Okay, yeah. For the first time in my forty-odd years, I've been suffering hay fever. Bastard grass pollen: sinuses full of wet concrete, itchy eyes. Bastard bastard bastard.
But those shiny new all-day antihistamines have been keeping me going nicely. I've been dropping one every night before bed, and sleeping reasonably well as a result. And that's all I ask. I can hack a bit of snot by day, but I really do need to breathe easily to sleep.
For some reason, though, the last couple days it hasn't gone so well. I couldn't work out why.
At least, I couldn't until this morning, when I woke up with a sore throat and a cough too. Y'see, all three of my offspring have had varying degrees of cold, cough, sniffles for nearly a week. And apparently, my number has finally come up. The Ubiquitous Hay-Fever Snot masked it, though, and it wasn't until the illness escalated that I figured out something was wrong.
Bloody typical it should happen on a day when the temperature spiked up at 29C. That's not unbearable by any means, but it's not goddam comfortable, and I always feel shittier when I've got a head cold and it's hot outside. Pfah. Vile micro-organisms! Abandon my nasal passages or face the wrath of the Flinthart immune system!
In other news: the last of the medical students goes home tomorrow. We didn't actually see nearly as much of her as we'd like in her two weeks, but that's how it goes. I'll be driving her to the airport at 0700 or so tomorrow, which will give me a day in Launceston with the Mau-Mau to get some Christmas shopping done.
It's the last day of school for the year tomorrow, too. Yay! One more set of obligations scratched off there.
Meanwhile, the raspberries are coming in, and the first of the black berries are ripening. I picked two litres of raspberries yesterday, and another two litres today, and about a litre of blackberries today to match the half-litre yesterday. Mmmmm.
It was good, though. Gave me an excuse to rev up the cooking tonight -- smoke-grilled vegetable salad with sea-salt, pepper, and balsamic vinegar; smoky grilled salmon with home-grown dill and lemon... and for dessert, a raspberry medley. That included fresh raspberries, raspberry sorbet, and raspberry pandowdy topped with fresh whipped cream.
Of course, I had a couple nice beers with it, and promptly felt like shit... fuck I hate head colds.
