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.
