Dear Spring, I hate you.
I know that millions of people are celebrating your arrival right now, and I respect that. But as for me and my house, you can kiss my winterized, translucent, veiny upper thigh.
I’d like to kick you in your pollen-filled blossom balls right now. Each year you take this family out, and I am done.
First, you rob us of an entire hour of our lives, which doesn’t sound so bad until you factor in the chaos that Daylight Savings Time creates for a bunch of un-morning people. I now lie in bed for ten minutes staring at Twitter while my eyeballs figure out how to focus, peel my kids out of bed when it’s still very, very, hopelessly very dark, and pull out of the driveway feeling like the underside of Death’s wrinkly tush.
No amount of coffee in the world makes me okay with this.
I’m pretty sure I could be one of those incredible people who gets up and makes healthy choices, like jogging and reading and praying, and I blame you entirely for my lack of said healthy choices. It’s your fault I’m not awesome.
The time thing would be bad enough, but no, there’s more. You have to hit us with wave after sprinkly wave of pollen. At first, we’re all, “Oooh, pretty! Look at the pink trees!” But give it time, Spring, give it time.
After we’ve inhaled the pink trees and then the white trees, and all my kids are home sick from school coughing and our heads are like booger-filled disco balls, then I don’t give a flip what color your trees are. Just make them stop. Dead trees can be pretty, too, Spring. Or those squeaky plastic ones from The Lorax movie.
As I write this, I can barely type for all the full-body sneezing wracking my frame. I probably need some Nasonex, but I can’t let Antonio Banderas see me like this, even in his buzzy little bee form. I don’t care how many cartoon flowers he sniffs, he’ll always be Desperado to me, and I am soggy and beneath his nasal spray peddling self.
I have been reduced to a dirty tissue-toting lady who apparently looks like a walking Kleenex to my drippy little nose-wipers. I bought a new blouse, Spring. A new blouse. This is rare for me, and I’ll never get to wear it as long as my kids keep spraying me down with their phlegm.
Children do not know how to handle mucous maintenance. They don’t know how to blow. They don’t know what to do with the tissue, so they smear it across their face, then chuck it at the back of my head where it sticks to my hair.
Spring, do you want me to have boogers in my hair? Is this a joke to you?
My kids glisten with shiny dried boogers all day, cough all night, and sound like Joan Rivers. I caught one of them picking her nose and wiping it on the back of the car seat.
I. Can’t. Even.
You’re supposed to “come in like a lion and out like a lamb” in March, but all I see is a temperate reptile molting all over my sinuses. I’m roaring back at you and I’d like to baa baa your fluffy tail back to December and watch Winter eat you with his icicle fangs.
I’m blowing my nose between every sentence that I write, and I blame you entirely for these attractive red nostrils that sting as they flare in consternation in your general direction.
I am so over you, and I know you’re just getting started. Because I live in Georgia now, and pine pollen doesn’t start until April. Pine pollen is your great triumph, isn’t it Spring? Every April, you fill our state with your big bulging yellow gonads, which explode all over our cars and contact lenses.
No self-respecting Yankee should have to live through this. We don’t know how to handle it. I learned how to drive in a blizzard and can scrape ice off a windshield well into May. I do not know what to do with sludgy pine pollen turning my car yellow and puffy. It’s like we’re all characters in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and the pollen is the size of soccer balls.
If this kind of pollen happened in Ohio, I’m convinced the city of Cleveland would spend eight hours locked on the freeway like Atlanta did last month. Pollenpocalypse 2014. They don’t train you on how to navigate your windshield when the pollen combines with dew and creates a paste.
If I do manage to get my windshield clear, I’m still stuck with the unsettling notion of driving while sneezing uncontrollably and trying to Roto-Root a booger the size of a canary from my spasming sinus.
While under the influence of powerful decongestants.
And “spring showers bring May flowers,” but I just want the flowers to die die die and take their various fragrances with them. Go grow in flower heaven where the streets are paved with peat moss and no one has allergies and everyone plays their harps smoothly with no sneeze breaks.
Spring, I’m sorry to be so overly forthright with you, but in a world that lauds your arrival, I think you deserve the truth. I think you suck.
Hugs and kisses,
Girl with Allergies
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image from http://www.envita.com/eimmunotherapy/2013/09/21/dealing-with-seasonal-allergies-in-autumn/
