Better, Sort of...

Olivia and I both slept better last night. Which…whew, right?

About a half hour after we laid down to go to sleep, I was rubbing her head, running my hands through her dirty hair (she had a bath this morning during which I washed her hair, so I don’t feel too bad admitting that last night her hair was indeed quite dirty.)

Anyway, all that to say that as I ran my fingers through her dirty hair, I came across what I knew was a tick. The field around my mom’s house is wild grass. The owners are paid by the government not to farm the fields and so it’s just gone to weed over the decades. And in that wild grass? The ticks and mosquitoes thrive.

Ick.

But whatever. I couldn’t leave that tick on O’s head, right? So I did what I learned to do in the first aid class offered by work. I went and got the tweezers, I pulled that sucker off her head, tugging gently so that it would open its mouth and release her rather than pulling fast and hard which causes you to pull the tick’s body right off its head and leaves the head under the skin.

Again, ick. And ewww.

Once it had released, I knew it was intact because that little creep tried to escape up the tweezers. I made my way to the bathroom where I lit a match and held the flame to the tick, baking the little bastard until his legs curled up and he stopped moving. Then he was washed down the drain.

Ticks don’t stand a chance when facing this mom wielding a pair of tweezers.

But caterpillars? Ohh, they get the best of me every time.

Earlier in the evening I was out in the garden, picking cherry tomatoes. I started to grasp one and found that it was half eaten. Right next to it was a caterpillar, looking all plump and squishy, no doubt full of delicious cherry tomato and the accompanying juice.

Have I said ick yet? And ewww?

Yeah.

I called to Tom, who was on the deck with Olivia. He wasn’t wearing shoes.

I told him about the caterpillar.

He suggested I flick it off.

I shuddered and called back, “I don’t think I can.”

He sighed, went in and put on his shoes and came out to rescue our tomatoes from the evil caterpillar.

I think if that caterpillar had been on one of the girls, I could have flicked it away but since it was only a danger to the tomatoes and not to my offspring, there was no way I was touching it, not even for the fraction of the second it would take to flick it away. No way, nuh uh, not going to happen.

Given the option of flicking a caterpillar or singeing the life out of a tick? I’ll take the tick every single time.