Yesterday was a beautiful day, with blue skies, sun shining, just warm enough, with a brisk breeze but no humidity. This morning, I woke up to a gray sky
and muggy, unmoving air. But was I surprised? Of course not. I knew yesterday that the weather was changing–due to my nifty built in barometer.
I discovered the barometer a couple of weeks ago when I had to go home from work because I was feeling ill. I couldn’t explain why I felt so awful–or exactly what it was like–but I felt awful. My head hurt and my ears were ringing and the rest of me just felt queer.
I went home and went to sleep. The next morning, I was just fine–but a huge storm system had rolled into town.
Realization began to dawn. I started to watch to see if a pattern would emerge. And emerge it did. Before any change in the weather, my sinuses and ears would get plugged–creating a massive headache. My allergy medicine would seem to stop working after only four hours or so. After four hours to a day of discomfort, the symptoms would disappear and I’d be just fine.
It makes sense, if you choose to think about it. Due to allergies and perhaps something more, my sinuses are continually plugged–and my eardrums have perpetual pockets of fluid surrounding them. So, when the pressure outside changes, it takes a long time to equalize the pressure inside my sinuses and ears. Thus, I feel sort of like you do when you’re gaining or losing altitude in an airplane. My ears get that really full feeling, and my head starts aching. Only since I have so much gunk in my head, chewing gum or yawning doesn’t really help. I’ve just got to wait it out.
I used to want to build my own barometer, but I never seemed to get the supplies I needed. (Someone was always throwing away my trash stash before I had everything together! Grrr…) Recently, my younger sister made herself a barometer–I was pretty covetous until I realized that mine is infinitely superior to hers. She has to remember to look at hers in order to figure out what’s going on with the pressure. Mine has auto-alerts!