Poison Ivy/Oak Fun

The Fun Of Gathering Plants

Sunday afternoon.  Beautiful day.  Humidity was at 72% just short of a rain shower.  Temperature was 90 degrees, just short of punishment handed down against the withering soul.  Mowing the lawn seemed a perfect thing to do.

I'll weed eat first.  Gather up the weed eater, get it gassed, start the lawn mower for her to mow while I weed eat, crank on it, and it starts.  Yeah!  Then it decides to die, and start and die and start and die, (at which time to relieve this thing from printing all the starts and dies that it went through) I managed to being weed  eating slowly and then things finally kicked in and I began in earnest.

The backyard was the most difficult, with privacy fence on four sides and the house making up the fifth, and four, no five trees, and the tree stump located just behind the garden, and the neighbors plants growing through the fence, and lots and lots of clean up work.  This in my green stained shoes, shorts and t-shirt, with the head phones in, playing Pandora radio, and the vibration of the things melting every bone between wrist and shoulder, with the right should already feeling dead from pulling on the rope so bloody many times.

In about 45 minutes I got the back done....started the front....and in about 45 minutes I had every single place you could think of on this lawn ripped a new one, with the fence showing through, the sidewalk showing off its edge, the mailbox not looking as though it had grown there, and basically looking good, it was a wonderful time.  The to finish things off, I took the mower away and finished mowing the front yard, and the mower ran out of gas, ten feet from the gate.  Life could not have been better.

I went inside, she was in the shower, so I sat down at this stupid box, checked the e-mail, checked out a thing or two on Wimp, got around, pulled my socks off, figured it was my time in the shower, and headed in to take one.  There was green all about my legs that I washed off in the shower, got the green off of my toes, and managed with all the princely timing in the world to get myself nice and clean.

Put on  clean shorts, a clean shirt, settled in for a great time of TV watching and a wonderful nights sleep.  The TV watching went fine, the sleep, well lets just say it was itchy.  My legs were itchy.  I woke up about every fifteen minutes with the feeling of lots of little ants crawling about my legs, biting and taking their share. I convinced my self it was chiggers.  Little did I know that chiggers don't exist here in town, so all of the action that was taken to rid myself of chiggers proved to be at a loss.

Ooops  Wrong Picture

Managed to go to work.  Walk to work.  As long as my legs were moving, the itching didn't itch.  So I stayed on my feet most of the morning and into the afternoon, and came home about 2:00 o'clock, fixed a bite to eat, that should have been it, watch a show on TV, nap a little. But, somehow, life had been at work again, and the legs were itching.

I went to Walgreens and got some Cortizone cream.  That'll fix it.  So home I come and I rub that on both legs.  Thirty minutes later, I rubbed it again.  Fifteen minutes later, again.  The instructions say (to paraphrase) Don't Do That.

The clock said it was 7:50 pm.  So I hopped in the car, drove the car down to the local shopping center, to the urgent care facility and walked in at 7:56.  The closed at 8:00.  But, the first thing I HAD to do was provide them with the credit card, which I did, they ran it for $30.00, and THEN she asked me to fill out their forms.  Interesting.

So, forms done, taken in a room, weighed, temperature taken, flick flick of the mechanical pencil, told to go in the other room, sat on a table, in about, oh, a minute,  the Doctor walked in with a serious look upon her young face (incredible how young they can look) and asked the inevitable question, : "What is Wrong?"
(emphasis on the 'What' part of that, she seemed so sure of herself)

I pointed to my legs, to the blisters, gave a thirty second diatribe and watched as her professional self relaxed, (yipee, she thought, I will be out by 8:30!!!) and she said, "Poison Oak or Poison Ivy"  in one breath, "We'll give you a whopper of a steroid shot"  she was playfully grinning, "And you go back to Walgreen's and buy you some of the antihistamine, rub the other antihistamine on it, and (pausing with a feeling of deliciousness) wear long pants!"  Out she went.

A young bearded man came in (no gray in the beard) said "well, turn around and drop em" so I did, he whacked me with a shot, I left (entire visit took 7 minutes) went to Walgreen's, bought the antihistamines (typed it that time to see if could spell it correctly, failed) came home took two of those pills, had the shot still in my backside, greasy stuff on my legs, and am hoping beyond hope this shall all kick in and make things work, where sleep is concerned.