"I'b allergic to everythig here."

My allergies are hammering me right now. When I say “right now,” I mean literally right now as another stream of watery snot trickles from my nose. I’m amazed that the mucus in my head can plug my sinuses so completely, yet be so liquid as to drain from my nose like milk from an improperly assembled bottle. The weather has been unusually hot for this time of year, also known as “football season,” which makes my allergies even worse since every plant is shedding its offending allergens as fast as possible in an effort to keep cool.

Abbie seems unaffected by whatever allergen that’s forcing me to reach for a tissue once every 1.684 minutes. While I’m happy for her current naturally histamine-free lifestyle, my seasonal allergies never kicked in until I was almost a teenager, so there’s still plenty of time for my genes to afflict her. Of course by that point she’ll be old enough to take care of herself which means I won’t have to do anything more than point to where we keep the Claritin and make sure we have sufficient stockpiles of tissues.

Reading to Abbie is a problem with my allergies. Having to blow my nose every 1.684 minutes means I must take frequent snot removal breaks while trying to read to her. If I’m quick and make my escape while at the right moment, like while she’s trying to turn the page or lift a particularly stubborn flap, I can blow my nose, dispose of the tissue, and return to her side before she has a chance to wonder how many pancakes are on that page (13). If I take too long or her patience is too short, she degenerates into tears and I’ll need another 1.684 minutes to console her to a condition where she can read along with me without whimpering, at which point I’ll have to blow my nose again and restart the process all over.

With all that mucus running down the back of my throat, much of it lodges in my speaking equipment, which means talking to her requires extra effort. I’m ordinarily a fairly quiet guy, so conditioning myself to jabber endlessly about everything surrounding us in an effort to coax a little speech out of her was difficult enough. Now that I have to exert a little extra effort and occasionally some phlegm to produce speech, I’m content to sit silently while she plays, assuming she’s not doing anything disgusting and/or dangerous like sticking rocks in her mouth. When she wants to read, I suck it up, cough it out, and read to her with some difficulty. When she insists on reading, I do try to steer her toward books about opposites with one word per page and away from storybooks or anything else with a high ratio of words per interesting picture where the main thing keeping her interest is the sound of my raspy voice warbling its way through “The Little Engine that Could.” I’ve outright hidden anything that incorporates a button that plays a song when pressed because it depresses me too much to hear my mucus-impaired vocals sing their way through an entire song on one pitch.

I try to limit time outside in an effort to limit my direct exposure to allergens. This is difficult because it hampers two of my main forms of entertaining Abbie: Letting her wander around the backyard or playground, and shopping for Vital Supplies. I don’t mind spending less time shopping for Vital Supplies since it can only lead to spending less money on Not Quite Vital Supplies, which frees up more money for frozen custard. Not running around various yards though is too difficult to completely surrender. When I see a choice between feeling even more congested than usual and hearing her whine even more than usual, I know which option is more palatable; I step outside and watch the nearby trees peel off their layers of stifling pollen.