Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Around this time of year

Around this time of year Dad always used to start quoting, “Spring is sprung, the grass is riz; I wonders where the flowers is.” A fellow can hear this too many times in his life, but once a year or so it seems appropriate.  That little poem occurred to me yesterday on the ol’ 38L as it lumbered down the broad busy boulevard.  It’s a divided street with a neglected dirt bed down the middle where plants could have been planted.  Instead, the bare earth is the (probably) unintended host for hundreds of wildflowers that grow around here like… well, the obvious idiom is actually accurate here, they grow like wildflowers.  Poppies, lupines and irises erupting in clumps and sprinklings that indicate no human sower, but a wind-borne legacy that will eventually carpet every inch available.  It made me think that this state’s colors should be purple and orange.  I’d hate to have to wear them, but I could look at the intensity of those flowers all day long.  Well, if you handed me the occasional beer, I could. 

But with the onslaught of wildflowers and the prolific effloration of the acacias and other trees, my seasonal allergies have reasserted themselves.  It’s created a new entity in our household, one I’d be just as happy not to experience again - the screeze.  Kel wasn’t a life-long allergy sufferer, but over the past five years or so she’s taken it up like a trouper.  (Or trooper.  I’m never sure which to use.) Lately she’s been affected by surprise sneezes, which come up from nowhere to erupt violently out of her.  Sternutations so vigorous, profound and unanticipated that she actually shouts out with a shockingly high pitch as they escape from her usually demure punim.  She is screaming as she sneezes, with no advance warning or chance to prepare myself.  It scares the hell out of me, especially at close range in a closed space, like in the car.  We’ll be having a normal conversation and suddenly she shrieks out a sneeze in the middle of a word, loud and startling and actually kind of scary.  These screezes are making for an anxious April for me.  I’m trying to think what loud noises I can integrate into my usual biological activities to get back at her but I’m drawing a blank.  But I can be very creative.  I’m sure something will come up eventually.