Please Make it Stop

Ok, seriously, I've had enough. The month of June thoroughly sucked all around so I was looking forward to moving on and having a much better July. Maybe that was the point of getting sick, stay at home, inside in bed so nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Yeah, dream on.

So Sunday I was feeling a bit better. Gina and I got up, took care of the dogs and went into E.C. for some breakfast at the Hollow Bean. The rest of the day was sedate, just lazy Sunday. But late in the afternoon I decided I needed to go outside and be productive. We have a line of Leyland Cypress trees lining the one side of the yard. I assume the previous owners who planted them had hoped they rapidly grew into a pseudo privacy fence of sorts. We've been here 3 1/2 years and they have barely grown a foot, and actually one or two of them had died so I figured it was a nice day to work outside, why not cut them down? We also had this wonderfully dead lilac tree on the corner of the house that also needed to go. All went well in the cutting down and removal of said dead trees.

So Monday I'm standing in line at Quiznos with my manager when I realize my left forearm is really starting to itch. Not thinking anything of it and not noticing any little red bumps, I proceed to scratch what turns out to be poison oak. Fantastic. The past three days have been miserable, I'm not sure which is worse, the itching or the slathering a 3rd of my body with calamine lotion.












For those of you lucky enough to have never had poison oak or poison ivy, here is what you're treated with. I have been very good at not scratching but this shit has spread like wildfire. Ground zero seems to have been my left forearm and wrist. While there is no tried and true cure for this stuff, I did come across a good recommendation for relieving the itching, hot water. And just not somewhat hot, but hot to the point of almost scalding your skin, yeah, wonderful trade-off right? But it works and feels freakin' awesome. I was in the bathroom trying it out on my arm when Gina walked in and asked what I was doing based on the excessive moaning she heard. At that point I had to admit that relieving the sensation of all of those nerve endings at once ranked right up there with sex. And the relief lasts much longer than the calamine lotion.

Moral of the story, yard work is bad for your health.