In the church office today, Linda, the church secretary, mentioned that her allergies are bad.

“Mine too,” I said. “My eyes are itchy.”

“I know,” she said. “My eyes are really bad.”

“I just want to claw my eyes out,” I said. Which will sound disgusting, unless you too suffer from allergies in which case you’ll fully understand why I said that.

“Yup,” said Linda, “claw them out, put ’em in a glass of water, and rinse ’em off. That would be great. I’m using my eye drops all the time. I wonder what’s causing it, though. Usually when we get the first snow, that’s the end of allergies. But not this year.”

“Maybe mold?” I said. Mold is a huge problem in old buildings in New Bedford, because the climate is so damp. “Except that we live in a brand new building with no mold at all, and my eyes have been itching at home, too.”

“Well, I noticed a lot of the trees still have leaves on them,” said Linda.

“Leaf mold?” I said.

“I’ll bet that’s it,” she said.

“You know,” I said, “I thought I’ve had some kind of lingering cold for the past month, but I’ll bet it’s allergies. Itchy eyes, congestion,…”

“…Headaches, tired all the time, fuzzy thinking. Yup, sounds like allergies, doesn’t it?” Linda said. “We need a good cold snap to put an end to this.”

I’ve never had allergies in the winter before. This may be a small but unpleasant side effect of global climate change:– perhaps allergy sufferers will no longer be able to count on respite from allergies in the winter.