Another Good Idea Poorly Executed

I called my friend and told her not to bring her dog: I'm going out with the Round-Up and spraying weeds in all the landscaped areas. I waited for the sun to rise, as the directions remind the user to be sure it's "warm" before applying the spray. Gloved, gowned, and determined, I set off for the backyard, warning Mia to stand clear.

It took about 5 minutes before my head was throbbing so badly that I had to put down the sprayer, go inside, and pray that the cranium would not explode and leave brain matter all over the kitchen. Then, it dawned on me: I had not eaten anything since 6 pm last night, when I had a roll with cheese in the car on my way to the second class of the day. "Ah-ha," says I, "I'll just eat something and I will be fine."

Why aren't simply solutions the answer? I did eat, I hydrated, I regloved, and determinedly retook the sprayer into the back yard and within minutes had the same excruciating, pounding headache. "What the what the?" I thought, as I once again headed inside.

Okay, so something wasn't working; perhaps, I had not waited long enough for the food to metabolize, the water to hydrate, yada yada yada. After half an hour and another bottle of water, I decided to head for the front yard, where I could both pull some single, significant weeds and spray the spreading patches lower to the ground. I pulled a few, then sprayed where I had pulled, then relocated, pulled some more big weeds, sprayed again -- and almost keeled over, grabbing my head and actually moaning out loud at the sudden excruciating pain.

Well, you know how thick-headed Scandinavians are reported to be? While most of the time I disagree, preferring to think that we are simply committed to our ideas and opinions, I suddenly had the thought that should have been obvious a long time before that the weed poison and I were not compatible!

It wasn't the lack of food, it wasn't the bending over, it wasn't the warming sun: it was the poison.

I went back inside, showered and changed my clothes, drank another bottle of water, took some aspirin, and gave my body time to regroup. The headache receded, the dripping sweat stopped falling from my scalp, and I felt that I would survive the experience. This becomes yet another of my many normal maintenance tasks that I am going to have to hire done by someone else as it appears that which has never affected me in the past has now become a major health hazard.

Yeah, I'm loving it, this retirement and all the time to do all those kinds of things I enjoy doing, like household projects and landscape maintenance. As my dotter always tells me, if it doesn't kill me, it makes me stronger. Or sick?