It's Just Allergies....

The gentlemen standing behind me in the cashier line at TJ Maxx is gripping a mittful of cleaning aids - a broom, a mop, several different dusters. I comment to him that he looks like he has a big job ahead of him.  That is all that's required to launch him into a tale of his battle against the dust of Palm Springs. His frustration pours out of him as he tells me of wearing out the bristles on his broom from so much sweeping, his embarrassment at telling anyone how many different allergy meds he is on, how his mother's trip here from Ireland is being ruined by her congestion due to allergic reactions to the desert dust. He grew up on a hay farm in Ireland and never suffered a day of allergies from either the hay, the other vegetation on the farm or the animals. It wasn't until he moved to the paradise of Palm Springs that he experienced the torment of seasonal allergies.  

Cactus flowers

The desert in bloom.

Due to the higher than normal rainfall in Southern California this winter the desert is in a "superbloom" year. Everything that can bloom IS blooming. Very pretty but more pollen than normal. Couple that with more wind than usual and you have a recipe for rhinitis.  Being an allergy sufferer myself and someone who has experienced the losing battle of keeping out the dust of  the desert I nod in solidarity and let him express his irritation. I understand. 

People that don't have allergies don't want to hear about yours. In fact, some of you will quit reading right now so as not to hear from us whiners.  Go on then, stop reading.  I'll wait for you to go..... ok. Many people have no patience for what is perceived as the minor problem of a runny nose in spring but to those of us that suffer there is more to the picture. Here is a direct quote from a US government website for the National Centre for Biotechnology Information. (Http//www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov):
"The rates of depression, anxiety, and sleep disturbance (suicide risk factors) are greater in patients with allergic rhinitis than in the general population." But it's just allergies, right? If you ask the average person which time of the year they think has the highest rate of suicide most people will tell you the winter, or more specifically Christmas time, the holiday season.  In actuality spring, specifically May has the highest rate of suicide across all different nations and cultures. There are many, many theories as to why that would be. It seems to run counter to what we want to agree upon anecdotally.  Winter makes us miserable, we say,  we feel lonelier at the holidays if we are alone, not enough sunlight makes us cranky.  Springtime is rebirth, longer days, warmer days, more beauty and possibility in our life, why would more people kill themselves or at least try to kill themselves then?  I have a one word answer...allergies.  See quote above. It is as good a theory as any and has had much investigation about it. Allergies make you feel crappy, they give you itchy eyes, a runny nose, a mucus clogged throat, headaches or else the dopiness that comes with the stronger antihistamines. The feeling of having a cold that never goes away. New medicines are better at keeping you alert but not as effective at keeping down the symptoms.  A constant trade off. They may also be a symptom of other chemical imbalances going on in the brain. 

They bloom everywhere! 

Pretty and pollinating

My siblings all suffer from allergies to different degrees, as do my sons, one particularly badly so I've had a lot 
discussion and trial and error about coping with allergies, both seasonal and food related. Antihistamines, cortisone nasal sprays, the traditional neti pot, vitamin supplements, acupuncture, air cleaners...they have all been tried. Canadians suffer from one of the highest rates of allergies in the world, thanks in part to our abundant supply of trees and plants but probably as well from some of our ethnic backgrounds. Light haired, light eyed people suffer more from allergies of all kinds. Thanks, Ove and Dagmar, my Scandinavian grandparents. 

As I listened to my red haired, Irish friend in the TJ Maxx line up I sympathized.  The dusty desert winds of places like Phoenix and Palm Springs are not kind to me either. The only place I have found so far where I am allergy free is Hawaii, perhaps a less obvious reason why I enjoy Hawaii so much but just as important as the sun and sand. When I'm there I can leave the house without a couple of emergency tissues in my pocket, I don't startle people with my trios of sneezes, I can sleep without waking from mucus choking me in the middle of the night. Let me tell you, that can endear you to a place! The different vegetation and the constant blowing trade winds work together to bring me relief no antihistamine can match. 
So with this in mind, when someone sneezes next to you in a line up and they rush to assure you "it's JUST allergies", instead of rolling your eyes, send them a little loving thought and tell them you hope they feel better soon. 

It Never Rains in Southern California

I have the great fortune to be spending some time in Palm Springs right now. And it's true, when you are here in the desert it does feel as if it never rains in Southern California as Albert Hammond tried to tell us. Although he did go on to sing that it "pours, man, it pours". And so it does some years. It has been a rainy and snowy year for California and they are about to experience the flooding that comes with the snow melt but here on the desert side of the San Jacinto mountains it feels like another world. I have included a picture of the blue sky so that those remaining in Vancouver can have a reference point.

Before you get hating on me I will let you know that I did my time in Vancouver this year. I was there for it all, the month of snow, then more snow, the unending rain in March. This was the first winter in many that I did not get an opportunity to escape to somewhere warm and sunny, warm enough to be in a bathing suit for part of the day. So I had to scrape the mould from behind my ears as I boarded the plane for California and the greenish, algae-like tint is slowly leaving my skin the more time I spend in the sun here. I feel your pain.
I am a born and bred Wet Coaster. Lived all my life in BC, most of it in the lower mainland. I know rain. My parents were born and raised in the area, rain is mixed in with my blood. I am used to it. But this winter has tried the spirit and soul of even those of us born to the wet weather.

When climate change was first discussed it was all about the idea of global warming, we would be growing lemons and oranges in our back yards, no more skiing in the snow-less mountains. Palm trees would abound, why, Vancouver was to become the new Los Angeles as Los Angeles withered up and blew away or sank into the sea.  Now the buzzwords are global climate change. Ah, that is a bit different. That leaves things open to all kinds of interpretations, expect anything! Los Angeles and Southern California were deluged with moisture this winter as were we in the Vancouver area. And still are according to reports I'm getting from friends at home. There won't be any orange groves in Vancouver surviving the snow we saw or flourishing in the few hours of tepid sunshine this spring has had to offer. Even our native gardens didn't survive the weather we had. Lawns turned to mush and then froze. Thawed and got rained on again and are now mostly moss. Trees that were never meant to carry eight inches of wet heavy snow were snapping their branches off in desperation to be free of the weight. Hedges splayed outwards, long branches escaping their tidy boundaries, requiring amputation.  In my neighbourhood the city workers were still cleaning the fall leaves off the streets in February, leaves that had been caught under the snow and ice and could finally be swept away.

Easterners laugh at our bitching and moaning and tell stories of snow so high they have to shovel out of their front door in the morning. That is precisely why I don't live in eastern Canada, or central
Canada, or northern Canada. I live as far south and almost as far west as I can get to escape Canadian weather. If Canada, instead of the U.S. had managed to strike a deal with Hawaii, or we had annexed  the Turks and Caicos like it had been discussed in 1974 then I would be living in one of those two places right now, I'm betting. I went to Hawaii for the first time at the age of eighteen and fell in love. Not with a person but with the islands. I had no idea such a paradise existed so close to home and so accesssible and I  tried to figure out how as a teenager with few skills I could wrangle a green card and stay there. It was not to be. But if I had had the Turks and Caicos to go to at eighteen....

  Don't you want to be here right now?

Courtesy of Turks and Caicos Tourism

Americans really have the choice to live in any kind of weather they want while staying in America. The U.S. has it all covered, weatherwise. Dry, wet, cold, steamy, arid, scorchingly hot. I envy them that.  The plan to make the Turks and Caicos our eleventh province was floated around again in 2013 and I'm hoping one day the Queen will give it up to us Canadians. Let us have our version of Puerto Rico or Hawaii, a tropical  dream with Canadian currency, the English language, a Caribbean flair,  and lots of room for our damp and chilled populace to to flake out on the beaches. It would be nice if it happened before global climate change melts the glaciers, raises the sea levels and sinks the Turks and Caicos. Fingers crossed.