I’m Allergic to Global Warming…Literally

I knew that my allergies were really really bad this year, worse than I ever remembered. I would start to question whether my allergy medicine was working or not, but then I would read somewhere else about how bad allergies were in general this year. It does make me feel a little better to think that it’s not just me, it’s everyone.

It turns out that there is a reason for all of this. I’m allergic to global warming. No joke. Basically, rising global temperatures and changing climates are resulting in warmer springs, which leads to higher pollen counts.

This article reads like the script of a horror story. We have some choice quotes like, “Pollen from ragweed, which triggers most cases of spring hay fever, is projected to increase up to 100% between now and 2085”, “ragweed pollen could become up to 70% more allergenic”, and “climate change, it turns out, is likely to favor trees that give off pollen as opposed to those that don’t”.

AAAAAH!

Now, all of a sudden, it’s personal. That’s certainly something I didn’t think about when looking at those lush scenes with dinosaurs….dinosaur sized ragweed spewing dinosaur sized pollen year round.

No thank you, my friend. Me and my scratchy red eyes are voting for an ice age.

Another Monday, another set of quotes

Evie, laughing: “Aunt Rachael…cracking me up!”

Me: “Oliver, your big sister put her hair in the water all by herself.”
Oliver: “Mfgh!”
Me: “He said, ‘wow!'”
Evie, skeptically: “I’ll take your word for it…”

Evie is really learning how to use her words. She can be encouraging, as in “Good job hurrying Grandma!” when we are trying to get out the door. She can be so polite when she wants to, such as “Daddy, thank you for the big fork, but I would prefer a small fork.” On the other hand, she can also be not-so-polite, as in “I said I wanted strawberries, how dare!”

Evie had to go to the ear doctor a lot before she got her tubes in her ears. We tried to think of ways to make the visit a little more fun, and the ear doctor came up with the game of looking in her ear and seeing who was in there. “I see Elmo in this ear!” Evie got a big kick out of that. I’m still not sure if she understood that Elmo actually wasn’t in her ear. But anyway, we continue the game to this day, when we are doing checkups with her doctor kit.

Evie: “And in your ears daddy, I see…hair.”

You have to take a lot of abuse as a parent.