Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey

I've been greeted on my return from the Northwest by some truly gorgeous spring weather, though while I was gone greater D.C. officially reached the part of the year where I'm basically allergic to the world. The first troubling omen, as it is each year, was the sight of my car dusted to an ominous yellow-green by tree pollen -- a particularly intense omen this time around, since I had left my car parked under one of the tall ash trees on the apartment complex grounds for a week. (The pollen's actually more or less unavoidable; the reason I try not to park under the trees between April and October is that the birds sitting high up in said trees will crap all over my car. Hence the second troubling omen of the year.)

I did remember to stock up early on generic Sudafed and Claratin this year, so I can avoid most of the allergy symptoms (in particular the obnoxious nocturnal ones like wheezing and full-body itching) by just eating some pills every couple of hours. The cost of this is a sort of muffling, medicine-induced haze, which I can sort of but not quite cut by ramping up my daytime caffeine intake. Thus an afternoon like today's, where I struggle to stay awake at my desk and have a slightly floaty drive home. It doesn't help that I'm driving a rented '07 Sentra while a Geico-affiliated auto body shop in Alexandria fixes up my bumper, and maneuvering the slightly larger, more softly upholstered vehicle feels like walking around in a too-large suit. Once I've fed myself and slept off a couple hours on the couch I'm readier for action through the late evening -- that "action" mostly consisting of casual Internet browsage and reading more of The Language Instinct -- though the option of fully alert wakefulness is pretty much off the table for the next couple of weeks.

Anyway, I'm kind of looking forward to midsummer, when the weather becomes clingy and insufferably hot and my nose doesn't run any more.