Lumbago

Not Lumbago

I used to think that people who were able to predict the weather by how their body felt was an invention of the movies. They would show some old guy (Walter Brennan?) sitting on the front porch in his rocking chair, "Eh yep, gonna rain tomorrow. I can feel my lumbago acting up". I now think that it is an actual thing, that body parts can predict weather. On Saturday, all day long, my knuckles were hurting like hell. I hadn't done anything strenuous or knocked them against anything, they just hurt. Sure enough, Sunday morning it started raining here for the first time in over a week. And it's not just my knuckles that can predict or announce a change in the weather. An oncoming cold spell makes my knees behave like hinges on a rusty old car door. You can almost hear me coming down the street, like the Tin Man on a rainy day. My nose is also sensitive. I start sneezing and wheezing when African dust storms blow across the ocean. Yes, that is a real thing that happens here. I told Mark this and he didn't believe me until he saw it on the weather report later in the day. I have another weather phenomena that I can predict, snow. When my whole body shudders, it is going to snow. Not because it's going to snow here in South Florida. My body shudders because I'm thinking of moving back to Chicago and living through another winter there.