PART TWO of: Gomorrah, Wisconsin - The Apple River Hideaway

Now, here was the part of the adventure that I was most nervous about: getting into the river. I have this pathological fear of dark, murky water. I don’t swim in lakes, ponds, or rivers. The ocean I can handle for some bizarre reason (despite the threat of sharks and undertows…go figure!), but inland water? I can’t even swim in a pool that hasn’t been cleaned in a few days. Algae wigs me out. Seaweed is worse. Slimy rocks, no thank you. I have actually had nightmares about pools with seaweed and water bugs and me being so close to the edge of falling into them that I wake up in a cold sweat. I am not exaggerating. But I’m also a stubborn person that believes in the power of mind over matter, and despite the anxiety I tell myself to just suck it up and “don’t be such a wimp about it”. So, this was the pep talk I was giving myself as I stepped into that awful, murky water as squishy, slimy, muddy grass on the riverbank squeezed unpleasantly between my toes. I got into my tube as quick as I could manage and the cold river water grabbed my senses by the fists and squeezed me around my submerged rear end. This was not a good feeling. And for those of you who don’t know, I’m very short. The tube hole was rather large. If I had allowed my body to completely relax in the tube, I would’ve folded up like a lawn chair and gone right through the hole.

So, here we were, all five tubes tied together and floating down the river. The river was crowded. People of all shapes, colors, sizes and formats were in great masses, tied together in these huge floating blobs. From the view of a bird it would’ve looked much like the floaty masses on the top of spoiled milk (I tried to think of a more poetic metaphor, but this was all that came to mind...).
Now, when you’re floating in a tube, especially when there’s five tied together, there’s very little way to steer and propel. Tree branches in the way? Too bad. People in front of you? Be prepared to get a little personal with them. Now, my friend (with a baby growing in her belly, mind you) was our steering savior. She was the bold hero who would flip over on her stomach (which gave me the heeby-jeebies every time she did it…River water! Scary!) and paddle her arms against the current to steer us out of harms way. I wanted to help her, but just having my rear end in the river water was too much for me. I didn’t think I could flip myself over, or submerge any other part of my body in the river to manage a paddling frenzy that would be of any use. So, here I am now giving praise and credit for her valor. I am eternally grateful, My Dear.

The rude pretty boy who called us boring had told us that it takes two and a half hours to float down the river without stopping. I believe we floated for maybe an hour and a half before coming to the part of the river that we had to exit. We had a few adventures on the way. We saw two turtles. One was normal looking. The other was big and weird looking. Snapping turtle, maybe? There’s snapping turtles in Minnesota rivers. In case you don’t know anything about them, they’re the size of small sea turtles and their chomp can be as severe as a shark’s. This, even being the dare-devil animal lover that I am, freaked me out a tad. More than a tad, actually. My heart actually started to race. I tried to hide my fear by staring up at the clouds and pretending to daydream. There, in the clouds, was a giant turtle. A cloud turtle. I took a picture of it to prove it to you, Reader (check out my slide show at the top). I looked up at that cloud and I thought, “Really? Is this a joke from God?” I was tempted to believe so.

We reached our exit point after going over a minnow equivalency of rapids (which were pretty fun, actually, because our speed increased). This was the part I was really dreading: the exit. I was going to have to get out of my tube and walk waist deep in the river. I did not like it, not one bit. I put my feet to the rocky floor. Slimy rocks! Great! And you couldn’t see them. I would take a step forward thinking there’d be floor when no, just kidding! A giant rock. You step on top of it only to slide down the other side of it only to hit the next one with your knee. I find things like these very annoying to my sensitive senses. Being extraordinarily observant is a gift when I can put it to use in my art and writing, but in regular living conditions it can be extremely overwhelming. It’s sensory overload for me. It’s a great cause of my anxiety. I’m learning to ignore things, to numb myself from overwhelming environments, but it’s sometimes challenging. Walking over boulders in a river that’s already wigging me out was challenging. I was doing everything I could not to come off whiny or wimpy. I kept my mouth shut best I could. But I was wanting to curse under my breath with every slip of my foot. My friend had noted, “Can you imagine doing this drunk? At least we’re sober.” And I said, “I think I’d rather be drunk…” But I said it thinking, “Then I wouldn’t care so much about the slimy rocks and the dirty water.” I wasn’t thinking about coordination…

We made it out alive. We then had to walk up a very gravelly pathway, barefoot. This was another over sensory activity for me. From having to wash my feet several times a day for weeks on end because of my poison ivy bout, my feet were as soft as babies’ skin. Walking on that gravel was making we really wish I was either drunk, or on a codeine drip. It hurt. A lot. And it was uphill. And I have teeny tiny feet and very large thighs. I was feeling very sorry for myself. I was feeling like a wuss. I was feeling unadventurous and very, very old. I thought, “Really? You’re supposed to be able to hack this sort of thing… What’s happened to you?” If I wasn’t so dedicated to my writing and the belief that you have to put yourself through uncomfortable situations just to have material to write about, I would keep myself locked up in my house and never come out. But my passion to write overdrives my fears, and I am thankful for it.

The bus. We had to get onto a bus that would transport us to the top of the river and then we would have to float back down to our campsite. Dirty. “Germaphobe” came to my mind as I sat on the bus seat and looked around at all the people around me. I thought to myself, “I wonder how many people who’ve peed in the river have sat on this seat with their wet, contaminated swim suit… I wonder how many sweaty, nasty rear ends have been in this spot, and I wonder how long it’s been since these seats have been sanitized…” I’m not a germaphobe by any means, but after working in my field of work for twelve years (which requires a lot of sanitation to prevent illnesses) you become uncomfortably aware of all the different ways germs are spread. I decided to focus on the group of drunk girls sitting across from me. Blondie on the left was pretty drunk. She sat there, unable to have conversation with her other two friends, her head weaving left and right as the bus moved on. Her eyes were slow and glazed, and I got a kick out of watching her watch other people. Her head would turn ever so delicately to the people next to her. Expression would form so slowly on her face as she was trying to react to things she was watching. She would then gradually turn her head to gaze down at her beer can, stare at it for a few seconds, then finally take the energy to put it up to her mouth for a swig. It’s really fun to watch drunk people when you’re sober. It was convenient to wear my sunglasses, too, because nobody knew I was staring at them. Then again, I doubt they would’ve noticed much anyway seeing on how they could barely focus on the top of their beer can.

We got off the bus and got back into the river. At this point, I couldn’t wait to get to our campsite. I wanted nothing more than to be on dry land, sitting at the picnic table and eating chips. We rounded a bend where there on the shore was a giant mass of people all shouting and hooting and hollering as if we were the Titanic being welcomed into port (had the Titanic not sunk, that is….). People were waving their arms and screaming, and with all of them on the riverbank it looked as though it was a welcoming party for the people floating down the river toward them. This was odd, thought I. I didn’t understand what was happening. It turned out, nothing was happening. This was the spot on the journey where the Hideaway has a shop for beer and smokes. Someone in our group said, “People actually bring their wallet on the tube with them?” Good point. I’d be a wee nervous about dropping it in the water, especially if I was drunk. But anyway, here were these people gathered on the riverbank celebrating their newly bought merchandise. Nothing more than that. So we floated on by (or rather were propelled by my friend’s husband who diligently walked through the foot deep river to guide us the rest of the way) and eventually came to our campsite. This was sweet relief for me. I tried not to think about having to tube again the next day. I was seriously considering telling the group that I would stay behind, you know, “to write in my journal or something…” was going to be the excuse. I was dreading having to be such a party pooper about it… But I didn’t need to think about that right now. Now I needed to focus on putting my feet into that slimy, muddy riverbank grass again to get out.

Finally. Picnic table and chips, here I come. And that’s what I did. I kept my filthy swimsuit on because it was a hundred thousand degrees outside and I wasn’t ready to change yet. I wish I had not opted to do this. I developed a rash the next day between my upper thighs, a sort of rash you get from contaminated swim shorts. Like, a fungal rash. Or chiggers. I can’t honestly say which it was, but I hear chiggers are as bad as bug bites so maybe it wasn’t chiggers. All I know is, is that it was definitely from sitting in my swim suit too long. I remember watching all that horrible floating algae moving in around my middle in the water and thinking, “I’m going to have some sort of reaction from the algae I just know it…”. I’ve had enough itching, thanks. The poison ivy on my feet, meanwhile, was what I thought to be close to drying up. But with my feet sticking out in the sun for two hours on my tubing adventure, and my poison ivy medication thinning out my skin, my poison ivy sunburned. It burned rather severely actually, but I didn’t realize how badly until days after when my skin started to peel off. Like, severe skin peeling. Not normal sunburn peeling, but the sort of peeling that leaves bright pink, fresh skin that should be covered with another layer of skin, not open to the stinging air.

Anyway. I could feel my foot burning in the sun as I sat at the picnic table, but I ignored it. I tried to shade it with my other foot every once and awhile, but there was very little I could do. I continued to snack on my chips, talk with my friend, play twenty questions with everyone as the grill was heating up, and keep my mind off my burning foot. Dinner was finally ready and served, and I was starving. Now, normally I have a hard time eating in public. I have another pathological fear of getting food poisoning in public (only because I have in the past, and it’s not a pleasant experience). I usually get so anxious to eat in front of people, that I don’t eat. It’s stupid. You can say it. It is. Hence the “pathological” part of the fear. But at this moment I was feeling very comfortable in my company, and I was feeling liberated from surviving the river and proud of myself for sticking it out. So I dove into my burger with relish and enjoyed its very generous gifts of juicy deliciousness. Yum! But I was slightly dehydrated. I had been in the sun for a very long time with no water. I was suddenly feeling nauseous. I couldn’t swallow my last bite of burger. I spit it back out onto my plate and could feel my heart racing. I was starting to panic. I talked myself down and said, “It’s not food poisoning. You need water.” So I got some water and tried to relax. But I couldn’t. It was too late. My little anxiety attack gave me a sick stomach. So off to the disgusting, lockless bathroom stalls I went. I came back to my car, dug into my purse, and retrieved my anti-anxiety meds. I was feeling better just knowing that I had taken one, and finally talked myself down enough to return to my friends.

Sitting on my towel on the grass next to my friend, I listened as the group chatted. I began daydreaming and zoned out for a few minutes. But something was going on around us. It took me a moment to realize it. My friend was making signals and comments that she was offended and angry about something that was happening. I looked around and listened and then came to realize that a very large mass of tubes on the river was shouting out criminally hateful words toward a man on the riverbank next to us. You see, a group of men parked next to our campsite that were, to put it bluntly, clearly homosexual. At least, some of them were. The ignorant bigots in the river were scratching their monkey armpits and calling out words like “faggot” and adding things to that word that made my blood boil. It was verbal harassment like I’ve never known. That ticking bomb inside of me was so close to a ten second count down, I wasn’t sure I could keep it from going off. My heart was racing, my adrenaline pumping. I wanted to jump into the river and track down those revolting people and do hideously violent things to them. A hatred coursed through my body, a hatred I hadn’t felt since high school when I heard people use the word, “nigger”. But this, this was like nothing I’ve ever heard, and there they were, those cowardly apes safe in their stupid floating tubes moving down the river shouting out words that would haunt the poor man they were shouting at for the rest of his life. Words have a power that can be abused just as damagingly as anything else. A wife beater, or a molester, a murderer. A dictator. A communist trying to take over the world.

Someone once said to me that words are just words. To paraphrase, he said they can mean whatever you want them to mean. “Fag” is just a word. It means nothing unless you allow it to. But I disagree. Words have a breath of life that we, as humans, have breathed into them. They can be used in different ways, yes, and as an artist I have to agree that it’s possible to change the meaning of a word with a sort of crafty ingenuity, re-creating a new purpose for it and so forth. But this does not negate the power of language. If words were just words, then I’d be out of business. All writers would. If words were just words, then Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address would not have been bothered to be remembered and recited and taught as a part of our national history. Brainwashing Hitler would not have come so close to conquering the entire world. Martin Luther King Jr. would not have been able to lead a revolution if there was any truth to words being just words. If words were just words people’s emotions wouldn’t be manipulated by them so easily. What would be the point of communicating? Words have a value that is so understated, and in turn are so abused. And here, before me, the abuse was so overwhelming that I was seriously considering going home, sewing myself a costume, and beginning my vigilante career. My vigilante daydream was the only thing that saved me from getting into serious trouble, there on the riverbank. I was imagining my group of prisoners strapped to cold steel tables with cellophane (attention Dexter fans!), unable to move, surrounded by a bunch of frilly gay men holding curling irons and very feathery pirate costumes, giggling like nine year old girls ready to play with life sized Barbie dolls. Black homosexuals would be even better…

It took me quite a long time to calm down from this. Eventually the sun began to set, and we all enjoyed a good game of Mad Gab at the picnic table. The campsites around us began to fill up. The music began to pound through the earth from the next door rich kids’ SUV. The volleyball court was completely full of drunk people in their scummy bikinis and swimming trunks (I say scummy because the river is what it is: scummy), and they barely had time to play the game with all the yelling and arguing they were doing. It was like watching a bunch of ten year olds try to agree on fouls and fair game with no referee. It was funny.

Next to us was where the interesting things were truly going on. This was the foreshadowing of our late night climactic event. This is when the baboons started swinging and throwing their feces…

PART ONE of: Gomorrah, Wisconsin - The Apple River Hideaway

So. I had ignorantly thought the Apple River Hideaway was in Minnesota. I’m not sure if it’s cheating or not to write about a place in Wisconsin here on my Hating Minnesota blog…

I’ve just decided: it’s not. And this is my reasoning:

1) A majority of the Apple River adventurists are Minnesotans.

B) Tubing is a huge Minnesota past time, no matter where it is.

III) The Apple River Hideaway is right across the border of the two states, so who the hell cares.

AND) This is my creation, and I get to make and break rules as I go and if you don’t like it, too bad.

I’m not exactly sure what I expected. I don’t think any of us did. We knew about the Apple River reputation, but it turned out far more ridiculous than anticipated. Maybe this was a sign of my age. Maybe this was a test of my inner uptightness. Maybe it was an illustration, an evidence of sort, of my lack of tolerance. Whatever it was, it was definitely an insight to who I truly am.

I went with a crowd of friends who, in short, do not drink. This was apparently a foreign concept to the people who go tubing on the Apple River: it was the equivalency of a group of people going to a rave and not doing ecstasy. We knew we’d be outcasts. But to the degree of it, I don’t think we were quite prepared for. We were not prepared for several things…

My friend had found these amazing deals online, which began the adventure in the first place. It was $20 for two people to tube for two days and do one night of camping. Considering that it’s $15 just for one person to go tubing and $30 for a campsite, it was an amazing deal. In my life (I’m about to get real pessimistic here…), I sort of live by the code: it’s always too good to be true. Really, it’s a hit or miss code when you think about it. That’s the true nature of pessimism and optimism. It’s a fifty/fifty either way.

Arriving we discover that we have to pay a $20 fee per vehicle. I was near flat broke, and very embarrassingly had to depend on my friend to cover my asinine vehicle charge. Explain this to me, logically: what the hell are they charging it for? We park it on their grass by the river in the campsite we already paid for. It sits there all night long. Are we paying for someone’s lawn mowing job? Seriously? On top of that, there was a $30 garbage deposit which you would see only $20 returned if your site was cleaned up. They charge a $10 recycling fee, which, allow me to say is a complete joke considering that all of the garbage is bound up in one bag that you yourself have to drive to the dumpster that is NOT divided into TRASH or RECYCLING. This is a mild complaint compared to many more. The middle-of-the-night incident was what made me flip my lid, and I have plenty of good reasons why. But I’ll get to that climactic happening later on in the story…

Annoyed and feeling somewhat scammed for the $20 per vehicle charge (not to mention the garbage charge, though that made slightly more sense), I was already feeling bitter as I was writing down all my personal identification information on my car sticker. The girl checking us in was a bit of a wonder to behold. She was a cartoon in human disguise, to sum it up simply. She clearly had veneers which made her speak with this hard-not-to-laugh-at lisp, and despite her pretty blonde hair and perfectly round features, she had the remarkable resemblance to Karee from the Pixar film, The Incredibles. This is the evidence of my mean side, Reader, of my lack of tolerance. I was at the campground for not but ten minutes and I was already having it in for the chipmunk checking us in. She would’ve been nice had there not been that one way she screwed us over, to which all chipmunk jokes will be made without apology. There was nothing wrong with her other than her impossible-not-to-talk-about cartoonishness up until the point of reaching our campsite. We had asked for a campsite away from people. We specifically requested it…

Well, so, there I was, filling out my address and phone number on a sticker that was going to be visible to anybody who walked past my car. Call me paranoid, but I wasn’t comfortable with this. Despite this however, I noted that I liked the fluidity of the pen I was using. “This is a good pen,” I thought to myself. Good pens are hard to come by. As a writer, I’m a wee particular about my pens. They have to write black, and they have to write smooth and dark. This one did. I thought, “They’re not going to miss their pen...” So I took it. No? I stole it. I totally broke the law. This was vindictive and childish. Passive aggressive and pathetic. But after the night was over, this minute act of rebellion brought a smug bit of joy to me.

We headed to our, um, campsite. We shouldn’t have expected much, but I expected at least a little bit more. It was lawn by the river with a post and a picnic table, and our neighbors’ picnic table was directly right next to ours. No fire pit. (I mean, okay, there was a circle of bald lawn on the ground that was made from people before who made fires regardless of there not being a pit…but, come on…) No grill. No electricity post. Now, these things aren’t vital, no doubt, but when someone charges $30 for a campsite these are the normal things to expect. So, that was a little bit of a disappointment. But what was worse was the fact that Karee the Chipmunk did not put us away from other campers as my friend’s husband had politely requested. She put us right next to the volleyball court. Are you kidding, Karee? And, next to about five already existing campers. Now. See? We weren’t trying to be snobs asking for a campsite away from everyone. We knew we were going to be the only ones not drinking, and it just seemed proper to have our own little space away from the hullabaloo. (I just used the word “hullabaloo”….this is definitely a mark of my age…). It was a simple request. It should’ve been granted.

The bomb inside of me was tick-tick ticking away…

We had our campsite claimed with the rising and pitching of a tent. It was near eighty something degrees, and the sun was blazing steadily with no shade. It was time to go tubing. We took our tubing tickets up to the garage where the tubes were and were then directed back to the place the tickets came from. To get your tubes you have to give them a pair of car keys and have them swipe somebody’s credit card (in case you loose your tubes). Now. The guy taking care of all of this for us was not my favorite. He was a thirty year old pretty boy smart ass who clearly just had his pecks tuned on his adolescent ego. I didn’t like him. And I’m sure he’s used to being loved by the brainless, blondie Karee chipmunks out there, but personally I was repulsed. And I'll explain why.

He had asked us if we wanted to rent a cooler tube (to carry booze or other beverages with us down the river). My friend responded with a kind, “No thank you.” His straight toothed white grin cracked with a rude intention. He was clearly putting on his “I need to sucker them into renting one” look. So he got pushy. An’ I don’ like pushy. In fact, pushy people trigger a very ugly and nasty gear on me. My reflex is to make it perfectly clear to them that I am not one to push. When his pushiness failed, my friend told him, “We don’t drink, so we don’t need one.” He gave a startled, judgmental jerk in that stupid grin of his and said very rudely, “Well that’s boring”. Had I been in different company, my language would’ve gotten a little colorful at this point, but I was gritting my teeth and behaving myself. I realized that most of my emotions were drawn up from a maternal place, the need to protect people I care about. He had just insulted my friends, and I wasn’t very happy about it. This feeling stuck with me throughout the trip. My friend, however, handled the situation with grace. She laughed at his rudeness and said, “Yeup! We’re boring!” I was ready to tear him limb from limb, especially when he continued to push the renting-the- cooler-tube-thing on us with, “You can use it to put your water in, too, you know.” I briskly and huskily gave a flat, nasty “We don’t need one”. He looked at me like he was two seconds away from smirking with a “Settle down, bitch” to add. Oh. I wanted him to say it. I was ready to bring out my emasculating whip of wit and tear him down. Violent and ridiculous, you say? Well, sure. But like I said, pushy people trigger a nasty gear inside of me. And when I’m angry? If you’ve offended me and my adrenaline is pumping red hot signals to my brain? I’ve got the articulation of a Harvard graduate’s movie script, and there’s no stopping me once I get going. (Hmm… If only I could summon this wit at will, like, when I’m not pissed off…I think I’d have more luck with the men… Actually, no. I wouldn’t. My wit does me very little when I’m a short stack of thick thighs and crooked teeth…).

Anyway.

A hundred million minutes later, we finally get to retrieve our tubes. Some nineteen year old kid is framed before us by a giant poll barn door which sports a Styrofoam tip cup in the corner of it. There’s a tip jar. What? The tip jar is a joke, right? They don’t actually expect us to tip for someone handing us water tubes… right? We laughed about that one. It was a good joke. What was even better was when the nineteen year old kid told us it would cost a quarter for the twine we needed to tie our tubes together. (Our water tubes, not our inner tubes...heh...). Really? A quarter? You mean, after you scam all these drunk people to pay you $15 dollars to float down a river, an extra $5 per cooler tube, and after you charge your campers $20 to park their car at their campsite that they’ve already paid for, and after you charge a $10 recycling fee for each campsite (there’s over fifty) when you don’t even have a recycling bin, and after you continue to scam the drunk people with your ridiculous beer prices, food prices and tobacco prices, you really can’t throw in some free twine for people to tie their water tubes together? Come on, man. I mean it. Come on. A quarter?

In all fairness, I have to give the joint a little credit for their brilliance. I mean it. ‘Build a reputation for being a place where you can enjoy yourself both legally and illegally, throw in the whole Mardi Gras slash Spring Break theme, and you’ve got yourself an easy ticket to make some dough, to take advantage of a bunch of drunkards and stoners, under-aged rich frat brats, and the partiers with bottomless wallets. Create an environment where raunchy girls with no self esteem feel the need to show their breasts when they’re howled at like animals, and you’ll do some pretty good business. Create an environment where the masses can come from miles abroad to break every moral rule in any given moral book and not be punished, and you’ve got yourself your own Pleasure Island. If only the Lampwick next to us had turned into a donkey, I would’ve left the place a little bit happier. Now don’t get me wrong, Reader. I believe in breaking rules sometimes. I believe it’s okay to eat, drink and be merry from time to time, in a respectable manner. But chaos and barbarity breeds nothing but fools and idiots. The Apple River Valley Hideaway crowd (at least the crowd around us on that particular day) was like being amidst hundreds of baboons who were all in desperate need of bibs and souls.

Stayed tuned for the colorful illustration of the baboons who camped next door to us… If I had taken a picture (kicking myself for not!) you would’ve actually seen, literally, baboons wearing Abercrombie & Fitch.

The Poison of Poison Ivy: PART 2

(Friendly reminder to all of my followers and friends who read these via email, don't forget to check out my pictures, travel tips, and "Hating Minnesota" road trip soundtrack on the blog site itself. Listening to the music itself is worth going to the site.)

It was sometime in the beginning of July when I started to scratch. I immediately followed protocol. I washed everything. I dressed the bumps with cortisone cream. I refused to itch, no matter how badly the urge. I washed it. I medicated it. I washed it. I diligently kept to a routine. I slept with my foot exposed. I kept it away from every other part of my body as best I could. But when you subconsciously cross your legs or sit on your knees ten times in a normal day, these habits are hard to break. While sitting at the computer I had absent mindedly pulled my feet up on the chair, butterfly-stretch style. Stupid.

My other foot broke out. I let this go on for over a week before breaking down at work. Not only was the itch driving me insane, but the job stress itself was wearing me paper thin. So, I went to urgent care. I promptly told the doctor that I have a history of not being able to get rid of poison ivy, and that I’m usually treated with a huge benedryl shot and a prescription cream. No problem. Done. I was feeling hopeful, positive, and sure that it would be cleared up in a few days’ time.

Nope.

It had spread up between my thighs (thanks to my butterfly-stretch sitting in short shorts). Both thighs. On each side, touching each other. Spots started to bloom behind my knee and up the back of my leg. The doctor I had seen had given me this pathetic prescription, a teeny tiny tube of the most mild steroid possible. It was gone in twenty four hours. I was in big trouble. Spending an entire weekend in and out of the bathroom to wash and dress my new poison spots and trying not to go completely mad from the itch, I knew I had to call in sick for Monday.
So. I went to urgent care again. Saw a different doctor that gave me a steroid shot and an enormous tube of prescription ointment that I could get refills on for the rest of the year. This was it. I was certain it was going to clear up this time. I went home and spent the rest of my sick day washing and medicating my spots diligently every two hours. To my great relief, the spots behind my knee and between my thighs cleared up within a few days. I was seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. In no time I’d be sleeping in my sheets again.

Wrong.

Now, meanwhile (be prepared to hear this word a lot through all of this – there’s a lot of meanwhiles in this story) I was preparing to go on a date for the upcoming weekend, one in which I was feeling extremely hopeful about. My dating hasn’t gone so well for the past four years. That’s just the way it is sometimes, especially when you’re my age and none of your friends are single. But this date… This was going to be a good one, I was sure of it.

The day of, I was struggling fiercely with my foot itching. It brought me to tears. I was seriously considering canceling on the guy, but I had already done that the weekend before and I couldn’t bare to do it again. Twice would’ve gotten me nowhere. So I bucked up and went. I was extremely glad I did. The date went better than I could’ve possibly expected. I was comfortable, confident, and cool with him, and that hasn’t happened for me in a very long time. The feeling felt mutual as he spoke of future outings. I was certain in my heart that this was going to at least be something promising.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t eaten a thing in over a week, and my nights consisted of waking up every hour on the hour having to wash and re-medicate all of my spots before crawling back under the single, pathetic blanket that would cover only the upper half of my body. I was sleep deprived. And my appetite was completely gone. Little did I know that the appetite part of the misery was due to another ailment, not the anxiety and stress of the poison ivy itch. This is where it begins to get graphic, Folks. You’ve been warned.

New itchy symptoms were rising in a place I really, really didn’t want them. The inflammation suddenly set fire, and I was certain that I was now battling a yeast infection. I suffered an entire day of work with it thinking I’d be okay if I just kept treating it with over the counter medicine. The following day was an all-day training day that I just couldn’t afford to miss out on. So I bought myself a box of Monistat and did what I needed to do that night. But the relief did not come. The burning I suffered after medicating was so atrocious that it brought me to tears (yet again) and I seriously considered driving myself to the emergency room. But no. I had to go to work the following day. “Mind over matter,” I said to myself. “Women suffer yeast infections all the time… you’re being a baby…”

So I suffered through it. The itching was beyond anything I’ve ever felt in my life. The burning and the pain was so unforgivable that I was seriously wishing for an organ transplant. I was glad I went to my training seminar because I needed the money, but suffering through it was an absolute nightmare. But I pulled up my toughie trousers and rolled up my sleeves and tried my absolute best not to let anyone know how much I was truly suffering. I remember thinking, “this has to be something worse than a yeast infection…this is number 9 pain on a pain scale.” I failed, of course. I could barely sit in the chair without wanting to cry.

Meanwhile, I was still treating the poison ivy on my feet.

Meanwhile, I was texting the guy I went out with, telling him that he has to wait until next week to go out with me due to “some health issues that I’m dealing with….”. He was very nice about it, and still seemed plenty interested. I’m assuming that when you say, “Go out next week” and he says “Perfect!” that he wants to go out with you again. I’m not misreading that, am I?

Meanwhile… My yeast infection was bringing me to tears. Again. I was certain I could take care of it myself, but things started to become worse. When my co-worker asked how I was feeling, I broke out into tears and made a mad dash for the bathroom to cry.

Through all of this, my stomach had been making strange sounds now and again, and I was having a very difficult time eating. My insides were gurgling and moving and feeling very unusual, the very sight of food made me want to vomit. A very strange rash was forming on my belly too that was baffling me. It wasn’t poison ivy. It was more itch that I was horrified to have to deal with, but it was definitely not poison ivy. My stomach continued to behave even more unusually. I figured that my IBS was inflamed from all the anxiety, so I didn’t think much of it until I had to rush to the bathroom. I went. And it went sort of strange. I looked in the toilet to find, to my absolute horror, two long tape worms. That was all I dispensed. Granted they were covered in you-know-what, but there was absolutely no mistake about what they were. Before saying anything to my mother, I flushed (which was stupid….), and decided to go online to see if there was any chance at all that I was mistaken about what I saw. This also, was stupid.

I highly recommend you not Google “internal parasites in humans”. The images alone are enough to make you want to vomit. To me, there’s nothing more revolting than parasitic worms which (in close-up pictures) have alien like mouths filled with pointy little teeth. Knowing these abominable demons were inside of me, my heart began to race and I began to sweat. I had found the description I needed. One of the symptoms was having a rash on your belly. The other, loss of appetite. I was doomed. This was my breaking point. I privately told my mother what was happening, and I broke out into a full fledged panic attack. I was hyperventilating and shaking and crying, and wanted desperately to go to the emergency room (again). She talked me down and convinced me to “go to urgent care tomorrow”. I took two of my anti-anxiety pills to tranquilize my horror (and pain and itching), and eventually came to a calm.

Doctor number three. A man. Of course it would be a man. Of course. First two doctors were women. I go in for a yeast infection and worms, and it’s a young, attractive man. Of course. He was very nice, though, and I did survive. He did a number of tests, and they all came back negative. “But it looks like a yeast infection so that’s how I’m going to treat it” he tells me. At last minute I gain the courage to tell him about the worms. He was very nice, again. He told me it’s more common than people think. People don’t exactly like to talk about it (except for self-absorbed writers who thrive off the attention of sharing gross stories). He wrote up a one-pill treatment for it that “will most definitely take care of it”.

‘Took my pill for the yeast infection as soon as I got home. Hours later I was feeling internal relief. ‘Took my wormy pill. ‘Had a few unpleasant bathroom moments, but soon was in perfect plumbing working order. My appetite came back full force. It was liberating. ‘Took my second pill for my yeast infection 24 hours later. Internally, so much better. But there was still a violent outer rash that just would not clear up…

Meanwhile, still treating the poison ivy on my feet.

Meanwhile, still texting that guy to try to keep him interested…but he wasn’t texting back…

Three and a half weeks since the poison on my foot began, I was at work. What I do for a living can be very stressful on the heartstrings, and can bully your wits enough as it is. I have plenty of challenges that are tiresome to overcome, and having to deal with violent rashes in nasty places and poison ivy on my feet, I was due for a finale melt down. After the ninetieth time of going to the bathroom to treat my private rash, I snapped emotionally. I came out of the bathroom to tell my boss that I needed the next day off so I could make an appointment to see my own doctor, but when I tried to tell her all of this I couldn’t speak. I began sobbing. I was hysterical.

I left work early. I came home and sobbed some more. I just wanted all of this to be over. This was going on four weeks of dealing with all of these things. Madness had set in.

Meanwhile. The guy I was desperately trying to keep interested, lost interest. He stopped texting me. I should’ve taken the hint at this point.

Meanwhile. I was losing it mentally.

I finally went in to see my primary, something I should’ve done from the get-go if I hadn’t needed immediate fixes. She took one look at my private rash and said, “That is NOT a yeast infection… that is ANGRY….” She looked up at me and said, “I’m pretty sure that’s poison ivy.”

Obvious, you say. I should’ve known. What else would it be?

I had also asked about the worms, because the other doctor never did explain how I could’ve gotten them. After some discussion, we pin pointed the most probable cause. I had put horse manure, from the pasture, into my garden. I then planted my garden with my bare hands. I must’ve absent mindedly touched my mouth while digging, and worm eggs made their way into my system. The idea of it sickened me, and I will now never put horse manure in my garden for the rest of my life. End of story.

She wrote up a far stronger prescription cream for my feet, and told me I could use the other prescription ointment on my private area, “but no longer than two weeks.” I thought to myself, “Two weeks! You expect this to last another two weeks!” I was certain that if I had to deal with this another two weeks I was going to be collected immediately by the loony bin.

I began piling on my new cream onto my feet. It worked for a few days, but then started to fail me. New spots were showing up smidgeons away from where old spots dried up. So I finally took both medications and concocted a bomb-effect on my feet. It worked. Finally! But it was so goopy that I had to be careful about how I slept. That, and overdose...

Meanwhile, I finally received a return text from my so-called promising date man. Paraphrasing, he said it wouldn’t work out. No reason. Nothing. It left me angry. It left me crushed because this was my one shining ray of hope, the light at the end of my dreadful health tunnel, the one thing that was going to be good when all of this stupid poison ivy went away.

Meanwhile, I’m checking my bank account and realizing that there is absolutely no way I’ll be making that trip to New York I had planned on taking this summer, thanks to all of my medical expenses. I was supposed to go to be with a loved one who’s going through a very difficult time. I was supposed to go so I could see two of my best friends, and one of those best friends’ daughter who is like a niece to me. I was supposed to go so I could get a break, have a vacation from the awful stress at work. I was supposed to go home to be home. But poison is as poison does.

Here is where I claim my right to be a little whiney, Reader.

It is now the end of August, and I am still dealing with the poison ivy on my feet. My private rash has dried up, thank goodness, and did not last as long as I feared it would. It was just under two weeks before it was completely gone. But that concoction of medication I used to dry up the mother-ship patch of poison ivy on my foot? ‘Gave me a chemical burn. And then on a very hot day, it sun-burned on top of it. And now I’m treating a second degree burn on my foot, on top of new spots that sprouted over night last night. I’m at the very end of my super-strong cream – as in, I’m two seconds away from cutting open the tube to get the very last microscopic measures of it.

I’m obsessively looking at my foot a hundred times a day, wondering which red area is a dried up patch or one that I have to medicate. But I can’t medicate it anymore… The skin damage on my foot is more atrocious than I’ve ever suffered before. I remember bruising, and scabs, and some skin peeling, I do. But not the burns. And now there’s dry, dead skin that itches and is making me unbelievably paranoid to itch it. I tried lotion before, but that just seemed to spread the poison.

Hmm. Allow me to change my mind.

I’ve decided not to whine.

I have a confession to make, Reader:

I’ve always considered myself a person who can adapt well to her surroundings, who can survive change. The truth is quite the opposite. I’ve learned to discipline myself into accepting change because I believe it’s healthy to, but deep down I don’t handle things well when my world is knocked into. When my schedule changes, I spook. When my routine is interrupted, I panic. When I’m out of my comfort zone, I have to throw back a pill just to handle it. I try to hide these things because they embarrass me. It makes me feel weak and fragile. But the truth of it is, when health issues interrupt my life and take away my regular schedule of things, my routine, and throw me into a very uncomfortable zone, mentally I start to loose it. Emotionally, I become turned into myself. I become angry. Depressed. And I’m unable to cope with it in a proper fashion.

I’m perfectly aware that the world has not come to an end. I’m perfectly aware that I’m not the only person in my personal community dealing with unpleasant complications in their life. I’m perfectly aware that all of this will eventually heal and come to an end. There is always healing. Even when you can’t possibly fathom it, you will always heal. You might come through with a scar, but hey. We all know that cliché, don’t we? Poison ivy ruined my summer. It did. But if this is the worst I have going for me, then I’ve got it pretty damn good. So, instead of whining to all of my readers, I want to make amends with you.

I am sorry that I don’t have it worse than you. If I could take on all of your pain, I would. If I could take on all of your grieving and agony, I would pile it into my heart to save you. You know who you are. You know I love you, and I am so sorry that you are hurting. All of you. I am sorry to all of you. Like I said before, my existence is wee, little, and meaningless. I can hold myself accountable for that truth. But you… You are everything that I live for. You are the purpose that keeps me going, and if I could return the favor I would. I’m trying to. This is my way of sharing in hopes that it does something more than getting tomatoes thrown at my head. Poison is as poison does, and I know you’ve had to deal with the worst of its kind, and if I could form the perfect antidote for it, I would. Some people use faith. I’ve heard good things about it. Have faith, Reader. Believe that all bad things run their cycle and come to an end eventually. Have faith. Find your purpose. And give what you can to those who need you.

My poison will dry up. And so will yours.

The Poison of Poison Ivy: part 1

I’m not even sure which poisonous plant is truly the culprit, but I blame it on poison ivy because I have no idea how to identify poison oak or poison sumac, and in all truth, it doesn’t matter. The poison is the same in all of the plants. So, poison ivy it is.

I’ve debated whether or not to write this particular piece. It’s rather personal. It’s more personal than I thought I’d go when I first devised this travel memoir slash gimmick-to-get-me-published slash blog, and I’m still a little hesitant. Then again, the reckless side of me is screaming, “Do it! Do it! You’ve been doing it anyway…”. My addiction to wearing my emotions on my sleeves is rather parallel to that of an adrenaline junkie. I have a nasty habit of throwing myself out there, all caution thrown to the ferocious, unforgiving winds, just to see if I can make myself relatable to the public. I think to myself, “I can’t be the only one going through these sort of things. Maybe if I’m willing to talk about them, others will feel safe to do the same.” I know I sometimes come off whiney. I sometimes (most times) come off melodramatic and a little ridiculous. And I even sometimes (most times) come off pitiful and pathetic. But while I am most definitely all of these things, so is everybody else. I have a rather reckless faith in my audience, believing that they just might, just maybe, embrace my humanness as their own as opposed to throwing tomatoes at my head. Reckless faith, I said. Reckless. I’ve had tomatoes thrown at me…

But I’m going through with this entry anyway. I sort of need to, therapeutically. And if I can attain an audience from it at the same time, all the more therapeutic. So, I’ve decided to share with you, Reader. I warn you ahead of time: this entry involves some personal health issues, as well as some personal romance issues, as well as some personal personal issues. The squeamish, beware. The health issues are the worst… But they’re key to the emotional stress, and when you read about them? You’re going to feel very sorry for me (all memoir writers hope for this...). You’re also going to judge me. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take to tell this story. Bare with me now. Believe it or not, all of this does have to do with hating Minnesota. This is sort of a prelude to this weekend’s camping trip in the Apple River valley, place #4 on my Twelve. And it all begins with poison ivy.

That’s how it all began fifteen years ago, almost to the very day in fact. We moved to Minnesota in August 1995. School wouldn’t start for a few weeks yet, so my brother and I had taken to exploring the ten acres we now lived on. We grew up in a neighborhood. Having land was sort of new to us. We amused ourselves with the cat and four kittens left behind from the previous house owners. We were also put to work by our parents, building stalls in the pole barn and putting up a paddock fence for when our horses would arrive. The land needed clearing, and my parents bought our very first ride-on lawn mower, which to us suburbeons meant: tractor. It was not a tractor. But we used it like one.

Driving it around through the knee-deep over-grown woods was fun. Fun, meaning it took my mind off my friends and relatives and my whole life being hundreds of miles away, and having to start a new school in a few weeks. So. I spent a lot of time chasing the “wild” kittens in the heavily weeded woods, and I spent hours on our “tractor” mowing through brush in the wildness of our acreage. Little did I know that poison ivy grew on the property, and little did I know that I was very, very allergic to it. I romped all day in the woods back in New York, and never had a case of it. But I moved to Minnesota, and….well.

I thought they were mosquito bites. I had been eaten alive one day, chasing little black Buzz (one of the kittens) through the weeded woods. So I scratched. I tried scratching until they scabbed because, based on previous experience, this usually ends the lifetime of a bug bite. So I kept scratching. The itch was like nothing I’d ever felt in my life. It was flesh deep, bone deep, and it flared up like gasoline on flame. I remember crying in the shower, using my razor to scratch myself and making myself bleed. Then I cried simply because I was grieving the loss of my home and was now having to deal with what I had thought to be demonic, poisonous Minnesota mosquitoes.

Using an entire tube of anti-itch cream, I went on still thinking that it was mosquitoes that had done this to me. It was in my first morning class on the first day of going to my new high school that I noticed my bug bite was now leaking. It was oozing. My jeans were getting wet. This didn’t make sense to me. I tried to hide my wet spots on my jeans all day, crossing my legs in all sorts of positions, rushing to sit at a desk in the back of the room, hoping to all hope that nobody would notice my jeans and think that I was unclean, or disgusting. I was mortified. ‘Just what I needed while trying to make new friends. I wanted to be invisible. And believe me, I got what I wanted.

Eventually my mother recognized my condition to be poison ivy. I had no idea how destructive and horrible the poison is to your skin. I had always thought it was nothing but having the itchies. A lacey rash. It’s just poison ivy. ‘Put some anti-itch cream on there, take a benedryl, and dry it up.

No. It is not like that at all. There’s no such thing as “just poison ivy”.

It’s more like having angry boils on your body that swell up into these tumor like patches and ooze puss with a constant flow. On top of that disgustingness, the itch never, ever goes away. You can put gallons of anti-itch cream on it (while smearing around the puss which spreads the condition and makes it worse) and receive a simple surface relief that might, if your lucky, make you comfortable enough to sleep for a full hour before it wears off and wakes you up in the middle of the night, finding yourself absent mindedly scratching your patches until they’re all one, blazing hot fire of itch… But there’s always that bone-deep tickle that never, ever goes away. It is always on your mind. You can’t watch television without thinking about it. You can’t talk to friends without thinking about it. You can’t sit at the computer without thinking about it. You can't be at work without thinking about it. You can’t go for a walk because increased blood-flow worsens it. You can’t shower without being in mortal agony because warm water inflames it. You can’t dry yourself with the same towel twice. You can’t sleep in your sheets. You can’t be in the sun. You have to wash everything you’ve ever touched because the poison oil could be anywhere that you’ve been. You have to wash and medicate the areas at least twelve times a day to keep yourself from going completely insane from the itch. And you have to do this for weeks. WEEKS. In a nutshell, it’s completely, utterly, unfathomably maddening. It drives your wits to their very end.

I was finally taken to urgent care, and to be totally honest, I don’t remember what my first remedy was and how long it took until I healed. But I have been treated several times in my life for poison ivy, and every time I’ve been treated for it, it puts me through this violent wooshing of emotional stress. It reeks havoc on your mind and soul. Only people who’ve had poison ivy, and who are as allergic to it as I am, can understand this. I’ve had to be treated in the ER for it, when it became so out of control that it was making me sick. Like, throwing up and diarrhea for over a week sick.

So. When five weeks ago I began scratching the top of my ankle to see three teeny tiny pimple-like bumps that looked threateningly ready to ooze, my entire soul sank to the bottom of my very toenails. I knew what was in store for me. And though, sparing you the suspense, this was actually one of the most mild cases of poison ivy (thanks to all the work I did to prevent it from spreading) I’ve ever had, it was still, in another way, one of the worst. It ended up ruining a lot of good things. It ended up in places that it should not have ended up. It ended up sucking five weeks of my life away and ruining a lot of very important things that were supposed to happen this summer. You wouldn’t think a stupid little poisonous plant could destroy so many things, but it did. This is where you might find me unbearably melodramatic, pitiful, and whiney, Reader. There are, no doubt, worse things in the world than poison ivy. It’s stupid. It is. But let me explain this little devil weed’s chain reaction of destruction in my wee little meaningless existence, and maybe I’ll gain at least a minute ounce of sympathy from you. This stupid case of poison ivy not only effected me, but others as well. It was an exemplified torrent of misdeeds, this little devil weed’s doings. Poison is as poison does. And I’d like to share it all with you if you’ll let me…