This is just about all I know about poison ivy:

1. I can identify it easily and quickly, even from other similar 3-leafed plants.
2. It really, really likes me, and seeks me out as a host, at least once a year.
3. I’ve made up songs about the vegetation, and included it in stories, as well as taken many, many photos of it, here, there, and everywhere, in all seasons.
4. I often get it from gardening in my yard. The sneaky stuff comes in from the neighbor’s wooded lot, or entwines around the base of a pretty but thorny rose bush, camouflages itself in the phlox and hostas and weeds, and even shows up in itty-bitty plants in our lawn. I know I’m in trouble when I tug at some easy-to-pull-out weeds and a poison ivy vine in my grasp acts like a sling shot and warps around my arm like a snake seeking warmth.
5. I search the yard a few times each summer, scouting for the culprits. I then double-grocery bag my hands, put over my long-sleeved shirt, and gently pull the vine up best I can. Then I turn the bag inside out and throw it in my kitchen garbage, not the lawn waste can.
6. I’ve never gotten a poison ivy rash by pulling up the plants.
7. I’ve tried Poison Ivy Round Up, and must say that it does work, but I end up with dozens of brown circles in my  yard or in the untimely death of other plants in my various flower gardens. And then I’m afraid of the clean up. Is the oil still on the dead plant?
8. I know it’s the poison ivy’s oil which is the culprit to my rashes.
9. I have received its gift of rashes by putting on my camping hat after I placed it on the ground for a photo (a line of rash down my neck from the hat strap). I developed a rash on my knee in October – is no month safe? – when I knelt in my jeans in a swamp for this nice-but-so-not-worth-it-in-the-end mushroom on rich green moss shot. I got it from a friendly dog who nosed my neck and right ear, where the rash broke out the next day. I even got it from gnats. Yep, those itty-bitty bugs in early spring. I was sitting in our backyard, loving the feel the of the sun on my face, when all these gnats started landing on me. I shooed them away and noticed there were many more hovering over a nearby poison ivy  plant. My face blossomed where the gnats had landed. A friend moved to South Dakota and found these pretty red plants in her yard, so picked them for the house. She didn’t know poison ivy leaves were red in both spring and fall.
   

   
10. I’ve learned various ways to get rid of the oil, for instance, by immediately rubbing it off with paper towels, by pouring rubbing alcohol over infected skin, by washing with Dawn dish soap, or by rubbing honeysuckle blossoms over the area. I’ve discovered it I get the oil on my clothing, that I must wash them no less than three times in hot water. I also started laundering them in Dawn this year.
11. If I don’t get medical help within a day of the rash breaking out, blisters start developing the following day…and the next…and the next. I break out with the itching-oozing love-marks all over my body, where I know there was no way the plant touched. One time, before I realized I had it, but just knew my neck itched (from another close-up nature photo shot). In the shower, I washed my neck with the washcloth. It felt SO good that I rubbed and rubbed and rubbed and ending up spreading the oil around in some not-socially-polite-places to scratch.
12. Steroids are the only meds I’ve found to stop the rash from growing. Believe me, I’ve tried the lava soaps and straight Clorox and even scraping. Only steroids seem to work for me. That said, when I’m on steroids, I’m more hyper, shall we say, than my usual hyper. This past May when I got the rash, I stripped the wallpaper, patched the holes, and painted our bathroom – three times. This time of getting the rash, I’m starting vacation. You know, the kind where you relax, and just sit, or read, or do nothing? Oh, my poor, poor husband. My poor, poor husband!