I feel like i must have been an indoors kid.  before the dog.

let me start by saying that i didn't know that my heart would sing when i saw my dog's head hanging out my car window.

i didn't know that when i come home after leaving grover in the crate for a few hours, instead of being resentful of my short lived abandonment, he would just want to press his wiggly little body up against mine for as long as possible in celebration of our reunion.

but i also didn't really know about ticks.

I mean, i knew what a tick was of course.  I knew they existed.  I knew they carried lyme disease (sure fire "you may be Jewish if . . ." you know the disease everything is linked to).  And i guess i kinda knew there was a tick season, though, if pressed i probably would just guess it was the summer (its the spring folks  [maybe summer too . . . gulp?]).

With a dog . . . ticks are prevalent.  And i guess that for people who . . .  ah  . . . do outside things in warm weather, they are always around.  But this is the first time, for me, that they are a solid part of my reality.

Last night, right before going to bed, i found two ticks, back to back, on my dog grover.  not cool ticks.  super not cool.  As i grabbed the first one, sandwiched between a small piece of paper-towel, i found myself with the apple sauce jar full of hydrogen peroxide that we use for tick execution/burial at sea (*osama reference!*) in one hand, and the paper-towel in the other.  And i'm trying to scrap the tick off the towel into the jar.  but those friggin ticks are built to grip.  I hope we use tick-leg technology in our car-tire technology.  cause im sitting there for like 30 seconds trying to scrap this impenetrably shelled sesame-seed-sized piece of turd off this fucking piece of paper towel.  And then, in a moment of 1am clarity, i just tossed the little piece of towel, tick and all, into the peroxide bath.  smart mattiti.  cant believe it took that long to make it to that mental outcome. 

Suffice it to say, i used the same technique when i discovered tick #2.  Buh-bye

And then, as i turned to go back to the couch, i looked down and saw the hugest fucking bug i've seen in awhile (i have seen bigger in Japan).  It looked like that huge lava-shooting horned bug from Starship Troopers. 

but just a tad bit smaller

But i think it also may have had wings.  it was solid like one of those fat ol' bumble bees, but twice as big.  It was big enough that i didn't feel a magazine would be a definite one shot kill.  I ended up using a car battery sized box of "greenies" doggie treats on the queen bee.  (sorry insect lovers) but it died so dead. 

and right afterward.  i was shaken.  i was lying in bed, with phantom tick itches, worried that the insect giant was just the probe of some larger bug master race that was propagating in our vent system.  I had flashes of an insect version of Arachnophobia happening in my very own home. 

Sorry mmf.  i know you had to get up early to teach.  but i really needed that bug . . . i mean hug.