Good Plant, Evil Plant

I'd like to begin by giving thanks for the God-given, science-driven, ANTIBIOTIC.  I'd also like to thank Him for stretching out His mighty right hand and blessing us with steroids in their many forms.  Fear not, friends, this is not about to become a fire and brimstone post fueled by 'roid rage; I'm talking about the steroids that help those of us with immune systems that insist on acting like a stereotypical teenager (Daughter excluded, of course):  either too lazy to do much of anything or losing it in a fit of pique when something barely brushes its arm.

What I mean is this:  I went to the doctor.  I think we're going to be getting along just fine, given that she ordered up a couple kinds of steroids and an antibiotic because infection had set in a patch or two.  She also more or less said, "HEY, DUMMY- you are severely allergic to these plants.  Do not go near them.  Do not try to burn them off lest you inhale the smoke and do some real damage.  Get someone else to clear your yard of it."  The line, "I already know all that, Mom," did run through my head, but then reality snapped back into focus:  I was, in point of fact, sitting in her office covered in what my sister is calling "boils" because I was dumb enough to work up a good poison oak lather, this despite spending multiple childhood summers sidelined due to poison ivy.

So.  Yes.  My boils are improving.  I am still waking up throughout the night having already scratched myself half to death, but my days have significantly improved, where I'm able to move through the hours in relatively good humor, without falling asleep in public spaces because of Benadryl fog.

When not obsessing over "the devil's touch" (online poison oak sufferers are a hilarious but scary- and scaly- bunch), I've been working on making our house habitable!  For many this might mean unpacking or something equally practical, but unfortunately for my family, for me this means staining wood and planting flowers.

What I eventually want is a profusion of coneflowers all along the front of our white picket fence.  Coneflowers because:  they spread, they're pollinators, they come in a bunch of colors now, and they'll give me that cottage garden look I think a picket fence calls for.  For now, however, we'll just have to use our imaginations that the 10 clumps I've planted so far will be fruitful and multiply.  For you coneflower people, I've got Cheyenne Spirit Mix, PowWow Wild Berry, Virgin, and the original purple.  For you non-flower types, I've got, well, the usual purple, plus red, orange, yellow, pink, and white.  We'll see how many of them make it; I've had mixed luck getting anything but traditional purple to come back after a couple years.  I'll get a whole mess of bulbs in there this fall for spring color, and then I'll need to think of something for fall color. 

Cheyenne Spirit Mix

The wood staining has been done in our scary basement WHERE I BELONG (sorry, like I said, the poison oak is still able to seize control from time to time).  The layout of our kitchen is more than a little confounding, but my sister suggested tearing down the upper cabinets in the middle of the room so I asked Derek to do whatever she said (well, I omitted tearing out the back wall and putting in a sliding glass door because Budgets), and as soon as he got them down the room felt markedly improved.  The wood- ha, you'd forgotten the point of this story, hadn't you?  Me, too!- is for some open shelving we're putting up, because although the square footage of this house is similar to that of our previous, it's laid out quite differently with a notable lack of storage space, excepting the basement.  For this reason we've found ourselves at IKEA (because Budgets) three times in the last week looking at shelves!  And wardrobes!  And sideboards!  And other ways to hide our crap!

 
Tomorrow I can almost promise not to mention poison oak again, but there will be plenty of cemeteries!  Old cemeteries!

All I Need Is a Bridge To Live Under

It's been quite a week.  We took the kids on their virgin trip to IKEA, which Adelaide loved and the boys tolerated.  Derek and I basically looked at ten different ways to put shelves in ten different places; this new house has very little in the way of storage space, so as we continue to try and unpack it consists of us unwrapping an item, looking around for a place to store it, finding nothing, and putting it on whatever horizontal surface is within arm's reach.  Repeat x1000.

We got a new couch, which is exciting, because the one that has faithfully served us for the last 11 years only fits three people, and last I counted there are five of us.  It's nice and plump, although I haven't really allowed myself to recline on it yet; I currently look like a cross between a burn victim and a leper due to the increasingly widespread poison oak rash covering my body, and I don't want to get blister ooze on the new cushions.  Each day also brings with it a heightened sense of self consciousness in terms of bringing this open flesh wound out into public, although the real problem there is that I don't like for any fabric to be touching the rash, which hurts on contact but really starts barking when I later try to peel the fabric off that has inevitably fused to my weeping skin.  Clearly the answer is to go around topless, but something tells me this would attract the wrong kind of friends.

I started taking Benadryl a couple days ago to try and combat the incessant itching and pain, but did so with reluctance:  I'm pretty sensitive to the stuff.  I know this due to past experience, which consisted of me taking some Benadryl at Derek's parents' house years ago and then waking up an hour later, face-down in the middle of the living room.  I don't know why I didn't choose one of the beds, couches, or really any kind of furniture and instead chose to stretch out where there was a regular pattern of foot traffic.

But itchy and oozy am I, so Benadryl it is.  I've been keeping the operation of heavy machinery to a minimum, but yesterday I felt like it was safe to walk a block up the hill to the small and sweet Berlin Free Library (not to be confused with the town's public library).  I remember sitting down in a chair to read while the kids made their book selections, and then I remember waking up to my phone buzzing in my lap.  I'm pretty sure I only fell asleep for a few minutes.  I really really hope no one stumbled upon me in my (legal) drug-induced coma.

I am going to the doctor Monday morning.  I am hoping for more powerful, but still legal drugs.  That or they can just skin me and I'll start anew.  Whatever it takes.