FEELING GUILTY FOR TAKING A BREATHER

I can't remember the last time I could breathe, unfettered, through my nose. I can't remember when I didn't wheeze during some sort of physical activity. Sometime around my senior year of high school, I was diagnosed with allergies (later on, exercise-induced asthma) -- allergies to cats (which does nothing to explain why I own the orneriest cat alive), grass, dust, various trees, and pollen of many different varieties.

One of the symptoms of my particular allergies is that, on certain "bad" allergy days, I feel run-down ... almost drugged.

I woke up yesterday morning with all sorts of ideas on how to spend my day ... laundry ... dusting ... vacuuming ... scrubbing ... polishing ... being highly effective.

Guess what!? It didn't work. Turns out yesterday was a BAD ALLERGY DAY. I was reduced to a sniffling blob of human flesh that moved from one piece of living room furniture to another, exhausted at the mere activity of turning the pages of a magazine!

The end of the day left me feeling very guilty.

• Guilty because I didn't get my laundry done.
• Guilty because my house was still a pig sty.
• Guilty because I sat on my butt all day long.

This morning, it occurred to me. Why feel guilty about actually enjoying a day of complete and total relaxation?

We run so much, we tend to forget to stop and smell the roses (provided you can smell, which I can't). We have a bad habit of just racing through a day ... a month ... a year ... a lifetime, and we find ourselves at the end, saying, "Well, shoot! I thought I would have more time!"

I'm no longer going to feel guilty for enjoying a day of doing nothing. Our spirits and our souls need that every now and again.