> A grammar game! I know someone who would love this. But I shouldn't make fun, especially since I want to buy the book it's based upon. UPDATE: I bought the book. I loved it. Go get it now!
It's funny how life seems much better when you get a spankin' great new purse and wallet.
Ah yes.
<1:55 p.m>
Dear Members of the Wasp Family and other Members of the Hymenoptera order:
I am duly impressed by your ability to protect yourselves. Your stingers are effective weapons, not because they're sharp and pointy and even the largest of us fear things that are sharp and point, but it's because the stingers give you the ability to mainline venom to your victims.
Why just the other day, one of your brethren attached himself to my pinky toe and gave me all he had. It caused me – a fully grown adult female – to fall to the ground, clutch my foot and fight back tears while my young children look on with bewildered wonderment and fear.
Apparently the chemical responsible for the pain is called
melittin. It stimulates the nerve endings of pain receptors in the skin. The
result is a very painful sensation, which begins as a sharp pain and then becomes a dull ache which lasts several days.
I mean, how much of the stuff are we talking about here? What fraction of a millilitre are you arming yourselves with in the name of "self defense?"
Regardless, it was enough to make my toe swell up to the size of a plum. (Ok, a small plum.) I couldn't put any weight on my foot for the rest of the day. It was as if someone dropped an anvil on it and just left it there.
When the pain finally receded, it was replaced with an intense itch. It felt good scratching it in the shower the other day, but it really just leaves me feeling annoyed. And itchy. I have learned that I'm not supposed to scratch: "... because microbes from the surface of
the skin could be introduced into the wound and result in an infection."
Ha. Try not to scratch. Ha ha.
Stay away from me and my family, and or I'm going to have to get out the bug spray.
Sincerely,
andrea
<monday september 13, 2004 - 9:10 a.m>
Monday. Today is the first day of my new routine. I am actually working! (Ok, maybe not right at this very second, but I could be working!)
I will actually have a solid stretch of consecutive hours to do work. I can drink my tea while it's hot. Never underestimate the simple pleasures.
Alas, getting our sh!t together this morning wasn't easy.
Backtrack to yesterday afternoon, when I had the misfortune of stepping on a wasp.
Our front yard swarms with about 50 bees at any given time. We have liberal amounts of flowers with major bee-attracting powers. Some people are freaked out by the amount of buzzing, but it doesn't bother me. Other than the time the bees made nests under our front steps in in the garage I haven't minded them at all. We've never been stung. The girls know the rules and I've been fairly confident we won't get stung if we all just went about our own business.
I was wearing sandals when it happened. I guess I didn't expect someone to be in the grass, perfectly level with my pinky toe.
I was walking along when I felt a seriously searing pain in my baby toe. WTF? I lifted my foot, expecting to see a shard of glass or rusty nail embedded in my skin. (Note to self: get tetanus shot) This is how much it hurt. Then I saw the little bastard. He was clinging to my toe... stinger-first of course. I swatted it away with a yelp and plonked down on the ground.
The girls came over to see what was wrong. I told them I'd been stung by a wasp, and to go get daddy. They ran to the door, both screaming in unison. I wondered what the neighbors were thinking.
It hurt. It brought tears to my eyes it hurt so much. My toe swelled up to the size of a small balloon.
During similar times of agonizing pain I immediately try to remember the pain of childbirth.
GET OVER IT! I inwardly yell at myself. YOU ARE SUCH A WIMP. YOU HAVE GIVEN BIRTH TO CHILDREN WHO WERE THE SIZE OF WATERMELONS. IF YOU CAN DO THAT, YOU CAN GET STUNG BY A LITTLE INSECT AND SURVIVE. THIS IS NOTHING!
The rest of the night I convalesced in the company of Benadryl and Advil.
Ok ok. Back to the activities of this morning.
Sarah woke up at 5:30 a.m., soaking wet. Poor kid. She's perfectly dry all day, never a problem, but at night it's a different story. Mark and I changed her into dry jammies and put clean sheets on the bed.
An hour or so later she woke up with a bloody nose. It wasn't easy to get much sleep after that. Then we got up and rushed around, getting everyone dressed and ready to go, eating breakfast, making/packing a lunch for Emma etc etc.
Me, hobbling around all the while.
But we did it. And now it's time to work.
a.
<sunday september 12, 2004 - 11:35 a.m>
Friday was the first day both girls were in the respective school/daycare routines.
Emma, older and more fashion-conscious, is sporting lovely new back-to-school shoes, bought just last week to mark the big day. She was so accommodating we bought two pairs.
Sarah, on the other hand, could not be convinced. She was good enough to have her feet measured and try on several pairs of shoes (including a couple of very sweet black leather Mary Janes) but refused them all on the principle that "they all go up like this." I struggled to interpret what this meant, and later realized that they slip off her heel a little bit as she walked. Bigger shoes will do this. Hence the dusty, beat-up runners in the photo.
Yesterday we had no choice but to make a trip to Walmart. I really dislike going there, but their selection of children's running shoes is wide and varied. And it's close by, so off we went. I hoped Sarah would pick something. She did, and at just the right time because I started to feel that little vein in my neck start to throb as I negotiated the shopping cart, my offspring, myself between other carts, offspring and frustrated mothers squeezing their feet in and out of shoes/boots/fuzzy slippers.
I'm amazed I was able to hold it together enough to also buy them fleeced-lined raincoats for the fall.
Next week is the real thing folks. I expect to have a little more of my life back. Hooray for school!
I'm amazed I was able to hold it together enough to also buy them fleeced-lined raincoats for the fall. 
