hay fever

I inherited a few things from my mother.

Each spring I am especially aware of one. We used to call it “hay fever”, which sounds like something from the African jungles.

But it wasn't. I think “allergies” is what most call it now. Mom's allergies were pretty well developed. Each spring she had this bout of blow and sneeze and trudge. It was long before any affective antihistamine and mom just toughed it through.

I did pretty well for some years, but when we went to Texas I discovered that anything I could be allergic to grew in abundance around there. There was a tree that had bad pollen, that affected a lot of Texans, but it grew a couple hundred miles north in Oklahoma or Kansas, but those nice people shared it with us.

Each spring I was miserable.

There were by then, two types of antihistamines. One was very effective, but it would make you very sleepy. “Do not take this while operating machines,” the labels darkly warned, and ther was the “non-drowsy” formulas, but they did not work very well.

So I took the first kind, then tanked up on caffein to function. I was teaching two classes and was a full time graduate student as well. It was a wild ride each spring.

Then the drug genii came out with Claratin and my whole world changed. I wrangled a prescription. It worked and I could function with out all of that caffein.

Here in Idaho I get a shot of this allergy each spring. It goes about a month, so I can buy the generic formula to make it through the spring.

We are there right now!

Where did I put that bottle?

As you moved the colors on this paint job moved too.
Massively spendy I'd guess.
The car was an early '50's Plymouth, something you don't see in car shows too often.
Old cars are great to look at, but I don't have a lot of good memories of my cars of that vintage.

reconnect

I live a rather alone life.

Not really lonely, as long as I have my Miriam's mind even a bit, but largely alone.

In my life I have not had a great number of really close friends, but neither have most of my contemporaries. I am not sure Miriam has had any other than me.

The longest close friendship has been with Gene. We were freshmen in high school and in the 55 years since we graduated from high school, we have kept a conversion going. Mostly.

We have never lived in the same time zone during those years. Gene is a genuine scientist and teacher. I am an artist and doer (maybe).

We will have a rabid conversation for a few years and it tapers off and we are out of touch for a while, then it begins again with great intensity. We have been out of touch now for some years now. When we met at our 50th anniversary of graduating from high school Gene introduced me to his new wife and we visited a few minutes.

He was moving and did not have an address and neither of us followed up.

Then this week I got an email saying that a Gene had asked to be my friend on Facebook. I am on Facebook, but I am not very into it, I don't follow it too closely.


He was anxious to reconnect. He lives in Wisconsin now. He and his wife have been caring for her aging parents. Mom is gone now, but at 93 Dad keeps plugging along.

Gene was a college Biology professor for most of his life, so talking to him is like having a genial conversation with the wizened Professor.

We don't have to agree on much of anything. We just throw ideas back and forth, sometimes in very rapid form. It is that exchange of ideas and thoughts that has kept this conversation going.

Glad we are back in touch old friend.

Controlled fire!
This is history. Matt had his 14th birthday a few weeks ago.

fire

Last week my neighbor had a noisy party.

The neighbor has a fire pit in his rather small back yard and he had a good sized fire going.

The noisemakers were standing around the fire talking – a bit loudly perhaps.

The noise was not a serious impediment to the reading I was doing, but it did bother me a bit. On the other hand, we live just a ways from the high school football field and some noise could be coming from that direction.

So I slipped on some shoes and went outside to check out the source.

First thing I noticed was a figure coming toward me. In the dark I could not see who it was so I spoke to the person. It was Juan my across the street neighbor.

“Dave, your house is on fire.”

I looked past Juan to his house across the street. Juan's wife Sylvia was standing on their front porch with a phone to her ear.

From Juan and Sylvia's front window the fire pit is in direct line with the back of my house and like good neighbors, they were on the alert.

Juan had not even bothered to put his shoes on, but had come running across the street in his stocking feet.

He called across the street to Sylvia, who terminated he call to the 911 operator.

The neighbor's fire does bother me. It is not too far from a cedar fence which is a few feet from a cedar shaked wall on my house. If things got out of control, it could get nasty.

On the other hand the owner (yet another Dave in my life) was reasonably careful.

I thanked Juan for his concern. When Dave had begun the big fire thing I decided not to hassel him with the legals of it all.

My nutty solution was to make sure I kept my fire insurance policy up to date.