Last night, at 1:30am, Tessa came into my room and said, “Mom, is this a tick?” For some reason, I am completely paranoid of ticks. This does not, however, make me a tick expert. So, I immediately got out of bed to go look at said tick in the light of the living room. I asked her where the tick was on the short walk, and she showed me. It was the bikini shaving area. To her great credit, she let both Taryn and I get up close and personal. All I saw was a tiny black dot, like a mole. Taryn insisted that her younger eyes could see legs. Unfortunately, due to the location, Tessa didn’t have a well formed opinion. After looking at it with my readers on and running my finger along it, I still thought it was a mole, but was forced to concede that Tessa would know best if she had a mole there. 

At this point, we got Travis to check it out. Again, to her great credit, Tessa did not flinch to have her dad look at this location. We all know what Travis does for a living, but still, it’s her dad. All Travis could see was a tiny dot. Conceding Taryn’s far superior eyesight, we went to hunt in the junk drawer for the tick key that I randomly purchased a couple months ago. Okay, it wasn’t that random. Blackie had a much larger tick on her and we had to pick it off through other methods because I couldn’t find our tick key (after two moves). Taryn couldn’t get under this microscopic tick, so we let Travis try, because somehow he would be best at using a tick key because he is a doctor. Also, I am paranoid of ticks. Travis got it, and the tick fell to the hardwood floor. It still looked like a tiny dot on the floor. I grabbed a small ziplock bag and we managed to scoop it into the bag. Dang if that tiny dot wasn’t moving around in the bag. So we folded the bag several times, taped it with moving tape, put it in a Rubbermaid container, and put it outside. I have no idea what to do with this thing, but I didn’t want it in my house. Even in the plastic bag, it looked like a dot, but a moving dot. The tiny size of this thing completely freaked me out. Imagine trying to go to sleep at 2am after that. I felt like I had bugs all over me. Every bump on my body (and I was checking) warranted flipping on the light to see if it was a black dot that could be a tick. Why don’t humans have a flea and tick treatment? Why are girls’ swimsuits and shorts so short? How would anyone else even find that? I have to look up what to do about this now. I have to tell Tessa to clean the area with soap and water followed by alcohol (I did). I need to call an exterminator to spray the yard. It took a while to fall asleep.

On an entirely separate note, we put the boat lift cover on the lift this past weekend. We still don’t have any boats due to an unfortunate call schedule, lack of a second boat lift (this is temporarily resolved), and a little mismanagement by our boat storage place. We should have one boat in the water soon, so we wanted to have the cover on. Our boat lift guy (who found the temporary solution for the second boat lift) notified us that we probably shouldn’t leave the boat cover on for very long without a boat weighing it down, because a storm could create a “parachute situation” whereby the entire lift could end up in our yard, badly damaged. YIKES!!! TOO LATE!! If it’s not the darn tick causing me to lose sleep, it’s the parachuting boat lift!! Then he asked a very interesting question. How did we get the cover on without a boat? Interestingly enough, that was VERY difficult, and it occurred to me about halfway through putting that cover on that it would be far easier with a boat. So, I have included a couple pictures of the five of us, looking like spider monkeys on the lift. And yes, that is Trent on a ladder on the swim platform. Apparently, Safety Jo was on vacation because that was a bit precarious. In my defense, he could grab the boat lift to stabilize himself, but we did have to pause every time a boat went by. And two of the ladder legs fit perfectly in the holes of the swim platform, so the ladder didn’t move about the platform. And this is our first time dealing with this situation, as our cottage had a very different system. 

Now if freaky things would stop happening so I could catch up on old freaky stuff, that would be great. Happy humpday everyone!