Particle Woman

Sometime earlier this week, when I wasn't looking, the Yellow Peril invaded my neck of the woods. Anyone in this area of the country will know immediately that I am not referring to a nebulous sense of geopolitical menace emanating from across the Pacific - I'm talking about pollen, people. Unless you live in a crazy-high pollen area like me, where "extreme" ranges from other states don't even begin to cut your "normal", you may not know just how Perilous all that Yellow can be. Queenie is here to testify - it is nasty.

It's everywhere, literally laying on the ground in drifts like you'd see from a light snowfall. Yellow streaks festoon the street outside my house; the fine, dusty mess filters in our open windows and changes the color of the dark wood furniture it lands on, leaving sooty yellow messes on the windowsills. I dust it to no avail; I'm only shifting its position over and over again, making me feel like a voluntary Sisyphus, which is to say, stupid. My red car is orange at the moment, bright as a Clementine, my paint job overlaid by a thin film of vivid yellow pollen that acts on it like a gel placed over a stagelight, effectively changing its hue. It's a hideous color on a vehicle, to boot.

This week is also Spring Break, so the barbarians are quite literally at the gate. Since I am not working, I am home with the little heathens, and all of us are stuffy-nosed and gacking up balls of yellow gooz from our lungs. We've been out and about all week - the middle child needing ferried to various activities, the youngest and I hanging out at the park and the duck pond and other outdoor-type activities. We've taken the day off, though, today - bitchy Mommy, enforcing a Day of Rest - and we've sealed the house up once again, praying for some rain outside to wash away some of the particulates currently dancing a hornpipe on our membranes. The Weather Channel is predicting thunderstorms in a matter of hours, and the sky outside looks obligingly ominous. I love The Weather Channel - a middle-aged woman's Rock Gods - I'm hanging on their prophecy.

Tonight, once my familial duties are satisfied, I have a hot date with a pack of Benadryl. I've just sneezed polleny snot all over my typing fingers, biting the shit out of my tongue in the process. Crap.

Bleeding to stanch. AFK.