10 ways in which scratching a poison ivy rash is like teenage sex:

1. You know you're not supposed to do it.
2. You really, really want to do it.
3. You've read about all the scary consequences of doing it.
4. You know people who have done it and nothing bad happened to them.
5. You think about doing it every minute of every day.
6. It wakes you up at night.
7. The more you try to put it out of your mind, the more you want it.
8. You scratch just a little bit, and before you know it you get carried away and scratch the entire thing.
9. Nothing has ever felt as good as scratching that itch in the heat of the moment.
10. As soon as you realize what you've done, you instantly regret it.


A quick note to anyone who arrived here through a Google search for "teenage sex." Please go away because you are a pervert.

If you were looking for "poison ivy sex"... well, best of luck with that.

Today's tale: In which The Ivy exacts its revenge.

Prologue
I've never had poison ivy before. I didn't know how dead serious my Girl Scout leader was when she told me, "Leaves of three, let it be!"

Book the First
The first time my younger brother came over to our newly purchased house, he pointed out a section of the yard and remarked on the nice crop of poison ivy. That can't be poison ivy! I thought. The illustrations of poison ivy plants in my Girl Scout Handbook are very small and leafy. These large stalks are nearly as tall as the trees growing nearby. Besides, little brothers are stupid.

The Ivy narrowed its eyes and waited.

Book the Second
"We ought to do something about those weeds along the fence," said husband.

Book the Third
Wearing nothing more than a tank top and shorts (and a pair of gardening gloves, to be on the safe side), I removed the weeds. It was quite satisfying work, pulling them up by the roots and watching the pile accumulate. When I was done, the fence looked fabulously weed-free and I called over oldest daughter to help me stuff the weeds into yard waste bags.

She whined her way out of it. I gathered up big bunches, and The Ivy clutched and caressed my exposed skin as I carried it across the yard to the bags.

Book the Fourth
"What do you suppose this small, reddish bump on my arm could be?" I asked myself.

I could have sworn I heard the echo of The Ivy's voice answering, "Why, you're looking down the barrel of 3 weeks of misery, my ivy-pulling little friend. And just when you think it's going away, a rash will sprout up somewhere else. You'll never be rid of us!"

Conclusion
I'm never going out in my yard again, never never again. And I've also arranged to have the first layer of my skin surgically removed and replaced with a synthetic material that's impervious to all allergens and irritants.

The End

This is a comment about nature and how unfortunate it is that it doesn't come packaged in individually sealed wrappers for our convenience and safety.

Daughter and I were out pulling weeds in the yard yesterday, which is a surefire way to eradicate any warm feelings you might have toward grass, plants, and live things in general. After an hour or so of itchy, sweaty work, we decided to go inside for a snack. And on our way inside, we passed one of our trees which has been working on growing plums for the past few months.

"Are those ripe yet?" asked Daughter.

I smiled a condescending mom smile and started to explain that those were yard plums. The kind that grow on trees, not the kind we eat.

Huh?

While I respect the tree's efforts, it just never occurred to me that these little nuggets of juicy, pulpy goodness were the same sort of things for which I routinely pay around $2.00 per pound at the local grocery. For some reason, the produce in the store is clean. Pre-bagged, priced, and neatly stacked. So far removed from its natural, free-growing state that it seems to have more in common with the boxed cereal in aisle 4 than the potted mums you'd see in the floral department.

Yes, that's right. Plums DO grow on trees. And so do other so-called fruits and vegetables. In the dirt, surrounded by air, and crawled on by bugs. It's from this filthy, sordid past that the produce is plucked, cleaned up to look respectable, and warned never to mention its roots in polite company.

So, feeling foolishly urban and out-of-touch with the fine, fertile planet of my birth, we picked some of the ripe plums, washed them, and sliced them up. (I'll admit, I had to pretend I'd just bought a pound of them at Schnuck's in order to ward off the fear that they would erupt into germy, wormy, sliminess as I cut into each one.) And by Demeter, if they weren't the best darn plums we'd ever tasted.

Then Dad came into the kitchen and exclaimed in horror, "You're not eating the plums from the tree, are you?"

Grandma colored her hair black and always wore bright red lipstick even though she rarely got out of bed. Her legs hurt from arthritis. And so her bedroom was the living room, and at family gatherings, holidays, and Sunday visits, her grandchildren would pile onto her bed and watch TV with her, snuggling deep into her soft, Opium-scented grandma-ness.

Above her bed for as long as I can remember there was a picture she'd painted years ago of a forest landscape. "Let's take a walk in the forest," she'd say, and with two fingers as legs, we'd play hide-and-seek behind trees, swim in the stream, and stop to pet a baby deer.

Grandpa kept pigeons and rabbits behind the house. You could follow him out to feed them if you stayed out from underfoot and didn't touch any of the droppings on the cages. Passing the two-liters of diet Pepsi stacked by the back door (Grandpa was diabetic, and I hated diet soda), you'd be met by the strong smell of bird feathers and rabbit food as he pushed open the creaky metal door.

Many years later, I learned that the rabbits weren't exactly pets, and the "alligator stew" Grandpa made didn't exactly have alligator in it.

But on ordinary Sundays, if you were hungry Grandpa would boil you a hot dog. No matter what time of day, and no matter how much your mother objected that you had just eaten.

And if you were bored, Grandma would lead you into the back bedroom, which was stuffy in the summer and cool in the winter. And she would clear off her art table, setting out real artist paper, watercolors, and expensive brushes. If you asked for crayons, you were given pastels or colored pencils. And whatever you created was given an "honest" artistic critique. "Well," said Grandma every time, with her eyebrows drawn into serious consideration. "This is marvelous use of color. Your lines are very clear and your figures have wonderful shape. This is very good work!" It made me giggle with pride every time.

When I was in high school, Grandma gave me a box of her art supplies, explaining that she was old and her legs hurt, and she didn't think she'd use them anymore. I remember feeling annoyed with her. At 16, I was immersed in creating and studying art. Art was everything. You didn't just give your paints away, that was like giving up on living. I refused to take them, but she insisted. So I kept them in the box and refused to use them.

Grandma died Friday. After her funeral, I didn't go to the gravesite. I went home. I got out her box of paints and her brushes. I noticed that a fan brush was stained pale blue from the last painting she'd done – a landscape that now hung in the hall of my parent's house. I decided to paint the girls' names on their bedroom doors surrounded by flowers and other girly things.

Four hours into the project, it occurred to me that I could have spent that afternoon doing anything I wanted. And instead of painting in my new studio, or playing the piano, or journaling, or doing anything for myself, I wanted to do something nice for my kids. I wanted to make them smile, even for an instant. That's the reasoning, I suppose, behind why I am in possession of Grandma's paints in the first place.

Eight years ago I looked into the newborn eyes of my baby daughter and became her mother forever.

Eight years ago I couldn't have conceived of the beautiful child I saw this morning when I woke her up by smoothing the hair from her damp, sleepy forehead and patted her on the shoulder.

She groaned and pushed my hand away without opening her eyes. "Go away," she muttered. "I'll get up when you leave."

I remember when she used to bounce up on her knees and peek at me through the bars of her crib every morning, grinning and stretching out her arms to me.

"Happy birthday," I reminded her.

I saw her smile to herself, as if maybe she had until that moment forgotten.

My oldest child's birthday will always be significant as the day in time that I crossed over. Nothing was only about me anymore, and nothing about me mattered quite as much as the child that was mine.

I cried when she was born, and I wept for hours afterward at all the wonder and magic of childbirth, of looking into the beautiful, wide eyes of another soul. But the realization that this soul would call me mother, that would come later.

There was an almost painful sense of separateness and apprehension that first night when I sat on the edge of my bed, unpregnant, looking down at her asleep in the basinet. Was it safe to look away? Would she still breathe if I didn't anticipate every breath? Could I set aside the awareness of her tiny heart beating beneath her tiny ribs, and would it still beat?

That feeling nags at the heart of mothering, I think. Constantly wavering between astonishment that your child moves and thinks on her own, and the worry that she should move more, think more.

The baby that she was smiled when I coaxed her to smile and ate when I urged her to eat. She walked early, talked clearly, slept well, and very rarely cried or complained. Then I found out that easy babies turn into complicated children. My bright, thoughtful toddler disliked getting her hands dirty with finger paint and didn't run and play with the sense of adventure I saw in other toddlers.

My eight-year-old child is complicated and perfect. Complex and unpredictable and moody and brilliant. And her mother is simply background in her life, hopefully as unremarkable and constant as her own skin, and as comforting as the soft blanket she curls up with at the window during a rainstorm.

That's what I want to be forever.

Footnote to previous blog.

You should be aware that when you read "library-slash-study" your mind should translate it as "library/study". Get it? "slash" = "/". NOT: Library wear ski mask and hide behind tree in park at midnight, while waiting for study to walk home alone.

I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Thanks to all who wrote in with suggested uses for my empty living room. I'm happy to announce that a decision has been reached.

Though it does have some appeal, we will not be incorporating Reader A's idea for a kiddie roller rink atop the hardwood floors of which I am reasonably proud. Nor do we have the resources to install oversized aquarium tanks, as Reader B proposed, in order to house an exhilarating assortment of colorful fishies.

Instead, with my parents' generous donation of the piano I grew up with, the living room has embarked on its journey toward being made over into a library-slash-study. What does a library-slash-study have to do with pianos?

Um.

We just really liked the library idea, okay?

And pianos don't generally belong in libraries, but the living room has nice acoustics, so when someone is playing the piano it will be referred to as the study.

Because technically music is a subject to be studied. Or something.

There is no arbitrary value in human life.

There is value in what that life can mean to other lives. Its value is potential. It is the risk of never knowing what might have been.

The delinquent boy in fifth grade might cure cancer, so we keep him. Investing resources, tax dollars, sweat and effort, until he fails one test too many and we discard him to become a drunken, wife-beating auto mechanic who smells of axel grease and cigarette smoke, who leers too long at little girls passing his shop on their way to school. To the little girls' mothers, to the cancer patient quietly dumbfounded by the diagnosis in the leather chair of a physician's office, his life has no value.

But his value to the young lady with the malfunctioning transmission is immeasurable.

Were he to have been killed when his wife, tears streaming and bruises darkening, lifted an unsteady pistol and threatened to end it, the young lady might have been stranded for hours on the side of the highway in her light pink dress and white heels.

Value. It is measured by what will be lost when a person is gone – dies or withers away in stifling loneliness and self-imposed solitude. In fear of connecting with others and in fear of not connecting.

"You mean nothing to me," says the young lady's lover, and she is nothing.

I remember why I stopped posting for so long. Blogger. It pains me.

As illustrated in the mention below about "swiffering" with my new Swiffer WetJet, I've become more aware of products that are household-naming themselves right into my practical vocabulary. Maybe it's because I work in advertising and the psychology of consumers amuses me. Anyway, I'm talking about brands that become generalized to mean THE THING, such as "a Kleenex" instead of a tissue, or...

Okay, I admit that's the only example I can think of. All I can think of are Kleenexes because I have a cold. My nose is stuffy and I need a damn Kleenex. I don't have any Kleenexes at my desk. So I'm blowing my nose into paper towels, which is about as much fun as washing your face with sand paper. And what the hell is the plural of Kleenex? Kleenices? It's a freaking brand name. It doesn't have a plural. That's my whole point.

I woke up this past Sunday with a respectable number of household chores to accomplish, such as:

Swiffer kitchen floor and wood floors in living room, hallway, and den.

Clean bathrooms.

Unpack various boxes of miscellaneous stuff.

etc.

Instead, I found myself spending hours on my hands and knees in the living room scrubbing and cursing at what appeared to be many years' worth of sticky shoe filth.

It began innocently enough, with a quick swiffering. The more I swiffed, the stickier the floor seemed to get. So I tested a corner of the floor with some Old English (which made me feel very much like a sexy young maid cleaning the floor of some rich elderly gentleman named Chesterfield who leered at me from the hallway while puffing lasciviously at his pipe.). I soon discovered that the mellow dusky brown of the wood was NOT in fact the wood's actual color. I scolded Chesterfield for smoking in the house and spend the rest of the afternoon unleashing a brilliant, gleaming, golden shine from the floorboards.

I'm thankful that we have no furniture in our living room yet. As it is, I not only have unhindered access to obsessive polishing stints, but also a perpetual blank slate of a room on which to project various Surprise by Design and Trading Spaces fantasies. (I believe that Fluid Pudding and I are the perfect candidates for Trading Spaces. New home owners, recent babies, tight mates living within scant miles of each other? Make my day.)

Did you ever move into a new house as a young kid and wander through the empty rooms planning what you would do with each one? I remember being bitterly disappointed when my parents cluttered my lovely mirrored dress-up room (dining room) with tables and chairs. This time I don't have to give it up right away. There are so many things you can do with a living room that grown-ups never consider.

Library. (Credit to husband for the idea) We'll line the walls with tall bookcases and dark leather chairs. I have to admit, the only downside I see here is that bookcases and leather furnitures is 'spensive.

Dance studio. I'd just need to install a bar (or is it barre? )and a wall-sized mirror (mirrorre?)… well, and also hope that with anorexia comes coordination and grace.

Art gallery. Perhaps we'll set up exhibit tables and hang paintings with little white plaques that tell you the name of the piece and the artist and the medium. During times of slow production, I'll invite all of my hypothetical artist friends to have showings. And charge admission.

Musical auditorium. Me. A piano. And a microphone. Live! Oh, and of course we'd have to build a stage and install stadium seating. I don't see a problem with that.

To: All St. Louis Employees
Subject: Ice Machine

Good morning all,
 
In case you were not aware.  The ice machine in the cafeteria has been fully sanitized due to the squirrel that was caught in the machine last week.
 
Thank you
--------------------------------------------

Let us have a moment of silence for the poor damn squirrel who unwittingly found its way into the Ice Pool of Grinding Death, and for the poor fools who thought it safe to dispense a tall glass full of Frozen Fur.

Holy hell.

May that squirrel haunt this building for all the rest of its fuzzy little eternity.

First of all, I'd like to apologize for my web absence (the opposite of a web presence). It was unavoidable. As I foolishly ignored the squeaking of the weasel, part of the weasel actually corroded and fell off. (Poor fella.) It was tragic, but I think appropriate repairs have been made.

As you may or may not be aware, my wonderful husband and I have purchased a house. In the short term, the transition has robbed him of Internet access and the ability to remain connected to both business and blog. In the long term, it will provide our growing family with a large back yard of grass in which to roll and trees in which to climb, space in which to store household essentials, separate rooms in which the children can sleep, and more!

Oh yes, there's more.

Behind the garage is a secret room. Not exactly in the Lion/Witch/Wardrobe sense… in fact, the room is actually an addition to the garage which, until we took possession, was the workshop of an amateur auto mechanic-slash-car restoration guy. It held a stinky, dirty old car and oodles of tool-like things. Scary tools that spewed flame and spark, and hissed when strangers walked by. All I know is that it's gone now, and the above-mentioned wonderful husband has promised this room to ME.

You see, when first we walked through this house and discovered the workshop, husband looked at me and I looked at him. "This is your art studio," he said to me. "I love you," I replied. Faeries danced, roses bloomed, music swelled, and I was home. On our way out, I placed my palm against the cool, smooth, dirty wood paneling of that room and I whispered, "I will unburden you of this axel-greased, exhaust-fumed existence. I will return, and when I do, I will bring linen curtains, wood shelving, and proper drywall coated with cheerful paint! I will scrape tire tread from your floor and lay down soft, pile carpeting. Wait for me, and do not abandon hope!"

When we moved in, the room served as a staging area for unpacked boxes, but within a week husband was at work in the room – an entire Saturday devoted to stacking, storing, moving, and piling things out of my way. He carefully lined boxes of my art supplies along one of the walls. When he was done, I nearly wept with glee. "You see!" I whispered to the room. "You were meant to hold easels and acrylics. This is your true calling."

The room smiled.

I'm home.

This is a cross-section of my morning.

I'm standing at the counter grinding coffee, the grinder is buzzing loudly, oldest daughter is standing next to me saying, "Mom! Mom! Mom!" repeatedly over the grinding. Youngest daughter is pulling something heavy down off the shelves. Husband is saying something to me from the other room that I really wish I had been able to hear.

And it occurred to me that if a single person were plucked out of his or her quiet morning routine and dumped into the middle of my life, I imagine he or she would have much the same reaction as a cat suddenly meeting a vacuum cleaner. Claws out, ears back, scurry for cover under the nearest piece of furniture.

But when you ease into it day by day, and you balance it against being surrounded by the people you love, the noise is kind of comforting. Like the sound of life - breathing, heart beating, muscles working. It's the sound of being alive.

For some reason, Loobylu is making me jealous. It's not that I want another baby just yet, but reading about all the newborn things reminds me in a weird sort of way that my newborn is nearly a year old. It's a strange, conflicted feeling. I remember being so miserable when the baby was tiny because I could never figure out why she was crying, and we couldn't quite get the hang of nursing right away. It was so much worry. But now that's all gone. There's a new kind of worry and wonderment.

As I was leaving her at daycare this morning, she grinned her little gap-toothed grin and tossed me a half-wave. Everything about her still astounds me.

What does it mean to have a baby who's turning one? You find yourself reminiscing about where you were one year ago and how things have changed. You look at toys she plays with now that would have confounded her just a few months ago. Instead of gazing at your tiny newborn just marveling at the fact that she exists, you marvel at the skills she's perfecting and the speed with which she's learning.

She's leaving the special, protected state of babyhood and finding that she much prefers a new physical challenge (such as the hall staircase) to being secured in a soft, fuzzy blanket. She'll take a sippy cup on the go over a bottle in mom's arms.

But to watch her realize that she's a separate person with ideas of her own, that's something. Once she struggled for ten minutes to fit a block through a hole, and then suddenly discovered – "Oh, if I turn it this way…" and she laughed out loud with joy at the accomplishment. The other night, I put a few pieces of chicken on her tray, which she immediately stuffed into her mouth. "Is that good?" I asked. Her little head bobbed up and down in a nod.

In true mom form, I'm quite certain that no other babies are as beautiful and talented as my own. You'll just have to humor me.

Okay, I'm going to have to buy a space heater for my office. The fact that it's a constant 62 degrees in here is killing me. Maybe it's fine for the bulky men in suits, but I'm wearing two sweaters just to break even, and trying to type with cold, numb fingers is deterimental to my word processing. I wonder if studies have been done on the correlation between unreasonably low thermostat settings and the number of typos per document.

That's all I have to say about that. I'm also considering giving up blogging. It's depressing when all I have to talk about is how cold I am. I hate people like that, and I have no desire to be one of them. There are many more interesting blogs than mine out there. Go out and see for yourself. Go on! Shoo. I promise not to be witty and clever while you're gone.

Near the entrance to our building is a sad little table and chair reserved for job applicants. When some poor soul comes in, hat in hand, seeking employment, he's sent over to the table to fill out an application. Then everyone else, those lucky folks who have jobs in this economy, can walk by and peer over his shoulder, wondering at the turn of affairs that landed him here in such a sorry state.

This morning, the job applicant was particularly heartbreaking. Stocky, middle-aged, balding. Not attractive, but respectable-looking. Married (gold ring on his finger). He reminded me of my dad.

If his resume were an ad for a used car, it might have read: "Clean, dependable transportation. Good gas mileage. Some wear on body & interior, otherwise in good shape. Best offer."

Because my dad has had a comb-over for as long as I can remember, I have a sort of familiar affection for other men who do. I get defensive when people make fun of them and wonder why he doesn't just shave his head. My dad would joke about how little hair he had as if it didn't matter to him, and then painstakingly arrange those few hairs as if he were bargaining for just a little more time with each one of them.

And so it seemed to be with this man. He had a certain look of earnestness as he penciled in the addresses of former employers. The lines around his eyes reminded me of the periods when my dad was out of work and spent long, tedious hours scouring the want-ads, visiting potential employers only to return home tired and defeated. I wanted to go with my dad on those visits, to stand next to him holding onto his hand and enthusiastically explain to the bosses how wonderful my dad was, how hard he worked to care for us, and how smart, how dedicated, how kind he was.

I wondered if this man had kids at home who would have gladly stood beside him at the lonely applicant table, met my curious gaze defiantly and announced, "This is my dad. Anyone should be glad to hire him."

Thanks to all who voted in the poll, the business has a name! We are now...

Disenchanted Princess Cards & Gifts

Look for items soon in a trendy retail store near you!

Here ends the shameless self-promotion. At least until the website is up and running. Giggle.

My friend Fluid and I are starting a business! We'll be making edgy, unique, artistic greeting cards for edgy, unique, artistic people.

Because edgy, unique, artistic things make the world go 'round.

Help us name it, and I promise you'll instantly feel more in touch with your inner artist!

Cars and sex. Apparently there's more similarity between the two that I had thought.

For example, did you know that your local car dealer is looking for more than just a one night stand? It's true. This morning on the radio, I heard Mike Schmidt of Mike Schmidt Toyota tell me, "At Mike Schmidt Toyota, you're not just a number or a sale. We want to establish a relationship with you."

How flattering, I thought. But that's mighty presumptuous of you, Mike Schmidt. After all, we haven't even had dinner yet.

And maybe I'm not ready for a relationship with my car dealer at this stage of my life. There's something to be said for the quick and easy transaction, the no-strings-attached, no-questions-asked purchase. I know that someday I'll want that stability of one car dealer in my life, but for now I just want to see what's out there. Have fun shopping around. Experience what other car dealerships have to offer.

Forgive my lack of subtlety, Mike Schmidt. But at this point, it's not you I want. It's your Toyota.