After returning home from my weekly Meals on Wheels delivery today, I decided to take Abe out. I grabbed my house key and a doggie pickup bag, actions that Abe immediately recognizes. I said the magic word, walk. Abe began to prance about in his usual manner, the back half of his body bopping from side to side. I pulled my coat and hat from the closet, laced up my sneakers and grabbed Abe’s leash. But Abe was not at my feet.

I turned in a circle. Abe wasn’t in the room. I tried to make sense of this. “Walk” is the second best word in Abe’s vocabulary (the best being treat), and from the moment he hears it, he stays glued to my side.

“Abe?” I called. He must be up to something really bad to be distracted from a walk. I heard a thud. I wasn’t sure where it had come from. Upstairs maybe?

My mind raced in search of an explanation. Maybe someone had broken in while I had been out earlier, and now he was hiding upstairs. He had just struck Abe over the head with a blunt object. Maybe I was next.

“Abe!” I cried desperately, keeping an eye on the front door in case I needed to bolt.

There was a scratching at the closet door. I opened it. Out popped the happiest dog in the whole world. There’s that saying about how the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Yeah, that’s true.

One of the best things about living in Texas is the mild winters. For a few short, sweet months the sun loses its piercing intensity and rewards us with day after day of 65-degree weather. I feel like a criminal staying indoors on these days. But for the past couple weeks I have been sequestered in my house like a person allergic to light. Like a vampire, really. I have cedar allergies.

This is the first winter here that I’ve had problems with this. I didn’t know it was possible to develop allergies. I thought you were born with them, but several people here have told me that cedar allergies seem to need time to develop. Wow, once you get them, they are miserable. My sinuses are constantly stuffed up, and I’m having a hard time sleeping because it’s difficult to breathe when I’m so congested. So my eyes are puffy from not getting enough sleep, but on top of that, they also itch as though they have been smeared with some sort of poisonous weed. I’m taking allergy meds, but they always leave me feeling a little dopey so I try to avoid them when I can.

My co-workers tell me the allergies will only get worse over time. So I’ve started scoping out homes in Vermont. I’m thinking I will have to do a sort of reverse migration. When all of the seniors are making their way to the sun belt, I will flee to the gray, dreary north, where the only thing in the air is snowflakes. I’ve always wanted to take up cross country skiing.

Well, Texas, I thought that you and I might finally be friends. Oh, sure, I knew there were trade-offs. I had started to accept your violent thunderstorms and crazy monster-truck-driving citizens, knowing that in return I would never have to scrape my windshield or pull on an awkward, puffy pair of boots. But this, this crazy two-month-long illness you’ve saddled me with, is too much.