Strangeness.

So I am completely STOKED that we are leaving for Africa in less than a week. LESS THAN A WEEK! Anyhow...I'm having this strange feeling that I don't know how to pinpoint. The best I can do to explain it is that I have never been in this position before. I've known plenty of friends who have traveled internationally, so I have always been the one asking questions about where they are going, what they are doing, etc. Now that the tables have turned and I am the one being asked the questions, it's completely different. Don't get me wrong, because I totally dig it. I know we are going to have an absolute blast in Senegal and The Gambia and I can't wait to share that experience with anyone who inquires about it. This is so new for me and I can't actually believe it's happening to me.

I'd rather die than do this again...

Last week, I was the best partner EVER. I nearly froze to death and now have the worst case of poison ivy in the world. More on that later...

The privacy fence in our backyard had some brush, dead trees, and just general debris hanging out behind it. We knew it needed to be cleaned up, but decided to wait until the "winter" so that things would be dead and (in theory) easier to remove AND because there wouldn't be as many bugs and gross things to deal with.

WRONG .REALLY, REALLY WRONG.

Well, partially anyway. The actual removal of everything wasn't terribly difficult. Lindsay's step dad, Dale came over with a chain saw and cut down the really big trees and was nice enough to hook me up with a pair of lopping shears. These things are nice to work with because they can cut anything. Literally. ANYTHING.


This is the damage when we got done cutting everything down. I recommend clicking the picture, it really brings into perspective how much junk was there.











We cut everything down into even smaller pieces, loaded it into the truck, and took it to the dump, which by the way...is the sickest place in the world. Luckily, it started raining.




So...anyhow this is a really crappy picture (taken in the GD rain) of the cleanup. I wish I had a picture of what it looked like before we started chopping things down. It was a disaster!!!



Now, to my favorite part. I am HIGHLY allergic to poison ivy. HIGHLY. I don't even know what the heck it looks like, so I usually just stay away from anything green and leafy in the summer time. And with it being SO COLD...I didn't even think twice about poison ivy. TOO LATE.....cause now I have poison ivy on my hands, wrists, chest, neck, and even on one of my legs. OH JOY. To my surprise, I actually had my grubby little gloved hands ALL OVER some dead poison ivy. This is what dead poison ivy looks like. I recommend staying light years away from it.




It makes me itch and my skin crawl just looking at it. GROSS.

Further information for anyone interested, yes, clearly you can get poison ivy regardless of the season. You get the rash on your skin anywhere from 12 hours to 3 weeks after exposure to the OIL that is found on the plant. The oil that is found on poison ivy is incredibly potent. Trust me, I know. After a trip to Urgent Care on Saturday night where I received a steroid injection and some oral anti-itch medicines AAAAAAAND a lovely trip to a dermatologist on Monday where I received not one but TWO different topical steroid creams and more anti-itch oral medication.

I think my new ideas about mother nature are rapidly changing. If it isn't paved, I'm not going there...and if there is ANY potential of leafy thing, definitely count me out.