Ticki Ticki Tembo-...

...no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo. An interesting book, Tikki Tikki Tembo, retold by Arlene Mosel... try reading that to your kids after a glass of wine.

Where was I? Oh yeah, ticks.

Starting in late April, early May, Southern Maryland is riddled with ticks... and living on an acre and a half, a majority of which is woodsy, does not help.

The current tick count is: little e - 2, with 1 tick head embedded in her head; super K - 2; big K - 2, plus 2 more found crawling on me; and leading with a big goose egg - super big E. Way to go Superman!

Whilst enjoying ice cream with the girls tonight, I mistakenly thought KK got a glob of chocolate on her head... which is by no means unusual. Instead, I found this...
Yuck, ewww... definitely something to make your skin crawl.

With the help of my trusty assistant...

...I employed this technique:

'To Remove the entire TICK safely..........

Tick Removal Please forward to anyone with children .... or hunters, etc!! thanks! A School Nurse has written the info below -- good enough to share -- And it really works!! I had a pediatrician tell me what she believes is the best way to remove a tick. This is great, because it works in those places where it's sometimes difficult to get to with tweezers: between toes, in the middle of a head full of dark hair, etc. Apply a glob of liquid soap to a cotton ball. Cover the tick with the soap-soaked cotton ball and let it stay on the repulsive insect for a few seconds (15-20), after which the tick will come out on it's own and be stuck to the cotton ball when you lift it away. This technique has worked every time I've used it (and that was frequently), and it's much less traumatic for the patient and easier for me. Unless someone is allergic to soap, I can't see that this would be damaging in any way. I even had my doctor's wife call me for advice because she had one stuck to her back and she couldn't reach it with tweezers. She used this method and immediately called me back to say, "It worked!"'

...provided to me by my good friend Amy's mom, Doris, when she originally heard about e's tick head-head problem.

I did not work quite as promised, but did stun the nasty bugger enough for me to get it completely out.

As for me, one of the two little f*%@ers that bit me a month ago, must have had it out for me. For the past week I have been extremely tired and have had horrible knee pain. So, I loaded up the crew, including one 2 year old, sans nap, and headed to Naval Medical. After speaking with the doctor and providing three viles of my precious blood, I received a 21 day course of antibiotics to treat Lyme Disease. My results will not come back for a week, but hey... definitely better safe than sorry, right?

Darn, military housing or model home are sounding really good right now!

SUKANDA!!

Moving is hard. It stinks. Having to start over every 3 years, give or take, really can take it's toll on you.

And the worst part about it?? Consoling your kids because they miss their friends, adjusting to the new neighborhood/house, finding activities and schools for the kids, unpacking, dealing with move damage... the list can go on and on.

Nope, not one of those things makes me fear moving.

Finding a hairdresser... now that frightens me. Especially when you live in the land of the mullet... women included. There is no discrimination here. After looking at everyone's hair for the past 3+ months, I was very distraught. I had not seen one person that I wanted to find out where they got their hair cut. Then, while on a field trip with e's school... it happened. I finally found someone who had cute hair. I immediately and shamelessly marched right up to her and asked her who cut her hair. Thankfully, being a military wife has helped me to abandon all reservations and not feel strange at all going up to complete strangers and asking them anything.

Enter, Sukanda (cue harps and choir signing 'Ahhhh').

She is a cute little lady from Thailand that does a wonderful job cutting hair. After seeing her work, I was confident enough to let her not only cut 4+ inches off my hair, but she also thinned it for me.

Whew, one more thing checked off my list. MD is getting closer and closer to home every day.

Moving... Stinks!!

Normally, we LOVE to move. I know, strange, but we do.

We actually spend weeks prior to our moves de-cluttering, purging and organizing. Before the movers actually come, we stage everything... all pictures are put together, all of our electronics are hand packed in their original boxes, things that shouldn't be packed are placed in a room labeled 'DO NOT PACK', etc., etc. We do that so that we can have an easy un-pack on the other end. And it usually works... until this move.

We thought that we had the greatest packers when we were in CA. We were so impressed with their speed and the supervisor came out to pack our plasma and he told us that we had his 'A team' packing us. We should have had an idea when one guy actually packed the cat litter box, food and water... and yes, they were all full. Common sense would tell you that if we wanted the litter box to be packed, we would have emptied the poop, but who are we to judge?

Anyway, so it is now 8 days since we have received our household goods and we are still not completely unpacked... mostly, but not completely. Some would say that's pretty good, but for us... not so much. Our last move, we unpacked in 2 days.

Enough rambling... lets take a look at what we unearthed, shall we?

Here is a wardrobe from KK's room.
Underneath the toys and books are E's uniforms, including his Choker Whites... nice.

What the... ?
If you can't tell, it's a box of laundry detergent packed with Woolite, stain spray, dryer sheets... all neatly taped inside the box. Problem is, they packed it in the same box with the turkey roaster and rack which punctured the boxes (yep, there were two of these babies) and powdered detergent was everywhere.

Oooh... another wardrobe. What's in this one? It doesn't seem very full.

Oh... OK... yep, two leather jackets DO provide the right amount of padding for a semi-precious stone globe that E so lovingly lugged around Hong Kong to bring it home to me.

And one last thing for the record books. This box was in our garage... empty. Why not use it to pack in? What should we pack in it?

Good, pack the glass fish tank in the All-Clad box. It is the right size. Make sure you write 'Fragile' on it somewhere so that it's OK.

Oops... you forgot to put any sort of packing material in with it to keep it safe. Did you really forget?

There are so many more things that are just not right but that's just part of military moving. We should be used to it by now, but I don't think you can ever get used to absolute disregard for your things.

Next move, I swear we are doing it ourselves.

Note to Self

Next house should be ranch style.

Introducing...

Hailey 'M' ... named for e's great friends from CA.

We also refer to her as 'Pinkie Pie' (KK has a great love for My Little Ponies and her eyes really are pink).


Why do we have another hamster you ask? Well, after 14 days, 14 states, 3 hotels, 5 relative/friend houses, 4219 miles & 74 hours in the car, our other hamster 'Hamsley/Snow Princess', decided to off herself. Apparently, adventure is the name of her game. Being sedentary just wasn't her thing. E found her the morning after we got to the East Coast, hind end outside of her cage... we have no idea how he did it, but it wasn't pretty.

e was beside herself with the news. We had a full funeral, complete with flowers and remembrances... and a morning full of tears and sorrow.

We headed to the nearest pet shop to find a suitable alternative. What we found was pretty cute... although she is a bit of a nibbler. One crisis averted.


We also lost our cat, again, and spent the last day and a half looking for him. We informed the neighbors, the pet microchip company, and area shelters. This morning he appeared in our bedroom at 2 AM... we couldn't have been happier. There was no way that we were ready to deal with two pet losses in one week.

Driving in a Winter Wonderland

We left Central MN this morning to drive down to Southern MN to visit our great college friends. We decided it was a good idea even after reading the news story about the huge storm pounding the Central US (see post below).

Here is how the drive started out.

A little blowing snow is nothing for native Minnesotans... who cares if we haven't lived here for years?

We weren't the only crazy ones on the road.

Ahhh... why is traffic stopped?

Ohhh... now we see.


Get us off this road.

Luckily, when it got really bad, we happened to be 2 exits away from my sisters' house. Sorry, college friends, we'll have to catch you later.

Wish Us Luck!

Yahoo! is my homepage on my browser and this is the top story in news...

Storm blasts Central US, at least five die

What the heck are we doing here???