I’ve already told you guys how bad My Captain is about staying down and resting when he’s sick.  And yes, even though he’s fighting Lyme’s Disease, he went to work his 24 hour shift yesterday…in fact, participated in a full day of extrication training with the Technical Rescue Team.  In the sun.   NOTE TO MY CAPTAIN:  Doxycycline and full sun most emphatically do NOT go together.  ADDITIONAL NOTE TO MY CAPTAIN: The aloe burn cream is in the hallway closet, wedged between the hemorrhoid cream and the bug spray.

I’m not entirely sure, and I’m no doctor, but I’m relatively certain that people who’s immune systems are fighting a nasty bacterial infection like Lyme’s probably won’t have the proper strength to work on collapse rescue situations involving winches,

and pulleys,

and come-alongs.

They probably ought not be working on shoring up several ton vehicles with air bags.

They may not want to do things involving taut wires and ropes that could snap and kill you in skinny minute, or metal struts that could fail.

Or maybe not be playing with precariously balanced wooden shoring.

But I’m no doctor. What the heck do I know?

Not much.  I can honestly say I don’t know squat about all of those things.  But one thing I DO know about is the fact that I came perilously close to joining my captain on the ‘Benched’ list today.  I woke up and found a wee little bug on my arm…

in the same exact place my captain’s tick bite/bulls-eye rash appeared!

Can you believe it?!  I went to pull the little sucker out, and he just fell out on his own. (This picture is SERIOUSLY magnified! Deer ticks are tiny!)

NOT good…it means he was completely engorged with my valuable blood, and that he’d been there long enough to transmit any disease he might be carrying.

I was at the doctor’s faster than you could say, “Hypochondriac,” and was administered my own prescription of Doxycycline, thank you very much.

So now I have to stay out of the sun for a while, too!  I tell you, the family who gets infected together, stays together!

And if you know me at all, you know that I think that My Captain and I having tick bites in the same exact place is yet another romantic sign that we were meant to be together.

That, and we probably ought to stop hanging out together in the deer-tick-infested tall grass…..

Don’t judge.

He wasn’t feeling well before he went to San Diego for the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue class.  He’d been feverish.  He had a bug bite that he insisted was merely a mosquito bite on his shoulder.  He had a headache that refused to abate.  I suggested he stay home and get tested for Lyme’s Disease.  But he grunted dismissively, and went anyways.  Why?  Because he’s stubborn.

He came home from San Diego, and felt even worse.  He sported a temperature of 102 that made his teeth chatter, and his handsome square jaw clench.  The bug bite site had grown uglier, and his headache had blossomed into all-over body aches.  He insisted he would be fine with some Motrin.  I suggested he go to the doctor and get tested for Lyme’s Disease. He grunted dismissively, because he’s stubborn.

He awoke groggily the next morning feeling like death, warmed over.  I put my hands on my ample hips, stomped my size 11wide foot, and insisted that he go to Urgent Care.  He was too weak to refuse.  Guess what the doctor there diagnosed?  That’s right, Lyme Disease.  My Captain grunted, and said, “Of course.  It all makes sense.”

I resisted the urge to smack his handsome face, and punch him on his bug bite.

He was given antibiotics and was told to rest.  So he went to Adam and Shana’s Damascus Day cook out, sat in his lawn chair, and felt miserable, while everyone else around him laughed and played, and Critter taunted a head trauma in an oversized inflated play ball.

He did call off of work the next day, but then he forced his poor shivering body out of bed and went to a 3 hour construction meeting about rural water supply that was not even in his station’s first due, that he was therefore NOT even responsible for, and he didn’t even get paid for it…why?  Because he “didn’t want to let anyone down”, and, well, because he’s stubborn.

The next day he lay in bed for a little while.  But then I made the mistake of going to the grocery store, while Critter and his best friend, Richard, played on a slip and slide at The Little Cottage.  When I came home, Critter and Richard were nowhere to be found, and My Captain was out in the heat wrestling with the Slip and Slide, to clean it and put it away.   Why couldn’t he wait for me and the boys to do it?  He was worried about the grass dying, and well, he’s stubborn.

So now I’m sitting on him.  No, seriously, all glorious, flabalanchousness of the me that is Mama Boe is holding him down.  And do you know what he is doing while he’s flat on his back in bed?  He’s got his laptop out, and is working on a line-up lecture for tomorrow….TOMORROW….because he is planning on going back to work tomorrow.

Why?

Because he is the most stubborn mule I’ve ever met.

No, scratch that.  He is stubborn-er than a mule.  MORE stubborner-er than a mule.

And I love him dearly.

Lord, I hope the guys go easy on him tomorrow.

What. The. Heck.

Is.  That???

Critter did not know.

But that little fact did not deter him from jumping into it headfirst.

Without even a “Mother, may I?”

I have a feeling I know what his college years are going to look like.

You see, we were at a get together at Adam’s house to watch the parade for Damascus Day.  You might remember Adam from the Fourth of July Parade last year (~ Parade Perspective~ ).

He was the one who had to continually receive kids hopping down from the firetruck.  Adam is not only a fireman, he is also in the Coast Guard.  He’s a true blue, great guy.  Well, that great guy, and his gorgeous wife, Shana, have an adorable tow-head of a boy named Jack.   And Jack has this enormous, inflated, trauma-guaranteeing ball.

We were at their house less than ten minutes when Critter had taken it over.  Little kids were violently thrown to the wayside, tears and wailing included…nothing could deter Critter from the challenge that was discovering this ball.  It was not a proud-mama moment.

Over and over again, he hurled himself into this huge rolling piece of petro-chemically-created, trauma initiating, ball of fun.

I couldn’t watch.  Not so much because I was frightened, as it was because I was frantically searching my wallet to make sure our insurance card was up to date.

Critter jumped in and out, rolled around, and beat this thing up from 5:30 until 10:00pm.  He did stop to eat 2.5 tater tots but seriously, he ate them running.

Amazingly, we didn’t end the evening in the trauma center.  Though God only knows how.

I would have loved to try it out, but there were babies to be held, and then dinner was served, and fireworks and laughter and clapping….I was too busy.

(That, and I’m fairly certain that it would have taken Vaseline and a spatula to get me into – or out of – that thing.  Kind of like Spanx, only bluer.)

And you can well believe that Critter SLEPT that night.  I’m thinking about getting one for myself to help my insomnia, except for that whole Vaseline/spatula thing……

Happy Damascus Day!!!!