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Hay Fever Train Wreck
Mar. 19th, 2005 11:59 amWe had about a gazillion dry, wind-free days. In February. Usually, save for a week or two, a blustery and rainy month around here.
What happens when that happens?
February is the time of year when trees fuck. They gather great wads of dusty giz and wait for the most convenient vector, be it bee or bat or. . . how about wind? It's too early in the season for the hibernating bees and sloggy bats.
So Wednesday, the wind came, and so did the trees. All at once baby.
It blew at least a steady 20 knots, gauging from the scattered whitecaps on the lake. When I saw the dust-devils swirling in the intersections, I knew I was in trouble -- because I could see the dust-devils, dancing not with dust, but with leaves, premature petals, and pollen. It only took an hour for the sneezing to get so bad, I took the next day off. It is four days later, and still my eyes are watering. That's four days after a gentle rain washed most of the tree cum from the air.
It hasn't been this bad, this concentrated a hit for four years now, and that one I literally saw cumming.
A friend and I were out on his boat just off Shilshole. Like this year, it had been a gentle, warm February. We noticed the water puckering for the first time all that year with the first of the spring winds. When the wind hit Discovery Park and Magnolia to the southwest, a yellow cloud, thick like a road flair, rose off the forest. We were mystified. We thought someone's sulfur pile was going up, but no one has a backyard pile of sulfur. What then? Mustard gas? Is this yuppie chemical war?
I spent the next few days then as I do now, in bed, snotting and drooling and sneezing. The war wasn't chemical, but biological, and wasn't technically even a war, but a love. I just got my nose and eyes caught in the discharge.
What happens when that happens?
February is the time of year when trees fuck. They gather great wads of dusty giz and wait for the most convenient vector, be it bee or bat or. . . how about wind? It's too early in the season for the hibernating bees and sloggy bats.
So Wednesday, the wind came, and so did the trees. All at once baby.
It blew at least a steady 20 knots, gauging from the scattered whitecaps on the lake. When I saw the dust-devils swirling in the intersections, I knew I was in trouble -- because I could see the dust-devils, dancing not with dust, but with leaves, premature petals, and pollen. It only took an hour for the sneezing to get so bad, I took the next day off. It is four days later, and still my eyes are watering. That's four days after a gentle rain washed most of the tree cum from the air.
It hasn't been this bad, this concentrated a hit for four years now, and that one I literally saw cumming.
A friend and I were out on his boat just off Shilshole. Like this year, it had been a gentle, warm February. We noticed the water puckering for the first time all that year with the first of the spring winds. When the wind hit Discovery Park and Magnolia to the southwest, a yellow cloud, thick like a road flair, rose off the forest. We were mystified. We thought someone's sulfur pile was going up, but no one has a backyard pile of sulfur. What then? Mustard gas? Is this yuppie chemical war?
I spent the next few days then as I do now, in bed, snotting and drooling and sneezing. The war wasn't chemical, but biological, and wasn't technically even a war, but a love. I just got my nose and eyes caught in the discharge.