It’s rainin’ caterpillars!

All I can say about this past weekend is “Wild!” Everything about it was rip-roaring, frustrating, chaotic, dizzying, exciting, yet I would do it again if I could.

Most of our weekend was spent at Planter’s Point where we did a small amount of cleanup work, but mostly played on the four-wheelers with the kids. Those kids would have ridden the whole day and a half we were there if they could have — they loved riding! Hubby and No.1son cut new trails in the woods, then would take the bikes through the new trails. We rode so much that our hands hurt from holding the handlebars and pressing the gas.

There were only a couple of problems with the weekend. First of all, I didn’t feel the best in the world — I didn’t feel bad enough to stay home, just headachy, a little dizzy, tired, lethargic — probably a sinus infection coming on since the oak pollen is so high. All I wanted to do was lay down and sleep but I entertained the kids on the four-wheeler some and did some knitting on the poncho for Baby-Girl. The poncho’s main front and back portions were completed in a denim-blue color. I added a hood to the poncho in a light-mauve which went well with the blue. I think the poncho is absolutely precious! The blue color is the poncho portion, the light mauve is the hood, I almost knitted a light mauve pocket on the front of the poncho.

The second problem with the weekend was the lack of supplies. We forgot the charcoal to cook with. Luckily, there’s a Wal-Mart just a few miles down the road. We also forgot the sleeping bags, cook-stove, syrup. I don’t know what our problem was with packing for this past weekend, it’s not like we’ve never camped before — we have camped before plenty of times. We just couldn’t get our acts together and didn’t remember to ask each other if we remembered to pack “such-and-such.” That night, we paid for our sins memory-lapses — we nearly froze to death with only sheets to keep us warm. Hubby had towed the popup camper to the property the day before and being up off the ground protected us some. We wouldn’t have lasted the night on the ground. Hubby and I were in the queen-size bed on one end of the camper with a sheet and a lap-throw that was found in the SUV. GS2 and Baby Girl were on a bed in the middle of the camper with coats and thick clothing that we had with us. No.2son and GS1 slept on the full-size bed on the other end of the camper with a sheet covering them and a new tarp. You might laugh at that idea but the plastic tarp held the body heat in. Those boys were the warmest of the whole group.

An environmental event occurred which surprised Hubby and me. Caterpillars were in the trees by the thousands and I guess the caterpillars had just hatched and were gorging themselves in the lush green tender leaves that had just sprouted before falling by their silken threads to within a few feet from the ground before plopping to the ground.

Poor Baby Girl was almost traumatized by the “snakes” she called them. The fuzzy little colorful worms were everywhere — on the chairs, on the tables, plopping from overhead on to your shoulder while Baby Girl was crying “snake, snake” in every breath. I don’t think she’ll ever recover; we’ll probably have to drag her on to the property from now on.

This is a cocoon that the caterpillars came from. The cocoons were in the trees by the hundreds.

And for home-building purposes, we now have a drive-way in.

We are so excited.  We have completed the next step towards building a home on this property.

My photos are here!

At last — my photos have arrived.

You can tell they are having a great time!

Hubby

Baby Girl

Clean up work at the property

The property from the roadway

Scratch, scratch, itch, itch

After so much angst about the property, the property details seem to be flowing beautifully.  It was just like the property was put there just for us.  Hubby and I both love it so much, that we’ve almost forgiven the property for giving us such a bad case of poison ivy.  Of course it wasn’t the property’s fault, we knew the vines were there and worked around it anyway. 

Hubby and I had celebrated the buying of the property two weekends ago by doing some cleanup work on vines.  We knew we were getting into poison ivy, I mean any idiot could see the three-leaved vines tangled into anything that grew in our jungle.  But the stuff had to be cleared so we jumped on in.  Boy, did we pay for our efforts. 

I seemed to get the worst of the poison.  I had worn work-gloves but had on no sleeves – my arms were eaten up with the poison.  I clawed at my skin so much last week that I thought I would go insane.  I didn’t miss any work because of it but that was only because there were too many important things going on at work to miss any time.  I bought the drug store shelves out of poison ivy meds though.  Anything you could think of was bought.  Of course I bought caladryl/calamine lotion and it brought almost no relief.  It just wouldn’t clear it up.  Benedryl was swallowed by the doubles but I could only take them at night because they knocked me out.  Cortaid, a cortisome creme, was tried next, which was only slightly better.  We had heard about a wash that washes away the poison and went shopping for that.  It was called Zanfel poison-ivy wash and I was itching so badly that I was happy to deal out $40 for that stuff.  It felt like a scrub paste with a very salty-grainy texture.  And it was only too tempting to nearly scrub away with the paste at the itchy skin, nearly taking your skin with it.  At last, we felt better, as we rinsed the paste off of our arms.  We tried soothing it next with a calamine product called Avyrest.  By golly that stuff didn’t work either.  By Thursday, we were using Epson Salts, trying to dry the skin on our arms.  I think we were just too impatient for the miracle drug to rid us of that pesty itching, but you have to suffer through it I guess because it just wouldn’t go away. 

By Friday, I was a raving lunatic and called my doctor.  Yes, I was wimping out but I couldn’t handle it any more.  Could you believe my doctor’s office was closed?  Yes, closed!  I had to go to one of these “Minute-clinics” in CVS pharmacies now.  I gladly did it too, they took my insurance and I paid my little co-pay and answered the physician-assistant’s million questions, and nearly snatched the prescription out of his hands as I raced for the drug counter.  I was prescribed some tablets to take internally and a cream for the rash which I began taking and applying right away.  It’s now Tuesday and the rashes are quickly drying up.  When Hubby saw how well I was doing, he made an appointment with a physician assistant at his jobsite for this morning.  Yes, he gave in to medical help.

Even after all of the suffering though, we still love our property.  We actually returned this past weekend to the property to do some more suffering clearing – with sleeves on our arms this time.  I nearly burned up in those long sleeves, but I wore them anyway.  I want no more of that poison ivy.  We’ve cleared more than half an acre of the property over the weekend.  I can say that Saturday was the most enjoyable day we have ever spent there.  We worked hard, Well Hubby and No.1.son worked hard, I raked and tugged at a few vines; otherwise, we played on the four-wheelers all over the place, probably frightened the animals out of their wits because of the loud noise. 

The grandchildren played in the clearing that we enlarged, enjoyed riding on the four-wheelers, and watched small critters in the woods.  They were specifically enthralled with a beautiful bright green tree frog with white markings on his little face.  GS1, my little warrior grandson fears nothing and grabbed him up while his little brother, GS2, screamed for a turn to hold him.  And we all watched as the frog jumped up Cody’s arm to his shoulder, then to his head where the boy’s father proclaimed that the frog “pee’d”.  Now, I didn’t see the frog pee on the boy but we’re all looking for warts to appear any time now.  Just kidding.  It was fun to watch the kids play with that silly little frog and get so much enjoyment from it.

We have proudly marked off the place where our driveway will be with stakes.  The barbwire was cut to where the driveway is, and the driveway area cleared.  The county engineer was called last week and an order was put in for them to look at the driveway to tell us what size concrete pipe we need.  Their office just called me a few minutes ago to tell us the size to order.  Right away, I looked up phone numbers with no idea who to call and found out that hardware companies sell concrete pipes for culverts and deliver them.  I just called a hardware company in the area and ordered the pipes and asked for them to be delivered.  So it looks like we may have a driveway in a few days.  Yes!

I wish you could see a photo of the hard work that we’ve done.  But my camera is still not working.  I did take some photos with a 35 mm disposable, but when I searched for it on Sunday morning to develop the film, I couldn’t find the thing.  I eventually saw a disposable camera on the livingroom end table and snatched it up to take to the discount store for developing.  But when I picked the photos up later on that evening, the photos were from Easter, a year ago.  Chaos and confusion are the norm in my life I’m afraid.  And cluttered scenarios like this play out almost daily.

I at last found the darn disposable camera in the SUV last night, but when I tried to get it processed at the discount store, I’ll just be darned if the film processor at the store didn’t break down.  So I had to send the film off to be processed, just like in the good old days.  It’ll be the end of the week before I’ll get the photos back.