Today was Day 8 of the 2017 Fall pollen season. In the past few years, Fall pollen season starts around the middle to end of August, and continues right through September. I can’t recall when it usually ends.
What I am certain of is that the pollen count will get higher – and stay high – for a long, long, time. There aren’t going to be many more days where I am well enough to get basic things done. My strategy is to engage in a burst of productivity on a day where I’m sick – but not completely incapacitated.
The worst thing about pollen season, and the severity of my allergies, is that it makes me unreliable. There is no way to predict how awful I’m going to feel on a given day, and there is no way to know when a pollen season will end. Making plans is pointless.
The pollen count today was at 8, which is bad for me. I decided to push myself to get some housecleaning done while I still could. I did the dishes. I cleaned the microwave, the counters, and the walls in the kitchen.
These are chores that Shawn usually does, but he’s at a podcasting conference. I didn’t want him to come home and have a bunch of dishes waiting for him to wash.
When he called tonight, I was able to ask him how much laundry detergent goes into the washing machine. He is the one who does the laundry, and I’d forgotten how much laundry detergent to use. Traveling creates a mountain of laundry, and I didn’t want Shawn to have two mountains of laundry to deal with after arriving home.
My burst of productivity is a bit of a gamble. Tomorrow, I might wake up extra sick because I exposed myself to dust and dirt (in addition to the pollen that is filling the air). If I am ok, I intend to clean some more stuff.
It’s hard to be too sick to do anything useful for months at a time. Cleaning today means that I won’t feel absolutely worthless a few days from now when I’m struggling to function.
A Burst of Productivity is a post written by Jen Thorpe on Book of Jen and is not allowed to be copied to other sites.
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