July 13, 2018 – Third and fourth reasons for not blogging

         The second reason was out of order – the torn hamstring I noted July 11 and 12^th.

Third reason: Depression after my brother’s visit and my vacation

I was tired when I got home from my vacation with my brother, Ken, in middle May.  I guess I am out of shape.  Eight-hour drives are not the usual thing for me anymore and I had two of them within a four-day period.  I used to drive long hours daily when I worked for First American Title visiting title offices and training staff all over North Carolina.  That has been a dozen years ago and I am out of practice, but that long drive to Kill Devil Hills brought back many happy memories and stories.

         I abused my poor brother by talking too much.  It was a mixture of a fresh audience, happy memories, and owning a husband who is deaf.  When Ken said, “You sure talk a lot!” I knew he was maxed-out and I tried my best to shut up.

         Then, we both spent half a day in the blazing heat replacing the storm door at my front door.  The door is beautiful and as I watched my “jack of all trades” brother magically install it, I was astounded. He knew how it all went together including how you have to turn the door upside down in order for it to open from the left on the outside of the house compared to the salesperson at Lowe’s telling us that they only make opening from the right doors. 

Of course, Ken squinted at me in the store when the salesman said this.  Me, naïve that I am, couldn’t imagine that you don’t buy a left open door or a right open door for the situation. The salesman also told us we’d have to drill holes in the metal in order to switch it from right to left opening.  How my brother knew what to look for at the display model is beyond me.  But, Ken figured the salesman didn’t have a clue what he was talking about and that it was “interchangeable”.

It was one of those 95-degree days we get early in May and Ken was not used to that blazing sun or steamy heat and neither was I.  It tuckered us both out and we had to take a long break before the project was done.

I am always like this after vacations.  I am tired as well as stressed getting laundry done, things put away, and I become sad, because I have to wait for the next vacation and it will be a few years before we have another good time.

So, like many, depression got me down and mixed with the plagiarism issue, the end of May and early June were a struggle for me and the blogging went by the wayside.

Fourth Reason:

When I finally got into the swing of life again – in couple of weeks, I decided to get serious and get my gardens in order and start reducing them and/or making them easier to take care of.

I had a full width of English Ivy on the north end of my house and very often have to trim it back as it wants to climb the house or head out to the lawn.  I will no longer “trim back things” 4 or 5 times a season.  I don’t have the stamina to do this anymore or even consider doing it into my 70s, 80s, and 90s.  Now is the time to rectify this, not when I’m 70 and have to pay someone to do it.

Day one, I cut back about half of it and hauled it away.  I then rested a day and on the second outing, I did notice poison ivy, but I was being very careful cutting it out.  It being hot, I didn’t haul it off as soon as I cut it back or pulled the ivy, I tossed it on the lawn as I wanted to get the project complete.  If it didn’t get to the debris pile that day, I could take care of that the next day. I wanted a cleared out space.

That was where I made my mistake, the next morning, I’d forgotten about the bits of poison ivy here and there in the pulled ivy and I picked up the limp vines and hauled them off – three tarp loads to the woods.  Then I puttered around and did other work in the sweltering heat and humidity.

Worn out, sweaty and dirty by midafternoon in the heat of the day, I showered and then noticed my forearms were itchy.  It was then that I remembered there had been some poison ivy in the English ivy and I scrubbed with poison ivy removal stuff.  WELL, too late.  Within hours, the itchy became serious red blisters all over both forearms.  The next few days I slathered on poison ivy medicine and it did not improve. Day three, it was the worst case I’ve ever had. I went off to the health food store and latched onto a bar of special poison ivy treatment soap.  That was the only thing that calmed it down and started me on the mend.

It took a few days to get it under control and it looked awful for over two weeks.  Itchy forearms don’t like resting on the desk top to type so my blogging was non-existent.

What I learned about this? Obviously, I am more susceptible to poison ivy now or it might have been sumac.  The leaves are similar, but I would need my glasses to tell the difference. I can no longer be lackadaisical about poison ivy, and pulling it up and tossing it in a pile was not the thing to do.

All reasons/excuses fessed up now.  I am back to blogging. 

Needless to say, it has been one heck of a summer so far and we are only into early July.  There is a lot more summer waiting to be lived.