If you guessed that it’s rabbit season or duck season, you’re wrong. It’s allergy season. (Okay, so if you’re a hunter, it might be rabbit or duck season, I honestly have no idea.)

In my household, it’s allergy season. And I say my household because we all have allergies. It’s the season of “I’ve had a headache for three days,” and “Can anyone else not breathe out of their left nostril?” and “I wonder if my vertigo is from sleeping funny or from allergies.”

And no, I don’t mean the dust allergies that plague me year-round, or my mom’s mold allergies that keep us from getting a real Christmas tree every year. I mean those good, old-fashioned allergies that come with the change of the seasons and leave us feeling nostalgic about what it felt like to breathe.

Every year, I do get the slightest bit cocky if I don’t get hit with the first wave of allergy horribleness. I’m not sure which allergen is typically the first to come through our area when the seasons change, but as it turns out, it’s not something that I’m allergic to. So while everyone else is being assaulted by otherwise innocent trees, I’m sitting pretty. Maybe my local honey is helping me to gain some immunity to the local allergens! Maybe I’ve grown out of my allergies! Sure, because that’s how that happens…

At this point in my life, I take allergy medication every single day, year round, and I STILL suffer from allergies. Most days of the year, if I forget my allergy medicine, my nose feels a little itchy and I sneeze a lot more. No big deal. But then, Allergy Season hits…

There’s nothing like waking up on a bright spring morning, going outside, and smelling the flowers. Mmmmm…smells like an allergy attack. Then stumbling itchy-eyed to my car, only to find it covered in a beautiful — but deadly — layer of yellow. And it only goes downhill from there. My exposure to allergens only goes up throughout the day, and you know that even if I’m not outside, pollen sticks to everything. Once I have a little bit in my hair, it basically becomes a halo of death that surrounds my head for the rest of the day.

And allergies don’t just affect me in a little way. They affect everything. My nose gets so clogged and itchy that I can’t breathe and it keeps running (which of course backs up into my throat making me nauseous). My eyes get so irritated and itchy that I need to wear my glasses and can’t even wear my contact lenses. Usually I will still wear my contact lenses to work and see if they have to come out in the middle of the day and I need to drive home blind. It’s a really fun game that I call “Blind Commute Roulette.”

And as you all know from my recent post about My Aging Human Body™, my allergies now affect my skin too and make me constantly itchy. Is it hives? Is it ringworm? Is it a mosquito bite? Oh no, it’s just my SEASONAL ALLERGIES.

And don’t get me started on the sinus headaches. As if my sore nose, itchy eyes and raw throat weren’t enough, let’s add a full-blown sinus headache into the mix. You know, I was just wondering how life could possibly get worse. Thank you for the instant answer, Mother Nature! You never let me down.

And more pollen means more bees. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against bees. I am totally happy to let the bees live their lives and make honey and do other bee stuff. I just want them to do all of it FAR away from me. I am not allergic to bees or anything, but there’s something about that buzzing sound that automatically makes my skin crawl and my limbs flail as if I’m having a slap fight with one of my invisible friends.

Oh, and I don’t only have a bone to pick with the newfound allergens that are suddenly gracing my nostrils. It’s getting warmer out, which would be great, if it wasn’t for THE DAMN HUMIDITY. Seriously, spring has basically just started and the temperature is 65 going on 102. I dreamed all winter for the days when it would be warm enough for me to go outside — well, not me really, more like everyone else could go outside and leave me to my indoor, air-conditioned activities — but basically as soon as it was warm enough to be outside without a coat, it was humid enough to make me feel like I was going to waste away to nothing on the sidewalk.

Coworkers now pass me cautiously on their way into work because I’ve withered to the ground in the parking lot yelling “Remember me as I was!” and then reciting that entire Spongebob episode where he’s drying up in Sandy’s treedome.

No big deal, right? When I get home from a long day at work I can just take a dip in the pool? WRONG. It’s that awful time of year where the humidity is bad enough to torture me, but it’s not late enough into the season for the pool to be open. AKA the worst season of all.

The point that I’m trying to make is: the outside is trying to kill me. While I never think that I’m going to make it out alive, I always live to see another season…but then my eyes get swollen because of allergies, so I can’t actually see…and the cycle begins all over again.