Monday, October 8, 2012

In Which I Have A Case Of The Itchies

Just got off the phone with someone who lives far away who was telling me about some children who, months ago, had lice.  Now my head is suddenly itching as if it's totally infested with bugs!  The power of suggestion!  It's such a weird thing! 
Why is it that someone can talk about lice, and your head itches?  Or you can read a news article about someone finding an alligator in their toilet, and be terrified of the potty for weeks? 
Once, I saw a special on tv about how Sydney, Australia, is built on a huge spider nest.  They're called the "Sydney Funnel-Web Spider" and they are poisonous and they JUMP.  It showed them jumping at people, they hide in mailboxes and shoes and stuff and then JUMP towards you when they see you coming!  And they love swimming pools and they get all around people's swimming pools and stuff.  Argh, I had nightmares for weeks and was afraid to even stomp on a spider if I saw one, for fear it was gonna jump at me and bite me. 
Speaking of spiders, one year, in October (this is the WORST month for spiders, after all!)  I had just come home and was walking up to my house, in the dark, and saw a GIANT spider on the sidewalk, lit up by the porchlight.  Normally, I would just let a spider go when it was outside, but this thing was ENORMOUS and right there near my door, so I stomped it.  As soon as I did, little babies went running EVERYWHERE, it felt like they were going up my legs, they scattered in all directions.  Apparently, the mother spider had a gazillion-quadtuple baby spiders riding around on her giant body. (Which, now that I think about it, is kinda how I feel when I'm carrying around the twins.)  I screamed bloody murder and did this crazed "get-em-off-me!" dance right there on the sidewalk.  Just then, a friend of mine happened to drive by, and she almost ran off the road cuz I scared her so bad.  "Are you ok?!  Are you ok?!" she screamed out her car window.  I had to calm down enough to try to tell her what had happened, the babies still running everywhere.  I felt them all over me for days, and writing about them, I feel them on me now!
At my sister's house, deep in the woods, there are ticks.  A couple months ago I went for a visit, and stood out on the deck for awhile on the phone.  That was the only time I was outside!  Before I left her house, I found a teeny-tiny tick on my stomach, attached and eating away.  I got it off, killed it, disinfected.  Then,  2 days later, when I was at home, I found ANOTHER one attached to the backside of my knee.  I felt ticks everywhere after that, I was searching my clothes over and over again, running my hands through my hair and over my body, and every little mole or skin tag I was freaking out over and making my husband look, "Is this a tick?"  "No, a mole."  "Are you SURE it's not a tick?  Is THIS a tick?" 
It doesn't even have to be about buggies or something...ever notice how when someone else throws up suddenly you feel like you're gonna puke?  To quote "Wayne's World," "Don't hurl man, cuz then I'll spew!" "Don't spew, cuz then I'll blow chunks!" 
Ah, well.  The power of suggestion.  I think I'm gonna go take a bath, search for ticks, check my head for lice, and check my shoes for spiders.  And I may just blow chunks for good measure. 

11 comments:

  1. Shelly you are such a riot. And NOW my head itches. and I might have ticks!!!!

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  2. Man, I totally know how you feel! My daughter was at her friends house right after they had lice and they were here just before they found they had lice so as soon as their mom told me I started scratching my head and checking my kids heads 300 times a day, KNOWING they had to have them too. Then a few days later, my sons teacher sent out a "check your kids heads because someone in the class has lice!" email right before bedtime. I of course freaked out and after checking their heads while they slept, I went to bed. In the middle of the night I had a night mare that I touched my sons' hair and looked at my hand and there were thousands of lice eggs and bugs all over my hand. I scratched my head all night and even now, over a month later, I'm still scratching my head and checking theirs many times a day. I just KNOW they are in there, hiding! And I cringe everytime we're in his class and a kid gets near me or them. Right after the email, we had to go into the class for my volunteer day. I had my hair pulled back tightly and my daughters, and told both of them to not let anyone's head touch them because they might have lice and then they'd get it and then we'd have to take away all their toys for over a month to kill the lice on them. At one point during the day, a girl hugged Kenna across her midsection and she frantically started wiping away the invisible germs. I felt bad, but was glad cause I cringed when that girl touched her!!

    And don't get me started on ticks! When my son was almost 2, we moved into a new home, one close to the woods and across from the eno. Our cats were then allowed inside and would sleep on my sons bed. He woke up one morning covered in tiny black dots. No bigger than a pin dot. I started pulling them off and discovered that they were baby deer ticks. Apparently a tick on the cat gave birth during the night and they all attacked my son. I pulled over a hundred tiny dots off him that day and many more times that summer. Needless to say, they cats were banished outside after that.

    Ugh, I hate bugs. Oh and I know what you mean about those Australian jumping spiders, I've been terrified of those for YEARS!

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  3. Is my comment longer than your blog post??? Sigh, I'm too wordy! :-)

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    1. LOLOL!!!! SOmeone has a case of it as bad as me! I'm laughing my butt off! (And poor Alex with the ticks, that's so gross!)

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  4. Wow - I'm right there with both you...especially since I'm the one in the crowd ALL the little critters want. Mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, you name it - the want my blood. On top of that, I have some pretty nasty reactions to their bites from time to time. Don't get me started with poison ivy, poison oak and sumac. It is so hard being so popular....yeah - right! Shelly - you crack me up and I love it. Keep them coming.

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  5. It took me 3 tries to get my comment on here. Arghhh

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  6. I used to be scared of bugs really bad. Ticks were the worst. It would be attached and sucking. When I found one attached to me I would just look at it crying. How am I going to get this thing off of me without squishing it. I had heard that dumping alcohol on top of it would drown it if you waited long enough. Then lighting a match, blowing it out, and sticking the hot smoking match on its behind would cause it to release. Just don't do the above two methods at the same time. Or the obvious will happen. KABOOM! Of course there is the old tweezer method. Grab a hold and give the blood sucker a firm but gentle pull but don't squeeze. (Impossible in my opinion). While I'm trying to figure out the best method to use I'm envisioning this blood sucking tick growing into an egg sized paperweight that I have seen on dogs. I really can't remember when the fear of bugs went away. My new bug-fear freedom is wonderful. Now, I feel like go ahead bring it! Today it's people that scare me the most:)

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  7. Have you seen that show Infested? David and I watched a marathon of it one time...people whose homes were infested with snakes, bedbugs, spiders, scorpions...I couldn't sleep that night...eek!

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  8. Before I moved to SC, I associated roach in the house with nasty...Well, down here, EVERYONE gets them, only they are the little german cockroaches, the palmetto bugs are so huge(at least 2 inches) we call them the state bird. One time, we found a nest of them in an old box of Theraflu...I started screaming hysterically. David threw it outside and stomped on it and then burned it. We went through every box in the medicine cabinet looking for more of them. Thankfully they were only in that one box....but soooooo gross!

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    1. I've seen those things, they're HUGE! I don't know how you didn't have a heart attack. Last night, we found what we think is a black widow in Brenna's room, but it ran up into the wall and hid when we tried to kill it. I was freaked out all night and still am!

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