While the end of December has never sat quite well with me (see above), I've always been excited for the Winter Solstice, which is over a week behind us now. The increasingly crisp air, still carrying notes of fall with the smell of rotting leaves and not quite naked trees. Winter also means snow, which means snow days, which means sledding and hot cocoa and warm socks. I have dragon mittens, snow is an excellent excuse for them to make an appearance.
You may, then, be able to imagine my confusion and displeasure that today it is 74° and incredibly muggy. Stepping outside is not unlike what I'd imagine it would be to step into a mouth. While this allows me to use my favorite New York Summer analogy, it does not make up for the fact that Winter is a lie here. Oh, I've seen people in their coats, all bundled up on those days it drops below 60° (gasp! shiver!), and have even had the odd day or three where I've been able to don a heavier hoodie. Heck, it was 30-something° on Xmas, which to me is evidence enough to at least consider some sort of holiday miracle at work.
The real issue, though, is the allergies. The locals call it "cedar fever", but I prefer to think of it as a special sort of hell meant to punish me for betraying my New York heritage and/or some cruel tradeoff for access to great music and fun, quirky things to do. The culprit of said suffering is the Mountain Cedar (for the record, I spent a year living IN the mountains, literally, during which time I encountered nary a tree of this nature), aka Juniperus Mexicana, and it is pure evil. Think about Stalin, then turn him into a tree. I mean, not to belittle terrible tragedies or anything, but seriously, my eyes are really itchy. I burst a freakin' blood vessel in my left eye from rubbing it so hard. It was grotesque. My throat, too, itches like mad, and can only be relieved with loud and unattractive throat scratching, wherein I bellow like a trapped bison and frighten the cats. Oh, and my sinuses! They are on fire, causing frontal sinus headaches and very inconvenient vertigo. While that allows me to think about Lucille II from Arrested Development ("oh Buster, how grand!), it's most unpleasant and causes complications. See: last day of hoop dance class, where I couldn't get the room to stay still and was wobbling all over the place. More so than usual, I mean.
I am a half-Jewish (Jew-ish, ha!) girl with asthma and a sun allergy, and never have I suffered anything like this. Winter is supposed to offer reprieve from such misery, and I consider it cruel and underhanded that I was not alerted of this sneaky, vicious turning of the tables. This definitely was not included in the brochure.
As a result, I've been doing much research on the Mountain Cedar and its related "fever", and have come across a website devoted to people against cedars, aptly named peopleagainstcedars.com. Typically I would be very strongly opposed to getting rid of any trees, being a tree hugging (see below), field romping, outdoorsy dork, but I think these people are on to something.
 |
| 18 years old, college Freshman. Little did I know the battle I would face ten years later. |
Until such a time when we are rid of this pestilence, however, I shall be avoiding the outdoors, using the dreaded neti pot, continuing to take what has to be an unhealthy quantity of knock-off Zyrtec and sitting next to the air purifier Brian recently procured for me. Sweet, right? I'm pretty sure he did it to get me to shut up, but nonetheless.
We're off to Colorado for a visit and some ski adventures in a few weeks, and it should be a nice escape. DRAGON MITTENS, I tell you.