Winter?

I'm over it.

I'm over the snow (I swear to Whomever that we already have more snow than we usually get in two winters. Sure, it's not nearly as much as you folks east of us have to deal with on a regular basis, but let me have my whinge). I'm over the darkness. And I'm especially over the cold.

Erm... for those new to the program I should say that I have a perfectly valid reason to dislike the cold. You would too if it made you feel as ill as it makes me feel. Stupid weird allergies anyway. For extra fun and if you want to see some reasonably unpleasant pictures, google cold-induced urticaria and "ice cube test". Go ahead. I dare you. And yes, that's exactly what they did to diagnose me when I was a kid. It was as pleasant as it looks.

Today it's about -15C and humid. The humid part makes sense when you consider that it's been snowing on and off, I guess. The problem with humid, though, is that humid makes me react faster. Yay. Stupid weird allergy + stupid winter = please can I move to Belize or something already?

Brushing off the car was definitely not something I wanted to be doing today, I can tell you.

Hey, since I've already started whining about the stupid weird allergy, would you like to know how it started? I don't think I've blathered about that in a while.

It would have been the summer before I started grade five, I think. My brother and I came down with a weird rash. Weird enough that the doctor actually came to the house to see if he could figure out what was causing it (came to the house, yes. But small-town doctors used to do that in those days). I don't imagine that my brother even remembers because he has no reason to, but I can because I think that the rash must have set off weird things in my body chemistry. The fall after that I started to feel strange every time I went out in the cold. My face would feel numb and bumpy (I didn't know that it was a rash because I couldn't see myself) and my fingers would swell so much that I couldn't bend them. I didn't say anything about it because it kind of freaked me out.

Um, that was the kind of kid I was. If something freaked me out I kept it a secret. Makes no sense, I know, but then neither do I most of the time.

This would have gone on for a while before anyone thought anything of it except for the fact that I had a fairly young, fairly new, fairly panicky teacher that year. And one day I came in from recess with my face all puffy and bumpy and she took one look at me and decided that I had the measles, of all things, and had to go to the infirmary right away to wait for my mother to come get me.

We had no school nurse, but we did have an infirmary. Where I waited and picked up on the teacher's panic and started bawling (well... that wasn't a stretch for me. I bawled all the time at just about anything). And by the time my mother arrived... the rash had gone down. But the teacher made her take me home anyway.

And that started the doctor visits.

And that's when I finally told people that I felt funny when I got cold.

And that's why they put the ice cube on my arm to see if I'd react to it.

And that, boys and girls, is when winter became very, very different for me. Not that I was exactly in love with winter before all of that happened, mind, but that's when winter became too many months of near-hell that I have to spend bundled up and trying not to look like a walking disease.

Yes, it's not fun.

And I've been blathering on way too long considering that I'm supposed to be working, I suppose. Too bad, too. You'll miss the part of the rant that goes on and on about the cold showers....





Don't worry. I'll likely feel like blathering about that at some point, too.