D. used the blower to clean off our deck Saturday.

This is what one side of our deck looks like this afternoon.

The other side looks worse.

And I am certain that I will NEVER BE ABLE TO GO OUTSIDE AGAIN.

Without the aid of an Allegra / Clarinex / Zyrtec drip, of course.

But that’s okay because Alex and I can just sit inside and eat chocolate ice cream.

Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that, y’all.

(Edited to add: I do love everything pollen does to nature – I just don’t love what it does to my sinuses. And my eyes. But the end is near…and in the end, it’s a small price to pay for a glorious spring and summer. THINKING. HAPPY. THOUGHTS. See?)

For the six springs before this one, D. and I lived in a big subdivision where almost every single tree had been mowed down unless it was part of a natural buffer between streets. We had about four trees in our backyard, none of which were much taller than I am.

And as a result of those conditions, the pollen was minimal.

But in our new-to-us house, we’re nestled under a canopy of trees. The pine trees are so high that I have to wrench my neck to see the tops of them, and we have oaks, dogwoods, plus blooming shrubs.

And as a result of these conditions, the pollen is killing me.

For the last two mornings, my left eye has been swollen shut, and it’s only after several rounds with a warm washcloth that I can coax it to open. Without going into overly gross detail, I will just tell you that there is some gunk. And it is nasty. And I feel like before I engage in conversation with anyone I must give them permission to LOOK AWAY if necessary BECAUSE I AM HIDEOUS.

But I won’t be quite so hideous (well, at least not to some of you) in about a week because guess what I ordered from what my mother-in-law calls “Amazon dot cee-zero-em”?

THE SHOES!

Don’t worry, y’all. I really think my toes can handle them. They’re one part of my body about which I’m not self-conscious in the least. But now if I had to wear the shoes on my, you know, stomach, they’d have never made it into my “Amazon dot cee-zero-em” shopping cart. Trust me.

Emma Kate is usually my shoe-buying conscience, and when we see each other we automatically take off the shoes we’re wearing and swap. We don’t even have to announce it anymore (e.g., “I think I want to try on those shoes. Do you mind?”) because at this point it’s pure reflex.

And ultimately I made my decision to buy the shoes because I realized that if I were to see Emma Kate and she were wearing them and we swapped shoes as we always do, I would run away far, far away from her and keep the shoes forever because I would love them deeply at first sight and have to have them for my very own.

Which seemed to be a pretty good indicator that I was not motivated solely by the sales price.

And yes, I know that they are a bit quirky. But so am I. For this I have no defense.

I do, however, have another story about Emma Kate. As if the whole hypothetical thievery of her hypothetical footwear weren’t enough.

Last Monday night we were on the phone for the last five minutes of the Mississippi State / West Virginia basketball game. Since I have cable (THAT I LOATHE) and EK has DirectTV, she had a five-second broadcast delay that I was not experiencing. She quickly became frustrated with hearing me yell at something related to the game and then having no idea what I was yelling about until she saw the action five seconds later, so I finally told her that I would be quiet so that we could continue to watch the game together on the phone without me spoiling her fun because we are grown women and all.

You simply cannot imagine how difficult it was for me to maintain my composure during the last two minutes of the game without giving away critical information before EK saw it happen on her television. But I did it. Being able to discuss the game with Emma Kate was more important than fulfilling my near-constant impulses to scream my head off, and so I suffered in silence, down to the very last play when West Virginia beat us at the buzzer.

Since I was five seconds ahead of EK broadcast-wise, I knew about the tragic outcome before she did. And when it happened, I put my head down on my kitchen counter and shook it back and forth, wishing I could somehow roll back the clock and devise a different strategy for our last defensive series. About the time I was starting to re-structure the play in my head, my dear friend Emma Kate – who was just then seeing the end of the game – let loose with what could only be described as a wail. The wail of a wounded animal, in fact.

Y’all, I shot up from that countertop like a cannonball and nearly threw the phone across the room because what in the name of Cletus was all that noise?

“That noise” was Emma Kate. And she wasn’t just disappointed. She wasn’t just yelling. She was grieving.

As I told my friend Daph earlier today, the only way I knew to respond was to remain very very quiet and speak very very softly in very very soothing tones.

Finally, I almost forgot to tell you that Wednesday night I chipped a tooth in my sleep.

And I have no idea how it happened.

Unless I was dreaming of eating peanut brittle.