My Hairy House…..

It’s that time of year. Pollen is floating in the air like a green cloud. If you live in the south, you have been experiencing high counts of pollen and the overall miserable sneezing, watery, itchy eyes. The worst is the yucky, thick mucus that drains down you throat. Allergy season has arrived with a vengeance.

We live in a part of the country that has the highest onset of adult asthma, according to my Doctor that is. We live on the line where the trees from the south converge with the trees of the north. We get it all!!!

My husband and son have suffered the most thru out the years. I feel so sorry for my husband. He has strange allergies though. He will be fine until he hits the Occoquan Bridge. His nose will kick in and he is sneezing miserably. He has discovered that he is severely allergic to the dust in the Data Center. If he is handling any of the computers in the back he cannot touch his face at all. He has also been know to have olfactory hallucinations. He will be sitting at his desk and smell bacon cooking or some other meat dish. His coworkers have learned to expect the unexpected with him. He is known for the odd and unusual sense of humor. I mean the man does have a brain with a fish tie on his desk.

Our son has also inherited his father’s allergies. Last year was the first good year our son didn’t come down with bronchitis or pneumonia. It wasn’t until we discovered that he has an anaphylactic reaction to cats that he was tested. The boy has some major allergies. He is allergic to every tree, grass and weed, not to mention cats and of all things chicken. No more cheap hotdogs for us. His severest tree allergy is the oak family. The trees are broken into groups. Oak is the big one. He was further tested to see if it was just the pollen or the wood. Fortunately for us, it is only the pollen. Oak is nice in a fireplace when you have to have the dead tree taken down.

For years this child suffered from the severest eczema. His eczema was so bad his legs looked like a burn victim.  I was afraid to put him in shorts.  After the allergy testing the Allergist told me that the eczema was caused by his grass allergy.  During the grass pollen season, don’t let him go out in shorts. Make sure he showers everyday when he is outside playing during the high pollen seasons. When we stopped putting shorts on him during the grass season, his eczema went away.  He hasn’t had a single flair up!! In our area, grass pollen season is from April to June.

It’s ironic that he is allergic to oak…..we have nothing but oak in our yard and the surrounding yards. That could be why our street is Oak street. There are some very interesting things you can do with the acorns from oak trees. The Native American Indians would collect the acorns (must be from White Oaks) and soak them in water. The acorns were shelled, placed in some type of bag and left in a creek where they would be in the water’s current. This would leech the tanic acid from the acorns. They can then be ground into flour. WE have yet to try this. We have only had one really good crop of acorns and that was also the precursor of a bad winter for us. We have noticed that the more acorns we have the harsher the winter. My husband and I will go out onto the back deck in the fall and sit and talk. He has taken to wearing a construction hard hat. You have no idea how hard an acorn is until you have been beaned in the head by one falling out of the trees. It is pretty wicked at night when they are falling and hitting the roof. Imagine a constant hail storm for 2-3 months.

That was just a little bit of information, you can file it under useless knowledge if you would like.

Back to my son…..Last year we started the allergy shots. I have never been so happy. He has had the most incredible year. His only complaint this year has been itchy eyes but considering what we have dealt with in the past, itchy eyes are nothing. We discovered that his large bronchial airways were open and working at 98% capacity. His small bronchial airway was only functioning at 60%. That was why he would bottom out on us when allergy season kicked in. He would start out with the normal allergic reactions and end up with pneumonia. Their last year in school, he missed the first week due to pneumonia.

If you suffer from allergies to the severity of my son…I strongly advocate getting tested and starting the allergy shots. It has given my son a whole new lease on life. You have to be responsible enough to go every week for your shot. If you do it haphazardly you will not benefit from this.

What does all of this have to do with my hairy house?

Nothing really….It is Oak Mating season. My roof is covered with huge clumps of oak pollen. There are piles of it everywhere, on the streets, on my deck, in my yard. My yard no longer looks green from the grass. Even the dirt looks like it is sprouting stringy hair.

We need to have the limbs that are hanging over the roof taken down. I offered to go up on the roof  using the leaf blower, blow all that mess off the roof. I even offered to bring the 24 ft ladder up to the deck and take down the two limbs that need brought down. For some reason my husband wasn’t open to these suggestions. I know why (yes, I am accident prone, sort of…) but thought I would off anyway. I’m not afraid of heights. My husband said that was the problem…:)

Here are a couple of pictures of our hairy roof………

That is a closeup of the mess everywhere. If you are an allergy sufferer, there are a couple of sites you may find helpful. One site gives you your local pollen count. The other site is a survivors guide to allergies and asthma. It is chock full of information. Take some time to go thru the site. There are several pages for kids.

Allergy Forecast

Survival Guide