Among the more annoying symptoms of increasing age, my ability to recover from short excursions with alcohol had to be my least favorite until this weekend. It’s been a slow progression from four beers to three beers to two that used to give me a righteous headache in the morning, but now I can have one stinkin’ Corona on a Friday night and wake up feeling like there’s a midget swinging a hammer at my skull on Saturday morning. What gives? Corona is just beer-flavored water, for Christ’s sake. What have I done to deserve this?

Of course, this could be a symptom of the passive-aggressive weather patterns we’ve been living through the past couple of months; every time we have a new front blow through, it feels like I’ve had cement poured into my sinus cavities, and this phenomena has only gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. So it should come as no surprise, then, that the sudden spike in temperature kickstarted pollen production around our house, which caused my nasal cavities to start leaking snot at prodigious and embarrassing levels—all weekend long.

It didn’t used to be this way. I never had allergies as a kid (not that I can remember, anyway) and last year’s pollen dump didn’t affect me as badly as it has this year; in fact, I remember shoveling green pollen off the cars last year by the bagful and not blinking an eye. So what gives? Has the pollen mixed with a new and more potent brew of toxins and swine flu, or has my body decided 38 is the year to finally see if we can transform into a flesh-covered snot monster?

Whatever the case, I mowed the lawn for the first time since last September (coincidence? I THINK NOT), trimmed the sidewalks, watered two hedge plants (moved from the backyard last weekend to fill a huge dead spot), and attempted to repair our back gutter, which has sagged and leaked for the last two years. We also took the girl on an epic journey to find organic starter vegetables but were thwarted by poor selection and the commercial dominance of Miracle-Gro. Having the window in the Jeep fixed could not have come at a better time, though, because Her Highness spent most of the day in a onesie and still wore a rosy pink glow, even though I put the air conditioners in the windows and chilled her cave to a comfortable 72°.

Plans are afoot to purchase a fan for the greenhouse, and I will have tomatoes planted within the week, but finding other organics to grow indoors remains a problem. In the meantime, I will continue to blow my nose and fill wastebaskets and curse all of the pretty trees and shrubs and flowers that herald the arrival of springtime in Baltimore.