Blood Sucker!

This is a dark tale about an evil creature that killed my dog and attacked my husband. Nope, no holy water or garlic is necessary. Trade in those things for Frontline. I'd rather be talking about vampires and other things that go bump in the night, but I'm actually talking about this little blood sucker

Two thirds of my life I have lived in what would be considered by most to be "the country." Surrounded by yard, dogs, and other wildlife. I have always pulled ticks off my pets and squished them between my fingers without a second thought. They are just an annoyance, nothing serious, that is until two months ago.

I found the tiniest ticks I've ever seen on my husband and myself. The spot itched for days afterwards, but eventually it stopped and the experience was sent to the back of the memory bank.

Fast forward to three weeks ago. Chris asks me repeatedly over the weekend if I can see a bite or a rash on his back because it burns and he can't figure out why. A few days later he calls me from work saying he feels like he's going to pass out.

I picked him up and took him to the closest doctor's office. Fortunately, this doc had a good eye. He immediately zeroed in on tick borne illness and told us to go get the antibiotic that night instead of waiting for the blood tests to come back.

Sure enough my husband was diagnosed with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Despite the fact there was no rash.

I knew I had a tick the same evening he did and I've felt off for a couple of weeks (at the time he was diagnosed) so I decided to get tested. While the RMSF came back negative the short Lyme detected something (turns out the short Lyme test can pick up a whole laundry list of diseases including RMSF). So the doctor put me on the same antibiotics.

Well, if we have it. Surely, the dogs have been exposed since I find ticks on them regularly. As I was reading up on RMSF in dogs, I realized, this is what killed Bill.

I took one of the dogs in the next morning for blood work. Sure enough, it was positive. Which means all the dogs have it. Unfortunately, the vet only had enough antibiotic for two of my dogs. I'm waiting to hear back from her on when she will have enough for the rest of them.

This experience is making me seriously rethink my belief to not spray pesticides on our property. The girls have not been bit or infected, but they also have not been allowed outside to play since this ordeal started. Another reason I've not had a lot of time to blog lately. Besides illness and me throwing out my back I have been busy entertaining children with cabin fever! Mama needs her recess back!

Paper Bag Princess

This week we kinda Five in a Rowed a non Five in a Row book.

Cute book. A dragon burns a princess's castle to the ground, everything in it goes up in smoke including her clothes! She grabs a paper bag and promptly starts searching for the dragon who stole her betrothed, Ronald. She tricks the dragon and saves the prince. Instead of thanking her the prince scoffs at her appearance. The princess realizes Ronald is a jerk and dances off into the sunset by herself.

We made paper bag dresses.

And they used our box of recyclable craft things to make a dragon and paper bag clad princess so they could act out the book. (She had a cute face until little sister got a hold of her :p)

We raced back and forth around the house so the girls could feel exhausted like the dragon did after flying around the earth. We talked about our heart racing and our fast breathing. We discussed why both these things are happening and how oxygen keeps our body alive. We looked at the body app I posted about a couple of weeks ago. We also built this model lung.

Tamarin thought it was the coolest thing. Lemur didn't care. Howler carried it around for an hour blowing up the balloons.

I burned a few matches and we talked about the smell. We imagined smelling 100 burnt forests like in the book. Then we continued our talk about oxygen. We put a mason jar over the matches and I talked about how the fire needs oxygen just like we do.

We also incorporated the dragon into our math. If there were X trees and the dragon burned Y, etc.

We were going to make meatballs tonight for dinner (there's a brief mention of meatballs in the book), but the weather feels more like a stew and pound cake kind of night.

We also started doing yoga this week!

I found it on netflix. We did the first episode twice. I think it's going to be a good replacement for "circle time" which I've never been crazy about. Tamarin did the entire thing and Lemur participated till it got to the few minutes of meditation at the end.

Done Playing Nice

Just like around election time, I've gotten kinda quiet. It should be no surprise in the south it's kinda hard if you don't have far right Republican views. You have to play nice otherwise there truly is no one to play with. Today though, I have finally reached my boiling point. Let me clear one thing up for you sheeple.

Obama is not tantamount to Hitler. If you truly believe this (as apparently so many of my facebook friends do) you obviously don't know shit about Hitler. I am tired of seeing this:

Oh for fuck's sake! SERIOUSLY?? If you believe this you are a dumb ass! For over 8 years (and counting since no one around here removes bumper stickers) I had to drive past THIS!

  

 

And I disagreed with damn near everything that moron did. Had the "other guy" won the last election we would have had to live with a toothpaste R as our president's symbol. Remember? Or did everyone forget him as quickly as he "admitted" he didn't really want to be president anyway.

 

Okay, back to Obama=Hitler. Is Obama ordering the military to round up people to imprison or kill them due to race, religion, sexual preferences? No. Is he ordering people to join his army and should they refuse they will be killed in the street? No. Is he planning to invade and conquer other countries? Nope. Has he put the next election on indefinite hold or convinced others to change legislation in a devious way to ensure he will be named ultimate dictator of the United States? No. If you genuinely think he will do this in three years then you, my friend, are a dumb ass.

The fact that some leaders of the Republican party have made this analogy shows a lack of intelligence and competence. These are the people running that party! It's frightening.

There are websites out there dedicated to this idea that Obama is an evil Muslim who will rise to hitleresque power and bring about the end of the Christian world. No, seriously, I just went to one and I don't think I can hit clear cache and browser history enough for my computer to feel clean again. People BELIEVE this stuff.

NEWSFLASH, every politician, ever, especially those that have run for president are going to have similarities with Hitler, like encouraging children to be involved in their party and being great speakers and *gasp* speaking to stadiums of people. That's what politicians have always done, including Hitler. It doesn't matter what party, they all do the same shit in order to get people to vote for them. So there you go, if Obama is like Hitler then George W... okay, wait, I can't say that cause of the stupid things that came out of that man's mouth, George Bush Sr. There I can say that. George Bush Sr was like Hitler. Kennedy was like Hitler. Especially if we are talking about his charisma and ability to speak publicly which are two of the reasons why Obama is supposedly the new Hitler. Seriously, I won't link to these sites, but do a google search if you don't mind the disgusting feeling it will give you.

*sigh* I weep for our country right now. We have reached a point where most Americans do not fully understand how politics function and they have no idea how to change it. So do they get involved? Do they want to learn how to change a broken system? No. Instead they would rather make memes, circulate them around facebook and pinterest, then start screaming at the people that disagree with them. "A-mer-ka, fuck yeah."

The Little Things

Like walking. You don't appreciate being able to roll out of bed and walk to the loo at your leisure till you can't.

Last Sunday, I decided fall was here and the baking should have started already. Like all people the mystery black on the bottom of my oven had been left from last season. I removed my pans and shelves and crouched down to clean it out. I finished wiping out the charcoal that was previously something edible and grabbed the racks to slide back into place. First one in, great. Second one in, *#$)*$#*$#)*^)*!#$^)#!$*^.

I hit the floor. Hard. It felt like two of my vertebrae went in different directions. My back has gone out before. I've had to crawl to the phone and beg people to come entertain kids for a few hours till I was able to move properly again, but this time was different. I've never had a sensation like this. 

The girls were so sweet. Tamarin grabbed the phone and a pillow. Lemur brought me a blanket then put on her apron and told me she was going to take care of everything. She grabbed my wet towel and began wiping down the counters and asked me if I wanted her to make pancakes. Howler finally noticed me. She sat on my pillow and pet my hair. 

Chris had to turn around and come home from work. When he came in the first thing he did was give me pain killers. Two hours after cleaning the oven, I was still laying on the floor of the kitchen. Trying to inch my way on my belly to the bedroom. I could not get to my knees. Scooting hurt. Finally, Chris grabbed my arms and dragged my pathetic ass to the bedroom. It hurt, but at least it was done. It took the pain killers forever to put a dent in it.

As the day progressed I finally did make it into the bed, but I could not get up without screaming and digging my nails into my husband. Monday, we went to the chiropractor. One of these things is not like the other. Can you see the one that isn't right?

Now my vertebrae have always been curved a bit. Well, I say always. I never had back problems till I had Tamarin, but that counts as always. Another great perk of being pregnant, the permanent damage it can do to your body. 

The chiro sent me to a doctor (Very unlike her. She's a holistic type.). Pain killers, a shot of muscle relaxer, and hours later, I could walk again! Slow and for very small stints, but it counted. Five days later I'm still not one hundred percent, but I can walk without help! Small victories!

What I cannot do is bend over. I went to Target yesterday and sure enough as I'm walking through the parking lot I dropped my keys. Not something many of us think about, but most of us do the bend and snap to retrieve things.

If you can't do the bend and snap, you have to resort to a stripper's squat. No, I will not supply you with a picture. If you don't know what I'm talking about you can google it. 

All I can think as I'm squatting to retrieve my keys is anyone that happens to notice me doing this is going to think I'm a really bad plus sized stripper.

I run my second errand yesterday and all I can think as I'm walking to my car, Don't drop the keys. Don't drop the keys. PLEASE, don't drop the keys.

We did turn this into a learning experience. It just happens I had downloaded a science app last week (It was free at the time, but not anymore sorry :( ) on the human body. It covers most of the systems of the body, including the skeleton. You can knock all the bones out of the body and put them back together. 

The girls were comparing their spines with each other yesterday. As soon as I'm back to normal I plan on doing some skeleton crafts with them like these:

  

Tamarin also wants to make a paper mache skull like the ones in the Pottery Barn Kid's catalog.

For anyone that couldn't tell which vertebrae was really out of whack that's curious:

Just a bit twisted. It's really is amazing how the little things can destroy a week.