k's 8 Simple Rules for Planting Cactus

1. Before you put on your work clothes, make sure you shave your legs. If you work sitting down, shave your butt too. Hell, shave EVERYTHING. This is especially important if your tiny little body hairs are the same color as tiny little cactus spines.

2. Put out the needle-nose tweezers before you even start. Advise a very personal friend you may be requesting their assistance to remove spines from very personal areas.

3. USE those leather gloves. Will cactus spines go right through them? Of COURSE. But not ALL of them. See? Mitigate!

4. As usual, duct tape works better than scotch tape. Hair waxing stuff works good too. But it can be hard to apply since you don't want to accidentally push those spines in deeper as you spread the wax around.

5. If you try to pull spines out with your (barely existent) fingernails, you'll break more than you pull out. Well, that's life. But the less you leave to fester their way out the happier you'll be.

6. If you have a piece of cactus on the ground, and then you move it, don't sit down where it was. Don't. It's just dumb.

7. Wear long pants. If you don't have any long pants, go get some at the thrift store for virtually no money. If you do your planting in the back yard it doesn't matter what these pants look like. Good. Cheaper. Then when you're done you don't even have to wash them. Just throw them away. That means less suffering all around.

8. Grow orchids.