Trebuchets and ticklish spots

I live in a house of REALLY ticklish people. I am not one of them. This periodically drives the 6yo crazy and he badgers me to tell him where my ticklish spot is. I really didn't think I had one and I certainly wasn't going to tell him if I did but turns out I do and he can't get to it. And here's how I found it. 

Last week, my friend Em and I led the science station at our BSA district's Cub Scout day camp. It was SO MUCH FUN. We made glurch and oobleck and sleds out of plywood to pull the Boy Scouts around on and we fired trebuchets and water balloon slingshots and even had homemade root beer made with dry ice.

Our trebuchets were much smaller than this and flung tennis balls. Scientific discovery: trebuchet size doesn't really matter (at least when it comes to fun; I would imagine battering down a castle might be different). 

I also accidentally sprayed myself in the face with Diet Coke while trying to load up the Mentos geyser. Two discoveries: Diet Coke in the eyes isn't so problematic and I can move pretty darned fast in emergencies like that.

I even spent my (40th!) birthday at day camp which may sound sad to some but turns out it was also pretty d*mned fun. How many people can say they've been serenaded by a few hundred little boys and parents on their birthday? Me!

But I'm also allergic to dust and as our camp location meteorologically fits the definition of drought, it also fits the definition of Dust Bowl.

No, it wasn't quite that bad. But that's probably only because it wasn't really windy out there.

I spent the week fighting to keep my sinuses clear, living on a combination of Benadryl, Allegra, and caffeine. I ended up with a sinus infection.

I had never had a sinus infection until I had pituitary surgery almost 5 years ago. I was diagnosed with acromegaly caused by a tumor on my pituitary that was producing excess growth hormone; I had the tumor removed. Through my nose. It's really a genius way to get to the pituitary (take a pencil and stab it up your nose and that's where it would end up if there wasn't bone and other tissue in the way) but in my case, it also seriously horked up my sinuses. 

Also suffered from acromegaly. Prepubescent. I was very much post-pubescent and I am still short.

My regular ENT (at the hospital where I had the surgery) is notoriously hard to see so I tried a new tactic and called my primary care doctor's office. FAIL. His partner was unwilling to believe I have a bacterial infection, disinclined to believe that I could identify which sinus is actually infected, and wants me to wait until Monday. Statistically, it is unlikely that I have a bacterial infection - okay, I can appreciate that. However, statistically, I'm already enough of a medical freak that I once had medical students lining up *just to look at me* in the emergency room right after my surgery, simply because their chances of seeing someone with my disease in person is so slight. I've already been diagnosed with a disease that affects about 6 out of 100,000 and after my surgery, had not one but two of the least likely complications from the surgery. I have lived statistical unlikelihood, dude.

My symptoms being intolerable (but not including a fever, a strike against bacterial apparently, but also a symptom I never get), I went ahead and called my ENT and halle-freaking-lujah, got in to see him this morning. It's a beautiful (if also completely disgusting) thing: he reaches into the center of my skull, my sphenoid sinus, and plucks and vacuums out the yuck that is there. It. Feels. AMAZING. And turns out, it also TICKLES. A lot.

Weirdly, I've had this procedure done on this sinus before. At least a couple of times. Never noticed. Today, I was ready to fall out of the chair. The ENT thought he was hurting me. Nope. Just tickling.

So I've apparently found my ticklish spot. And there's no way in h*ll the 6yo's going to be able to reach it. Lucky me.

3:30AM

My Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight and I have bonded. I love it. Truly. Madly. Deeply. I have a tendency to stay up *way* too late reading but I also fully recognize this is my own d*mn fault and I fully accept the consequences. 

With a road trip planned for Friday night (a round-trip of 6 hours driving to be completed in one day), Thursday night was not the best night to choose to stay awake reading but there I was at 3:30AM, unable to shut off the Nook (*what's going to happen next????*) and vaguely startled by the door to the boys' bedroom opening. Immediately assuming someone has to pee, I also assume the footsteps will race down the hall to the bathroom. They do not. They pad quietly into my room, around my bed, and stop right in front of my face, on the other side of my Nook, and scare the crap out of me. 

In a perfectly calm, wide-awake voice, it's the 6yo:

"Um, mom, can I borrow your backscratcher?" I am speechless. I'm also in a bit of a fog since I've been unexpectedly dragged out of my book zone and back into parent zone. And I suppose I expected I don't feel good or something hurts or my brother's snoring but definitely not I need your backscratcher. Which looks like this:

I bought it at World Market. It's on my list of Best Purchases Ever.

and is typically on my nightstand. Which undoubtedly explains why it was my side of the bed he chose to approach (I will later discover that's not entirely true). 

The backscratcher is not on my nightstand. I offer to go get it for him and send him back to bed. Back scratching delivered, he curls back up in the pile of Guys in his bed and I am guessing goes back to sleep.

Fast forward a bit: yesterday morning we dropped off the 12yo to go to Boy Scout camp in Wisconsin. A week of merit badge classes, dirt, and hopefully more than one change in underwear. We get him back in 6 days. 

The 6yo is ecstatic in some ways: at breakfast yesterday, the 12yo grudgingly agreed to let the 6yo sleep in his bed, the Top Bunk, while he's gone. I had to agree to wash the sheets (and we all know how much I enjoy putting sheets on the Top Bunk) and point out that it's no different than when he wants to sleep in our bed when we're gone and Mimi stays here. FINE. 

I was not Parent on Duty for bedtime last night so I can't say for sure but I *think* that the 6yo went to sleep in the Top Bunk. By the time we went to bed, he'd been downstairs once for water (a highly unusual circumstance) and was holed up in his own nest of Guys on the bottom bunk. And by 3:30AM, he was visiting again - and this is how I know it wasn't just the backscratcher on my nightstand drawing him to my side of the bed. Apparently, at 3:30, I'm the Go To Parent. 

"Mom, can I sleep in your bed? I don't want to sleep alone." 

I guess he misses his brother. Although this morning, he told me he can't wait to tell the 12yo that he got to sleep in Mom and Dad's bed last night.

I wish I had a picture

Two days ago, a SATURDAY to be exact, FedEx delivered this rather shabby box of mystery to our house (and I emphasize Saturday because I thought only requested deliveries made the cut for the weekend; this was most definitely not a request):

Most entertaining to me is that they also left a sticky on the sidelight window telling us that they'd left us a delivery on our front porch. Yes, thank you, Mr. Obvious. Good thing I didn't trip on the box while trying to read the note that told me it was there. 

The spousal unit periodically orders stuff for work and accidentally ships it home so a package that's not instantly identifiable is not immediate cause for concern. Or bomb squads. Things like that.

But this one rang no bells there either. And forget about checking the packing list; my curious husband just ripped right into that box. And found this:

Note the high quality packing material. Oh, and the soot.

This looks to me like the laptop has a bit of a copper stogie thing going on. I was apparently the only one who thought that. 

See, two and half years + one day earlier, that particular object (on the last day of its lease, no less) burst into flames, setting off the smoke alarm, and waking us up at 3:45AM. Unprepared for incendiary drama, even by the incessant beeping, we dithered, expecting that the smoke alarm was just doing it's usual I-need-new-batteries thing which for whatever reason only ever happened IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKING NIGHT. 

My darling husband got up to replace the battery and discovered, much to our surprise, an actual fire. Panic ensued for about 1.5 seconds. Okay, I panicked. He rather calmly, in an act unsanctioned by fire departments everywhere, approached the flames, unplugged the device, threw it in the sink and turned on the water. Problem solved, sortof.* (Disclaimer: I in no way condone his behavior. If you have a fire in your very own house, I recommend you call a professional. A professional FIRE FIGHTER. And then, take their advice and don't keep sneaking back in to peak at the fire. I know someone who did that, it's just not wise.)

It looked sortof like this except it was sitting on the kitchen counter.  I actually only know that by report. By the time I came downstairs, the faucet had done its job.

We filed a claim with our homeowner's insurance and they promised to do battle to get us our deductible back (which they make you pay and then try to get the party at fault to reimburse). They filed suit. They sent updates. We got letters from attorneys making it clear they were either morbidly stupid or didn't care at all - misspelling our last name is forgivable when you are consistent in your misspelling; inconsistent incorrectness is just evidence that you're a slack*ss. They were also rude.

Recently we got the final notice that the insurance company had finally given up. No huge surprise, we weren't holding out hope of getting our deductible back anyway.

But we sure as hell didn't expect to get the cause of the fire back. And I would almost give up my deductible again to get a picture of my darling husband's face when he realized what he was looking at in that box.

W.T.F. doesn't even come close.

*I say "sortof" since putting out a fire has the direct and exceedingly problematic impact of creating enormous amounts of smoke. The smoke was a far bigger deal than the actual fire damage which was limited to the laptop, a Formica countertop, and the hardwood floor where burning bits had fallen. I will now also publicly apologize to the poor dumpster divers who took my ruined Christmas trees that were soot- and smoke-damaged but then packed back in their boxes and left on the curb on trash day. They disappeared before the trash was picked up and it was only then that I realized that I didn't write on the boxes that they were damaged beyond all reasonable use. I can only hope that the horrible smell that came out of the boxes with the trees was off-putting enough. My bad.