Hay fever / spring fever

“Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.” – Dorothy Parker
“Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again.” -Sarah Ban Breathnach

As if on cue, the calendar brings in spring and waking this morning we witness what the night has brought us. A powdery-yellow coat clings to all surfaces outside the windows that we were just thinking of starting to open to let the cool air in, to cut down on the extortionary gas-electric prices. Without a day in between, we will likely have to turn off the furnace and turn on the AC. To open the windows would let in far too much of the harmful things. They would climb into your nose and down into your lungs while you sleep, and you would wake to an elephant sitting on your chest, African not Asian. Even the tarry-nicotine protective coating on the lungs, if you are lucky enough to have such in this polluted city, cannot provide immunity from this yellow villain. And the boss still doesn’t understand that you may need to just stay in bed for the day, for to leave the house would be to risk further contact with the insidious golden haze.
Yet, I suppose, it is this time of the year in which we can all be reborn. Running begins in order to prepare us for certain summery challenges lying in the near future, and to make sure that the girls can still fit into the two-pieces, and the boys into the tighter Ts. It is in spring when Saturdays in the Highlands become necessary. The girls bare their shoulders and legs, tops come down on the convertible 3 Series BMWs. Our beers turn lighter as do our liquors, and perhaps our winter-weary hearts do as well.
Was playing: Missed the Boat by