7.15.2013

poison ivy panic

i can be pretty driven. when i get something in my head that i want to accomplish, i can be pretty stubborn, charging recklessly through any obstacle in my way. i got this from my mother. and it is mostly a positive, largely productive thing. but occasionally, we can get ourselves into a little trouble... charging through obstacles with no thought to the consequence, i mean. like building a canoe rack in the middle of a bed of poison ivy & oak. i didn't want to wait to spray it with round up & then wait until the plants die, that would be unnecessarily long & tedious. so my mum, who was equally enthusiastic about building this canoe rack, thought she had read somewhere that the roots weren't poisonous. so our plan was to dig up each plant, to which there were about a hundred, until the roots were exposed & then yank them out by the root with our bare hands & dispose of them in the lake. and our plan went off marvellously. we were covered in dirt & bug bites by the end but we were careful to wash our hands & feet with soap... just in case. and in the end, we had a beautifully creative mother-daughter creation in the end (will post the pics soon!).
i especially loved the canoe rack because canoeing is one of the very special memories my mum & i have together. she trucked through all kind of portaging bush with me as i completed the four long years of duke of edinburgh. she's the one who taught me to really see God in nature & how to be still. and she also taught irreplaceable feeling of building something that's your own with your own two hands. this is a tradition that is really important for me to pass onto my own kids, hence the canoe rack. so this canoe rack was significant to me none-the-less... just to give some context to why it was so irrationally important to me.
anyways, the next day neither of us had any sign of any kind of poison ivy or oak vengeance which i made sure to smugly highlight to my husband steve who had found us in the middle of the poison ivy infestation & begged us to see reason the day before.
little did we know the rash can take a few days to fully reveal it's fury. little did we know that every part of that evil plant is evil. little did we know that we also ripped out poison oak without any precaution.
lookin' fine!
and so i am sitting here in a apple cider vinegar-baking soda-hydrocortizone-calimine lotion paste covering most of my body. the kids call me the snowman. luckily, it is not actually contagious {unless you still have the oil on your clothes or skin}. i think i may have even ingested the poison by biting my nails a day or two after exposure so my throat & inner ear are also itchy, swollen.
needless to say, we have learned our lesson & will do the necessary research next time we decide to make up facts to accommodate our brilliant plans for grand creations. having said all that... i wouldn't change anything about being just like my mum. :)

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