Library Notes
June 6, 2003
By Pansy Hundley, Librarian.
Okay, folks, listen up now. I'm about to give you the "cure" for poison ivy. Yep, this fortunate one has tromped, trampled, and waded all through that green stuff. You'd think I had better sense, wouldn't you?
Last winter, with what the wind broke off the trees. With low hanging limbs that needed to be cut, I wound up with a lot of pieces of trees in my back lot, stacked in piles, waiting for me.
I let them wait a little too long. I've mowed around them a couple of times. Naturally, giant weeds, accompanied by GIANT poison ivy, has grown up over the mess and it has become a bigger mess.
Since no one has come along, begging to get out there and make that back lot all neat and tidy, I finally took myself in hand, donned my gloves, collected my limb-cutting paraphernalia, my trash receptacle and marched myself off to THE JOB.
I had to drag all that stuff out of the tall weeds. And, of course, all that nice, green, juicy poison ivy was standing there, waiting on me. I did not disappoint it.
By the next morning, even though I had washed good with soap, the legs were starting to itch. It had only gotten worse by the next day.
I took me and my itching legs off to the drug store to scrutinize all the poison ivy stuff that was supposed to be fantastic. I settled on one, paid my money and took myself off to get it started working.
The instructions said that it would start to work instantly and last up to 8 hours. Hah! Honey, it did not work instantly, or thirty minutes later, or two hours later.
I ran around with gritted teeth, telling myself NOT to scratch, as the lovely stuff spread. I now had three BIG spots and a growing number of smaller ones, growing rapidly. Anyone who's had this wonderful stuff will know just how I was feeling by now -- going nuts!
With nothing to lose, I decided to try something someone had told me about recently.
This gal had come into the library with something smeared all over her face, covering her poison ivy. I ask her what it was and she told me, saying that it would work. And when I saw her about a week later, she was all clear.
So, I set about cooking oatmeal, of all things. When it was fully cooked, I gobbed it on my legs in clumps while it was still warm. Oatmeal! I said oatmeal. That's right! The kind we ate for breakfast when we were wee lads and lassies.
Within about ten minutes, the itching had stopped. So what if I dropped little clumps of oatmeal all over the house? Who cared? The itching had stopped. My legs felt wonderful.
When I went to bed, I cobbed my oatmeal on really good and put a white rag around my leg from below my knee to my ankle. Pinned it in place, so that all my "medicine" would not rub off on my sheet as I slept, and my poison ivy could benefit from its' oatmeal glob all night long.
Within about two days, there was very little itching left, the angry red was much improved, and I was ready to extol the praises of oatmeal. And, that's what I'm doing, extolling the praises.
Keep that oatmeal on hand. With nice, green, juicy poison ivy growing everywhere, you may need it.
Now that the poison ivy emergency is past, let's read a book. Let's read Iris Johansen's latest novel, entitled "No One To Trust."
"He is the most terrifying of killers: ruthless, cunning, charismatic. And he had the means to get whatever he wants. And what Rico Chavez wants most is Elena Kyler -- and he wants her dead. Trained as an assassin by the military, Elena didn't need anyone to survive. But now she finds herself on the run from one dangerous man and turning for help to another.
Sean Galen was a man without illusions. He knew it was only desperation that caused Elena to accept his help. And yet he was determined to get this woman who had never been able to trust anyone or anything in her whole life to accept him as her ally. But both Galen and Elena know that Chavez's power and wealth mean there is no place they can be safe and no one they can trust -- not even each other.
Already Chavez's assassins and connections to those in the highest positions of power have turned this into a war with no rules. With two shocking acts of brutal violence, Chavez shows he will stop at nothing and that nothing will stop him. Soon a trail of horrifying murders will follow Galen and Elena across country to a last stand and a shattering showdown.
For Chavez is a mast of control and he wants more than just to take Elena's life. He wants her to live long enough to see him destroy every reason she has for living. He wants her to turn against everything and everyone she ever believed in. He wants her to commit the ultimate act of betrayal. And by the time he is through, he wants her to beg him to take the only thing she'll have left to give: her life."