Ticks. Ick.

I just want to say that I have lived in rural Maine for the majority of my 31-plus years, and I don't ever recall hearing about ticks until I was an adult. I grew up, literally, in the middle of the woods. There were trees everywhere and we had a big lawn with a lot of grass, which was sometimes long. We would spend hours outside in the trees, rolling in the grass. The idea of ticks was unfathomable to me. Yesterday I pulled a big, disgusting tick off of Miles' hip along with a pretty good chunk of skin. Erik had one on his arm the other night as well. And as if the idea of a parasitic bug attaching itself to your skin and sucking your blood isn't enough, you have to worry about lyme disease. Those ticks are so small you can barely see them. Two years ago when Miles was in Preschool, he had a big red rash that his teachers thought was the "bullseye rash" that you get from lyme disease. He had to take antibiotics just in case, but as it turned out, he just has a bad reaction to mosquito bites. Like there aren't enough things to worry about in the world now. Ticks.

Off to gag.