Distracting the Itch

Heather thought it would be oh-so-amusing to go for a walk, climb a tree and take a picture of the view from the treetops with her cell phone, thus scaring the happy crappy out of her acrophobic mommy dearest. I was totally freaking out seeing how high up in the tree she had climbed. I shrieked at her to get down. She laughed and laughed.

A week later, she scratched and scratched.

Yep, there was a nasty little bugger of a vine climbing that tree along with my daughter. The first few spots showed up right before Heather's boyfriend came for a visit. He's one of those outdoorsy types (working on his Eagle Scout project right now), and he took one look at her arm and said, "ummm, yeah. That's like totally poison ivy, dude." (I wonder if they have Boy Scout merit badges for being a hippy?)



Every day, the rash seemed to get worse.



It's been a challenge finding something to distract her to keep her from clawing her skin right off of her body.

Finally, she remembered how much fun it was to whack the mobsters while playing The Godfather on Wii. Yeah, go ahead, nominate me for Mother of the Year for letting my teenager learn the ultimate skills of extorting racketeers and using her Tommy Gun on innocent bystanders.

Still, it worked. I was thrilled that every time I looked at her, she had both hands on the Wii remotes rather than digging at her skin.

Then, she came to talk to me and I realized what happens when you become so engrossed in a video game that you forget to blink.



So, yeah. Red, itchy skin versus red, itchy eyes. Blink, dammit!