divine angst

After college, I lived in a part of the country where allergies are a fact of life. Cedar in the winter, pollen in the spring, mold in the spring, more pollen in the summer . . . everyone I knew had allergies of some kind, except me. Oh, I might get a little sniffy with the molds, but I never had any sort of reaction to pollen or cedar or grass.

Maybe immune responses to allergens really are conditioned on where you grew up. Because it seems the pollens here in Our New City™ really don’t agree with me. I started feeling an itchy throat mid-week, perhaps from some drainage, and it waxed and waned for a couple of days before almost completely subsiding. Yesterday, I felt fine. Maybe a little sniffy, but I’ve been sniffy since they turned the heat on in our building last fall.

This morning, even, I felt OK. A little sniffier, perhaps, and the sniffiness . . . moving . . . a bit more freely in my sinuses, but I was OK. Off I went to school to do some studying, feeling fine, but by the time I got there, I was a mess. Sniffy, itchy, sneezy, itchy, sneezy, and uncomfortable. I’ve since come home, gone to the grocery store, come home again, and it’s just gotten progressively worse. My eyes are now watering, I’m blowing my nose every five minutes, and my head feels heavier by the moment. I’ve taken an all-day sinus and allergy pill already today–and it had no effect–so I’m not sure what else I could do to feel better. Basically, I’m just miserable.

Thunderstorms are supposed to move in tonight, and it’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow. Maybe the rain will drown all the pollen out. Or maybe it won’t, and I’ll just end up miserable from the pollen and the mold. On Easter. While I cook a big meal. Fun!

I have only to get through the rest of today. Then I can drink coffee again! I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out, numerically and theologically, how I could move that up, but nothing has worked out. The fact is that Holy Saturday is the 40th day of Lent (since Sundays don’t count), and Easter begins, at the very, VERY earliest, tonight, with the end of the Great Vigil services. And I’m too old to be drinking coffee at 10pm anymore and still expect to get any good sleep.

So tomorrow morning, I’m planning to get up, make a big pot of my Community Coffee (support them! They’re doing GREAT things in New Orleans and southern Louisiana), and savor it. I fully expect to be totally jittery during church. Frankly, I’m OK with that.

Tomorrow’s Easter feast will probably get its own post, if it turns out OK. I’m using a Cook’s Illustrated recipe from several years ago for a roasted boneless leg of lamb topped with a parmesan and bread crumb crust. Along with it will be spinach wilted in bacon fat with garlic and balsamic, a pan of GFPs (Good Effing Potatoes, a brunch tradition from Our Old City, always made by one of our friends) and, for dessert, whiskey bread pudding. My lavender Easter suit will not fit when the day is done, but that’s OK. It’ll just go back in the closet until, I don’t know, some other holiday when it’s OK to wear a pastel linen-and-silk suit.

But until then, I’m working on my Property outline. Or should be. Exams are much too soon for comfort. This week will be very busy, I think.