What Are The Symptoms?

I am a creature of habit. I may have some strange habits but they are mine.

Everyday my alarm goes off at 5:45a. I roll over, turn it off and ignore it.

Then HHBL’s alarm goes off about 6a and I get up because I have this insane need to get up first. I must be first into the bathroom.

No, I am not competitive. Why do you ask?

I get up. I grab my phone. I trudge into el banyo, grabbing my glasses so that I can actually see the screen on my phone and I sit done on the royal throne to take care of stuff. Every day the same. Everyone checks their email on their phone as they pee first thing in the morning right?

Never mind.

This morning was just the same as every other morning. 5:55a I am up and in the bafuni (bathroom in Swahili….I think) and doing my thing. I pee, I read emails, then I put my phone on the set of shelves that sit right by the porcelain bus to keep it safe from accidentally taking a swim and as I am stretching my right arm out…………I see it.

Whastha? my sleepy little cranium asks. It is like some sort of round black thing stuck to my right forearm. I touch it with my finger. It is not all that big, about the size of end of a used pencil. It is hard. It is black.

I flick it a bit with my finger nail but it stays in place. Guys I am freaking myself out right now as I write this.

I flick a bit harder and it flips off my arm and onto the floor. I look down between my feet…..

And that black dot is moving just a bit.

SHIT BALLS!! (sorry).

I did not scream because I was too freaked out. Sort of like in a dream where you know you want to scream. You are trying to scream and yet nothing comes out. Yeah, just like that. When I had finished with the whole morning routine I grabbed a tissue and picked up the small, black dot of a thing to take a closer look.

Larissa, have you guessed what it is yet???

It was……a very live tick.

HolycowHolycowHolycowHolycowHolycow. Did it bite me????? There is a spot on my arm!!! Did that come from the creature or from me flicking it off me. What are the symptoms of Lyme Disease? How fast do they appear?

AAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

A TICK!!!!!!!!!!!!

The question is where did he come from, other than outside obviously, and how did he get inside. The possibility is that he might have hitched a ride in on Max the Magnificent but I am not sure that is the case. I don’t roll around in the grass all that much these days and I haven’t been tromping in the woods in recent memory. And the even more disturbing thought is that he was on my arm for who knows how long

AS I SLEPT!!!!!!!!!

Obviously the sheets are being washed even as we speak. And I have cleaned the bedroom to within and inch of it’s life. Sort of same reaction that I had when I looked down at Cartoon Girl’s lovely long hair when she was in Kindergarten and realized that she had a raging case of lice. How fast and how thoroughly can you clean a room.

I may never be able to sleep again.