Holding my Breath

I learned just about three years ago that I shouldn't hold my breath. Like the rest of you humans, holding my breath makes the pressure in my eyes increase and as we all know, high pressure is bad. If it wasn't bad, it would just be called 'pressure'. Or maybe it would be called 'relaxing'.
I actively try to avoid holding my breath. I've cut out my long under water swims, nixed seeing how red I can make my face and given up holding my breath at red lights.
Today I was out for an invigorating constitutional and was required to hold my breath twice, which as you can imagine ticked me off just a little bit. The first time was due to a groundskeeper mowing the lawn at an apartment complex I was walking by. His mower was gas-powered and was chugging out black smoke as he walked behind the mower pushing on towards even more carbon monoxide production. It turns out I dislike carbon monoxide even more than I dislike holding my breath so I took a deep breath and marched past, holding the air in until I was two-thirds of the way so that I could slowly exhale the last bit and minimize holding my breath. The second time holding my breath came about 10 blocks later as I walked near a coffee cart with a car at the window waiting on their double shot tall skim something. This was the only car I saw while I was out today that exhaust of any color coming from it's tail pipe. So, once again I took the breath, did the walk and began exhaling just as I passed behind the mobile carbon mnoxide factory.
Thank goodness my eyes didn't pop!
I hope that in about 42 days a certain President of the U.S. with the initials, Barack Obama, will take another look at national emission standards. Well, I'll be happy if he has one of his employees do it. What's Al Gore doing these days?