Time For Some Random

Indeed.  My thoughts have been all over the place lately. My brain is having a touch of the spring fever, flitting around like the finest grains of pollen, infesting the airways of the masses.

My nemesis?  Hackberry.  Look, there's a cough RIGHT in the name of the darn tree!  And I do hack quite a bit when hackberry is in bloom.  Sometimes I even lose my voice from hacking, to my husband's delight. 

We are supposed to be getting rain today, and that would be great news, since it would not only wash all of the pollen out of the air, it would clear out most of the smoke from the farm fires in Mexico.  Those guys feel that it is most cost efficient to burn their fields instead of plowing the chaff under.  I can understand their logic, as most Mexican farmers do not own the expensive equipment that American farmers spend tons of cash on.  However, all that burning creates a smoke cloud that travels north every year and makes the outdoors exceptionally hazy.  The only time the air appears hazier is when the dust from the Sahara travels across the freakin' Atlantic and shows up here.  Think about that a moment.  Sand from another continent ends up in America all by itself, with no help from the usual suspects like shipping containers and errant tourists.  They can even track it on satellite! That's fascinating, at least to a nerd like myself.

I've been having feelings of anxiety lately.  No reason, at least not any that I can figure out.  I love my job, I'm not in trouble, my husband and son continue to be adorable, I'm in the best health I've ever been. So why do I suddenly find myself thinking that something is wrong?  And of course, once you start thinking such a thing, you can't stop for awhile.  It's a loop that plays the same lines over and over inside your head.  It's annoying.  Since there does not appear to be an actual legitimate cause, my brain is already going down a list of things that it might be, such as my thyroid or menopause and what have you. Because that is SO helpful!

My husband and I have been having an argument discussion about what constitutes yelling. I tend to raise my voice when I want to be heard.  It's a habit born of years of people overlooking me, brushing me off, and disregarding my perspective.  If I didn't speak loudly, I wouldn't have been noticed.  I am not nearly as bad as I used to be, of course, but since I do the least amount of talking in the house, occasionally I feel that have to speak up a bit louder than the others.  And raising my voice while speaking firmly is one of two signals to my child that I mean business. I do not actually yell, though.  I just get chastised for yelling often. My husband, on the other hand, speaks several decibels above normal. That is his normal speaking voice, and since I know that, I rarely say a word about it, and neither does Zane.  It bothers me that I am not afforded the same courtesy, and I am also concerned that we will all need hearing aids before long. 

Anyway, thanks for visiting and listening to my little rants about nothing.  Have a great day and visit Stacy over at her place.   She always has something interesting going on!