anniversary – Almost Farmgirl

September 4th was our four year wedding anniversary. Let me tell you, we are not good at anniversaries. They always begin with the best plans, and somehow, by the end of the night, something has gone sideways, creating a day far different than imagined. For example, this year, we ended up taking care of emergency shoeing stops in Columbia, MO, five hours from home. Our anniversary dinner was especially romantic: Steak n Shake…drive through. We at burgers and fries and drank milkshakes while laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Despite all of this, I must say, my husband knows me exceptionally well: he bought me a perfect anniversary gift.

Meet Violet.

Violet is a yearling mini mare who was originally rescued by Guardian Oaks from the New Holland Auction with her mama when she was only a day old. She is tiny, barely standing past my knees, and is very sweet. Jeremiah adopted her for me.

Keep in mind, Jeremiah has often claimed that the four horsemen of the apocalypse will ride in on mini ponies. As a farrier, he’s dealt with some monstrous ones. Why? Because they’re small, and not intimidating like a bigger horse, minis are often owned by people who don’t know the first thing about horses: People who try to treat them like big dogs…which they are not. They often end up mishandled and difficult. (He is usually not a fan of minis, but he knows I like them, so he found one for me.) This little girl, unlike many of her breed, has been appropriately handled since the beginning, and it shows.

Oh, and did I mention we brought home an extra?

His name is Slash, and we brought him along as company for Violet. Right now, he’s a foster pony, but one of Jeremiah’s farrier friends may have a home for him. If she doesn’t, well, we’ll probably just send in his adoption fee and keep him ourselves! Isn’t he adorable?

We brought these little munchkins home on Tuesday–had to literally pick them up and place them in the trailer as they are both too small to make the jump–and they seem pretty happy with us. I haven’t decided whether or not to rename Violet yet. I can’t quite put my finger on the perfect name. In the meantime, I call them my bitty babies.

Bonus? Check out the llamas checking them out.

Once we move back to the farm and I have more time, I’m hoping to really work with Violet so that someday I can have her certified as a therapy animal for use in nursing homes, etc. (I have my eye on a couple of my llamas for the same purpose.) In the meantime, aren’t they just as precious as can be?

So, I have poison ivy. AGAIN.

If anyone is keeping track, that brings my count to, I think, five times this in the last few months. Given that it usually takes a few weeks to go away, that means I’ve basically had poison ivy to some degree ALL SUMMER.

Last night, as Jeremiah and I were winding down from our exceedingly exciting anniversary (Recap: We drove five hours to Columbia, MO. He put shoes on three horses while I watched him put shoes on three horses. We drove five hours home.), I was complaining about wanting to scratch my skin off. Anything that I knew had the potential to make the itching feel better (anti-itch cream, etc) was, you guessed it, at the ranch. Driving there to pick up such items wasn’t really an option, nor was high-tailing it to the local Walgreens. (Because it was late, and I was lazy.)

Instead, I did what any good millennial will do when in need of solutions to a problem.

I Googled it. (WordPress, by the way is flagging “Googled” as misspelled. At first I thought it was just jealous of Google’s success, until it flagged “WordPress” too…)

Turns out, Google’s first impulse is to assume that I’m trying to make poison. (To what ends, Google apparently does not judge.) It’s second impulse is to assume I’m a medieval sorcerer in search of potion making tips and tricks. (You have to go with sorcerer, by the way, because witch is just loaded with gender biased connotations. You probably don’t have to assume it’s medieval, but I did because I like the word medieval.) It is not until Google’s third impulse that we get anywhere near where we need to be.

You know what this means, don’t you? It means that there are more people out there searching for ways to make poison…or, erm, poison potions…than there are innocent people like me who just want to make poison ivy go away.

And, incidentally, Google still got it wrong because I wanted to search for “how to make poison ivy stop itching.”

Once I got passed my initial searching, which took a while because of the running commentary I was providing for my husband who really trying hard to get some legal documents filed with legal zoom, I finally found a fairly useful article on WebMD.

And by fairly useful, I mean that it provided quality information without suggesting that my poison ivy might be cancer.

I had been expecting all of the websites to recommend hydrocortisone cream or something, which I did not have. Instead, though, WebMD offered up some really basic suggestions. There were a bunch of things on this really long list, but I only read the first three:
1. Ice it.
2. Use a baking soda paste on the affected area.
3. Use watered down vinegar.
Now, these suggestions are all meant to be used individually, but, being the overachiever that I am, I decided to try all of them at once.

Go back and read that list again. Do you have it yet?

Yeah…I basically made up a batch of the contents of a third grader’s volcano science project, put it on a paper towel, and then threw an ice pack over the top of it. (By the way, overachievers don’t water down the vinegar…or the baking soda…because that would just be silly.)

Know what? Totally worked.

I’m not even kidding. Within about 10 minutes, the poison ivy rash that had been tormenting me all day stopped itching. And the itching hasn’t come back. Because science.

Now, if only I could come up with a delivery method that INCLUDED the 3rd grade volcano, this would perhaps be the best discovery ever.