The weather-caster noted this morning that ragweed pollen and mold were "uncommonly high."

Ah, so that explains it.

Unlike "normal" allergy sufferers - who sneeze and get runny noses and cough and in general have physical symptoms, I get tired. And dysphoric. And lose some of my generally bouncy and resilient demeanor - going from Tigger to Eeyore in the course of a few hours.

The thing is, unlike a lot of minor health-related things, knowing what it is doesn't help make it better.

I may need to invest in a new air filter. I used one for years (it was my night-time white noise source as well) but then the company that made it stopped making the filters, so I got rid of it.

I had something odd and unpleasant happen yesterday.

I have a two-hour break between my morning classes, and in the second class I was giving an exam, so I needed no prep time. So I finished sorting through the LAST (thank goodness!) of the 20 soil samples. (This will become important later; I didn't realize its importance until this morning).

It was unnaturally warm and humid here yesterday. (And yet: no rain. Boo.)

While invigilating* the exam, I began to notice my chest feeling tight. I didn't worry too much at first - it happens sometimes when my allergies are bad and goes away almost immediately.

This time it didn't. It got progressively worse. I started to feel a bit light headed but by that time I was down to 6 scattered students so I felt I could sit without worrying about anyone being able to cheat (besides, I use "form A" and "form B" with cleverly scrambled-up questions; it may not defeat cheating 100% but it would make it harder, and thus, I hope, more recognizable by me).

I began to worry - sure, this is chest, which for me usually means lungs (or rather, bronchi), but there's other stuff in the chest. Like heart stuff.

Dear God, could I be having a heart attack? (I had no other symptoms - no tingling, numbness, fatigue, nausea - none of the other symptoms. Plus every doctor that's bothered to check my cardiovascular system has found no evidence of anything wrong).

So I sat there, willing the students to finish up, telling myself if it didn't get better I'd drive myself to the ER and be checked out.

The students finished. I hadn't keeled over yet so I decided (and yeah, this was probably stupid, except in retrospect it wasn't) that our local ER being what it is, unless I was actively dying, I'd probably be sitting there four 3-4 hours, so perhaps it would be wise to run home and get a book. (And I still wasn't convinced this was anything worse than bad allergies).

I walked in the door of my house.

Immediately my chest opened back up, the tightness and pain went away, and I could breathe normally again.

I should note my house was a good 10* cooler than my classroom building (seriously; my office over here reached 30* C yesterday afternoon) and considerably less humid (part of the caretaking of the piano involves keeping humidity in a narrow range and monitoring it).

So, it must have been asthma. And I realized this morning that bending over plates full of wet soil for two hours probably was the root cause of the problem. So I'm glad to be done with that.

The really weird thing, and what clinched it for me as being allergic-related? When I went back on campus to teach the soils lab (which my TA could have done in my absence were I sitting in the ER hooked up to a nebulizer or whatever), I developed really bad eczema on both my hands and my feet - I get allergic eczema once in a while, not often.

It's all quieted down now (thank goodness for a jewel-weed/lemongrass salve I had at home), but I still feel kind of "fragile," like a bad exposure to dust could set me off again.

I know I said my allergies were mostly an "annoyance" but once in a while they do rise above that and become a little scary. (And yeah, I took my meds this morning, I guess I have to take them for a while now, even though they cause sleep disturbances for me).

(*Yes, I know, "invigilating" is one of those "affectation" words but I like it better than "proctoring." "Invigilating" sounds Latinate and smooth, "proctoring" sounds more angular to me and rougher. Though I suppose "proctoring" also has Latinate roots (though one etymology lists it as coming from Middle English))

Well, yesterday was my second (of three this week) fourteen hour day.

Uuuuggggggghhhhhhh. Especially ugh as it's the start of the worst part of allergy season for me.

Today - well, today I've decided to prevent it from being a totally 14 hour day; I am going home early this afternoon. (There is an evening forum on campus I am expected to go to. It may last past 9 pm. Since I have to come back for that, I think I'm going to take a couple hours at home to do something akin to relaxing).

I did a TINY bit of knitting on the second Opal Magic sock. (I am not sure why they call the colorways "Magic." I will leave it open to your interpretation when I get around to posting a photo.)

I've come to the conclusion that people who manage to design wonderful and exciting things - who come up with new ideas that are really neat - must have jobs where they work from 9 to 5, never take work home, don't do volunteer work, and don't have a lot of outside responsibilities. (And don't have allergies).

I don't know. I feel kind of bad when I look at the stuff people have designed - some of it is "hey, I could have done that!" stuff. But when you have approximately 35 minutes a day when you're awake and your time is not otherwise accounted for...there's not a lot of designing you can do.

The thing is: it seems to me a lot of the people who design patterns (or who get book deals) get all this positive reinforcement. And to be honest? I'm jealous of them. I don't always get a lot of positive reinforcement for the stuff I do - I think I once mentioned on grant proposals, you write and write and write and follow all the guidelines and then you, most of the time, get back a letter that says either "sorry, we ran out of funding even though your proposal is kind of good" or "We don't think your proposal is that good at all, sorry." And with journal articles it's somewhat the same, except once in a while you get a reviewer who is so snarky and so much has an axe to grind that you wind up wondering why you're even in the biz. at all.

I know, part of being a grownup is that you are able to tell YOURSELF how great you are but a lot of times I do not have that capacity. In the absence of outside confirmation, I frankly do not believe I am that great. (There. I've said it.) Sometimes I think it would be nice to be around people who are either not so wrapped up in their own lives that they don't notice what anyone else is doing, or whose phasers are not permanently set on "criticize" (I don't know many people like that but I do know one or two and it's kind of exhausting).

At any rate: I've learned one of the characteristics of being a grownup is that you have to accept that what you're doing is okay to pretty good if no one says anything. Because most of the time when someone says something, it's because you've screwed up. I don't necessarily think that's right - I think people do need some positive reinforcement from time to time - but it's just the way things are.