Dinner at the River's Edge

I forgot my camera, so this is the only picture I got of the evening.
It's Heather, with her friend Alison in the background.

Last weekend, Steve and I enjoyed an absolutely exquisite gourmet meal with our dear friend Heather and her boyfriend Paul, and another couple. It was an hours-long, al fresco repast beginning with hard-to-find cheeses, artisan breads, and dry, sparkling wine, followed by some amazing salads, tandoori chicken, and barbecued corncobs, and ending with a sachertorte and the best dessert wine I've ever tasted.

(Diet be damned, is what I say.)

A day or so later, I noticed that my legs were itchy. Itchy as all-get-out.

Legs covered with itchy, red spots. 

Meh. Mosquitos.

But then a colleague at work asked, "Are you sure it's not poison ivy? Cuz that's what I thought my poison ivy was at first."

He'd recently had a horrific case of poison ivy: huge, watery blisters covering both his legs, especially the backs of his calves. Even the soles of his feet! (He could hardly walk.)

Never, never, never suggest to a hypochondriac that she might have something more complicated than she has already acknowledged. I proceeded to fret and worry - texting Heather to ask if anyone else who'd visited her had "a rash."  They didn't, but Paul had been heartily bitten by mosquitoes. Clearly, Paul and I had provided the nasty bloodsuckers with dinner.

Anyway. I pulled out my trusty Caladryl. I couldn't remember the last time I'd used it.

Hm. That does not look right. Even after shaking.

So I turned the bottle over.

That explains a lot.

So I reached for this.

Which worked for about an hour at a time.

Finally, I became desperate. I was confident that this was not poison ivy, so I rubbed my legs with a rough cloth. Oh, sweet.

But it didn't last long enough, and had really only whet my appetite for MORE SCRATCHING!

Serious scratching.

Would you look at those bristles?

It's like a thousand tiny scratchers.
(I did wash the brush, but I could not get rid of all of the hairs.)

Here's the trick: you don't actually have to brush your bites (though that provides near-orgasmic pleasure). You can simply press the bristles against your skin and roll the brush the length of your limb. The irritated nerves get the response they need and the itching abates.

It's probably a very good thing that this did not turn out to be poison ivy. I don't know what I would have done if I really had not been allowed to scratch.