Susan Senator

She comes on like a rose,
And everybody knows
She’ll put you in dutch
Well you can look but you better not touch!

You older readers will know what I’m talking about. Oh, yes. I got it bad. It wakes you up at night and causes all kinds of redness and swelling. It makes some body parts feel like they’re on fire. Nothing can satisfy it. You vow that you’ll never, ever do it again, but somehow you always go back. You curse the fates for leading you to such a thing, and you are completely held it its sway until time heals you.

Or cortizone.

Yes, I am talking about poison ivy, of course. (Please check out the picture in this link so that you don’t get it, too! Unless you are hateful anonymous who sends me hate mail.) I believe I contracted it during a particularly wild weeding frenzy on Saturday. I was ripping out all manner of tall, ungainly uglies from my beautiful garden — I now have the full autumn fare. (Now that it’s autumn for real, and I have transitioned to the whole fall thing of school, occasional sweaters, jeans, boots, and PTO mishegos, I am into it and happy with it.) My garden is full of stands of pink or ruby sedum, pale pink tiny boltonia, purple and pink asters, roses, black-eyed Susan, yellow coreopsis, and a few different mums. (I realize I don’t actually hate mums; I really just hate what they stand for, the changeover from summer to fall. I have such a hard time letting go of summer, she is like a best friend, moving away. But she always comes back, per the deal between Demeter and Hades).

So I sent my doc an email and begged him for the stuff, Don Cortizone, who really takes care of that BI*** good, you know what I mean?

My right pinky is now lumpy and misshapen and itches like a … well, you know. Dad just had a virulent case of P.I. so I asked him to bring his medicine when he comes here for Rosh Hashanah, which is tomorrow night, (serious blog post about the Jewish New Year to come) but I just know that Dadley Do-Right will not because he will want me to get my own medicine, so that I come to no harm with his.

I never garden with gloves so I will never learn. I need to be able to feel the entirety of the plant to really snag it good. I need to get the soil under my nails and get really dirty when I garden. Gloves just get in the way. So that is why last year I got Lyme disease — and caught it in time, thank God, I actually had the classic bulls-eye mark! And that is why I get poison ivy every now and then. I take full responsibility for my condition.

But right now — I need to go and CHOP OFF MY PINKY. ARGGHHH!!!