two paragraphs. Let's not overanalyze that. Poor Matt forgot to take Claritin before we headed out into "the country" on Sunday, and the poor man was pretty bad off, all right. I'm very grateful for my relative health on this matter. It's just so darn gorgeous out there! Everyone bursts outside from out of nowhere. Flowers all over the place... *pauses for deep breath of springtime air* I can almost forget to dread the coming Humid Months. Blech.
This reminds me of a time when I seemed more vulnerable to the seasonal elements. Pre-adolescent Katie, who lived in a suburb of Portland Oregon, at this time, developed a nasty, itchy rash every spring. Cause: Unknown. Cure: None but the passage of time, apparently. Treatment: Calamine lotion all over the place. Very unpleasant to go to school with great patches of pink Calamine lotion all over me.
After several years of this, my father discovered the likely culprit: We had poison ivy (or was it poison oak?) GROWING IN OUR BACKYARD. Hm... Could that be why? He figured, for reasons I cannot fathom, that he was immune to it, and proceeded to hack it down whilst wearing wrist-length gloves, arms bare. My next memory of this incident is of playing a board game ("Careers" -- anyone played it?) a few days later with our family, and of him scratching at his forearms furiously in between turns, then rolling the communal dice when the turn came back around to him. Ewwww.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I know what you mean about the high! The first week it was really spring here, I came down with a cold that I didn't even realize I had until several days in because I just felt soooo good all the time. I couldn't figure out why my throat was sore and my nose was running, and then it dawned on me.
ReplyDeleteha ha! I bet your parents felt so guilty.
ReplyDeleteMom isn't convinced that the two things were connected. Maybe not, but it's an interesting coincidence. I mean, what ELSE could have given me a skin rash like that? Then again, I don't remember rubbing myself up against any trees or ivy in the back yard with regularity. Who knows.
ReplyDeleteI'm gazing out my office window right now - thinking about how much I'd like to be outside to enjoy the glorious weather.
ReplyDeleteIn our old townhouse (in your neighborhood) we had poison ivy growing all around our a/c unit. We also had a dog that used to love to sleep in it. We didn't know two key things. First that there was poison ivy in amongst the regular ivy and second that the dog slept in it. But Lily kept getting this horrible rash. And we couldn't figure out what it was from. Finally, somehow we found out that there was poison ivy back there and that the oils were getting on the dog. Lily was playing all over the dog and was (is) so allergic that just that little contact made her face swell up like a balloon. It was frightening.
ReplyDelete