Sunday, July 15, 2018

punch list, sweat, red velvet ant, and blog fix


Well, my dedicated week with Rocky lasted three days but he did have a good excuse. Gunnar's girlfriend went in to have their baby early Thursday morning (Gunnar is Rocky's son) and ended up having to have a C-section, poor thing, and delivered an 8 1/2 pound baby boy, a chunky little thing Rocky says. Rocky did show up yesterday (Saturday) and is back today. We're down to a little caulking, painting touch-up, and some grouting touch-up in the shower, oh, and switching the water pipes around in the attic so I have cold water to the toilet. No pictures though until they are completely finished which should be Monday after Gunnar touches up the paint for the last time. Finished whether all the picky details are attended to or not. Whatever is left I can take care of myself.

Yesterday I got out in the yard and cut back the climbing roses against the fence which were just canes with almost no foliage late morning and then early evening trundled the wheelbarrow full of plant trash to the burn pile, tidied up the burn pile since the last time Marc torched it only the center burned so all the small and large branches had to be moved into one neat pile, filled the wheelbarrow again with the squash and tomato trash and dumped it on the burn pile, plus my almost daily watering morning and evening and by the time I finished I was dripping sweat and by that I mean my hair was soaked, my clothes were soaked and sweat was running off me as if I had just stepped out of a pool.

A couple of weeks ago I was picking that big pile of dead plant material that I had made clearing the clasping leaved coneflowers out of the mini-wildflower meadow and putting it in the wheelbarrow when I unknowingly stepped on one of these...


It's a female red velvet ant, which is really a ground based wingless wasp (the male has wings and does not sting), and they say that the sting is the most painful of all the wasp stings and I'm here to tell you it's the truth. It stung me on the bottom of my left foot (yes I was barefoot) in the middle of the soft part of the arch. Holy fucking cow that hurt but after a couple of hours the pain had subsided and the next day the spot was a little tender but no further pain...for about a week until one evening it was feeling a little tender and I pressed on it and felt a hard lump at the insertion point with a two inch hard line radiating out towards my swollen instep and the whole bottom of my foot was on fire and itching like mad. Over the next week, any stimulation would produce the same result so I soaked it in the hottest water I could stand with epsom salt several times a day and it gradually got better. Today, the hard line has softened considerably as has the lump and the swelling has mostly gone down and while it will still itch a bit if stimulated, it subsides quickly. Will this finally teach me to wear shoes out in the yard? Probably not.

So, here's something totally unrelated. Many of us have noticed that comments on our blogs are no longer sent to our email even though we have it set for that. I learned on another blog that the way to fix that is to go to your settings for email notification and delete your email address, save the new setting, add your email address again and save the setting and it will start sending comments to your inbox again. I did it and it works.




14 comments:

  1. I must say that is the prettiest wasp/ant EVER! As usual, things in nature that look that red as toxic...so sorry for your foot, damn.
    Barefoot - yes, it feels right, like skinny dipping, however , clothing was invented for a reason. I spent an entire summer barefoot, my foot got abscessed from a ding, became way to large and had to be lanced . UGH. Good job figuring out the email thing! Thank you

    ReplyDelete
  2. I did it too, the email thing and it worked for me as well.
    Just looking at that picture of the velvet ant gave me a case of the full-body shivers. Yeah, I have finally learned to wear shoes in the yard. I just can't deal with all of the bugs. And nails. And broken glass. This yard has been here for over 150 years and there's plenty of broken glass and crockery almost everywhere. Last night though I got a glass sliver in my foot and Mr. Moon had to operate. August held the flashlight for him. He told us that he wears shoes to "rotec" his feet. Two years old and smarter than I am.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Another shoe testimonial here. I was stung for the last time by a lowly honey bee way back in the sixties. Bottom of my foot. I had it coming; I did step on the damn thing. By evening my leg was twice its normal size. Foot would not go in shoe. On Monday the doctor informed me I should have gone straight to the emergency room. Mind you, we did not do that lightly in 1968. He advised me to never be stung again, and so I have not been. I should also carry an epi-pen, but I do not. But, I always wear shoes, indoors and out. Well, not in bed.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 8 1/2 pounds? Early? Good thing she went into the hospital - that baby at term could have enormous!
    I can't imagine doing all that work in the Texas heat.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. the baby wasn't early except by a few days. they went in to the hospital early in the morning.

      Delete
  5. We call those cow killers up here and the stinger is almost as long as the body of the female. Even the small baby ones pack a punch. They are fast too and their exoskeleton is rock hard. I am sure it hurt.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wondered if part of the stinger was left in there and dug around with a knife and opened it up as best I could. got a drop of blood but nothing else.

      Delete
  6. Man, oh, man. You sure have some interesting insects down there. And you can keep them down there! Living in a house of random hairball delivery, I have learned to keep my feet shod. Worst wasp sting I ever had was in the middle of my chin. I looked like Jay Leno on steroids.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sorry about the wasp sting. That had to hurt. My last sting was a bee flying up my big legged shorts and stinging me on the back of the thigh. I missed three days of work because I could not sit on it due to the swelling.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Man, that sucks! You poor thing! I'm glad you are on the mend!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Insects just look so amazing. If only they were our friends - or vice versa. Lucky you are on the mend!
    I once got a jigger bite (tunga penetrans) in my toe, the drug I had to take was a bit like an acid trip, not that I have much experience of that, but I was *out* there with the rainbows. Not worth it though.

    Thanks for that email thing. It worked.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I "keep forgetting" to go back in the plant to see if there are any more of those red velvet ants back there. Fortunately, we all wear shoes at work. The one we saw was surprisingly hard to kill!

    Thanks for the tip about blog comments - I shall go & try it now!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Glad you are on the mend with the ant sting. It sounds awful. I was just clicking on the art pieces on your sidebar. Your work is wonderful!

    ReplyDelete

I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.