ahh, Ahhh, AHHH-CHOO!!!!!!

Remember how much I said I love springtime?  I stand by that.  I think.  It's just that I always seem to question myself when The Pollen comes down.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with springtime in the south, you wouldn't understand that The Pollen is indeed a proper noun.

I witness the phenomenon that is The Pollen every year, but I have to admit it seems worse this spring.  Every year the cars are tinged in yellow.  Some years it seems as if there's a yellow haze on the horizon.  But this year, The Pollen seems almost alive.  A plague o' Pollen, if you will.

I should have known it was coming when I read this article on the local news website, entitled 2010 Allergy Season Short but Intense.  Thanks to the torrential downpours monsoons rain we got in the earlier part of the year, and an unseasonably cold winter for central Georgia, the plants and trees decided to wait to blossom all at one time.  An optimist would look at this as a more beautiful spring, but the realist sees this as a nightmare for allergy sufferers.  Pollen of this magnitude makes even the least allergic people feel the effects.  (It's true!  I've heard lots of complaints as I eavesdrop my way through daily life.)

In case words don't do it justice (because they don't and can't), here are some pictures for you.  You may have to click on them to enlarge for the full effect.

These are the tracks through the pollen on our driveway.  You might typically see tracks like this on a dirt road in a drought, or a paved road in the snow but notsomuch on a driveway - because of pollen.

I mean, ick.  If the roads looks like this, so do the insides of our lungs, and even grosser, the undersides of our eyelids!

Here is the doorknob to my office building that I try so hard not to have to touch every morning when I unlock it.

These are the steps that lead up to the dusty doorknob.  The front face of them is the appropriate brick color, the top appears to be a little mildewy or just dirty.  I assure you, it's just covered in The Pollen.

It comes, then, as no surprise at all that this is the pollen forecast,

...hampered only in the slightest by the threat of thunderstorms on Thursday.

I'm no pediatrician, but I am a mom, and I'm blaming my sweet little girls' recent double ear infections on this madness.  And in the spirit of optimism (which, I assure you does not come naturally to me), may this short-but-intense allergy season be over, well, shortly!

And because you'll no doubt need a few of these (or, if you're like me, about twenty of these in rapid succession):

"God Bless You!"