Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Yea so, I got up around 5:30am to head to the pool for a swim. I stumble into the bathroom to put in my contacts and notice a big red area on my arm... with a tick in the middle! Ugh! Is there any worse way to wake up in the morning?? I grabbed some tweezers faster than you can say, "I'm going to vomit if I don't get this tick off my arm immediately" and pulled that sucker off. All but the head, which was completely embedded. Poor Chad, I woke him up and made him take a needle and dig around in my arm trying to get it out. No luck. He was literally prying at the head and trying to dig the skin out, but it just wouldn't come loose. I settled for some Neosporin and a super long swim to try to erase the memory from my mind of that disgusting blood-sucker attached to my person. It didn't work, as I literally shudder with revulsion approximately every two minutes.

You might think, from all the pictures posted above, that I was jumping in leaves and picked up a tick. Nope, those pictures are from the weekend. But, I do have a theory on how I got it. The boys and I went to a park yesterday, a park right by a big field and a pond and such, where Parker was filling buckets with dead leaves and in general messing around on the ground. After the park, we came home and got in my bed to read stories. I think that there was probably a tick in the cuff of Parker's pants or something and that it crawled into my bed. Then, when I went to bed last night, it fastened itself to my arm and started drinking my life force. Luckily, the kids don't have anything on them. But, my arm really aches! Who knew that a tick bite could be so painful! I imagine that poking around with a needle at the site didn't help much either. I'm also just totally grossed out and haunted by the image of that tick on my arm, with its fat, engorged belly sticking up. Yuck. And I'll be spending the next six weeks making sure that I don't have any rashes or fevers or joint pain. Double yuck.

Besides the tick incident, it's been a very good week. The kids and I have been having fun all week, especially on Tuesday when both boys had a holiday from school. I'm focusing on endurance this week in my training, so I've done a ten mile run, a couple mile swim, and a not-so-long 24 mile bike ride, but I couldn't take more than that before my fingers felt like they were about to fall off from the cold. I'm going to try to get out for a couple hours this weekend in the afternoon when it's warmer. I am totally loving the end of daylight savings time and having a bit of light in the morning. Plus, it's been much easier to get up every morning with the time change.

So, things are good... just have to shake that tick image from my mind!