I’m Not Crazy — I Have Allergies

Well, spring is here and Dallas is in full bloom.  The first day of spring did not catch us napping.  It did, however, catch us rubbing our eyes and sneezing.  The allergens are off the charts here.  You can practically SEE the air.  It looks like someone turned on a fog machine filled with mustard-colored fog juice.  Every morning by 10 AM, it feels like my eyes are full of diatomaceous earth.  They are so gritty and itchy that I want more than anything to rub them … but doing so feels like giving them a good buffing with 120-grit sandpaper.

By noon, my eyes are usually bright red, watery, and I have a crazed look that comes from not being able to rub my gritty eyes.  Also, my eyes are rotating crazily within my sockets because my contacts are swimming around randomly on my eyes and so I blink rapidly and wall my eyes, trying to get my contacts re-centered over my pupil.  All of my co-workers think I am sniffing glue in my office or snorting whiteboard marker dust.  I half expect orderlies to show up, fit me for a jacket, and manhandle me down to the back of their waiting truck.

I try to tell them that if they will just flush my eyes with a steady stream of lukewarm saline solution and shoot a couple of Claritin down my throat with a pea-shooter, that I will be as sane as the next person.

But they can’t hear me over all the sneezing.