Well Duh!

Thanks again for everyone's nice comments.  I'm no longer in pain, and am up and about almost as good as new.  But, I am avoiding stairs, slopes, and uneven ground as much as possible.

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If this sounds like more whining, it isn't.  It is just to tell you how mentally slowww I'm getting.  I'm so disgusted with myself that I have been laughing all day since the bulb went on about 10:00 this morning.
LOL

Sometime around Easter, I noticed a funny little white bump on the back of my hand.  It kind of itched like a mosquito bite and after scratching it - oooo, what a mess.  Then I had more bumps  - all over my right arm.  The bumps would open and weep or be scabby, and they itched like crazy.  I was blaming the mess on laundry detergent, dish washing soap, bath soap, cold dry air, the animals, lack of sunshine.   I tried anything I could think of on it.  Vaseline seemed to help the most.  So on our first day of sunshine, I sat out until I burned the top of my head, and my arms turned pink.  The spots cleared up almost immediately.

Now for the* rest* of *  the* story: 

Last fall, we took all the big pots of flowers and vegetables inside.  We weren't quite ready to give up the last of the tomatoes and summer blooms.

One of the pots had come from my mom's house.  It had 

dusty miller

 mixed Gazanzia

and another pretty blooming plant that I've forgotten the name of.

All winter, this pot sat in front of the window at the shop.  We let the blooming plants to go to seed, but the dusty miller kept growing and growing.  Then a new plant sprang up.  I just figured it was one of the others coming back from the roots or from a seed.  Pretty soon I could tell that it was a different plant entirely than what had been in the pot.  The green arrow shaped leaves on long stalks where reaching out to the sunlight. (Are you getting a clue?)

I'd walk by, admire it, and touch it.   I asked J what if he knew what it was.  He didn't. The plant matured some more.   I was still admiring it and touching it.  I noticed the "funny" leave configuration, but didn't think too much about it.  (Are you laughing now?)

Finally, the plant was getting too big and flopping over where we were brushing it as we walked by, so J pulled it out and threw it away.


Then an article with pictures came out in the paper:

Poison ivy

This is what J pulled out.   J didn't react to it, but I had been handling it all winter.  Took me until about 10:00 this morning to realize this was the cause of the mess on my arm.  Well DUH! 

(In our defense - this was not our "local" poison oak.   This was poison ivy.  It must have come from "imported" potting soil or dirt.  Also, thank goodness, in the past neither J nor I have been bothered too much by poison oak.  Sumac hasn't bothered us at all.)