Love Bugs and Spiders and Scorpions! Oh, My!

Here is our little neck of the woods (literally!), we encounter lots of different types of creatures.

There are love bugs which, rumor has it, are a science experiment gone wrong. I'm inclined to believe it because I see no other purpose for these annoying little black bugs with tiny red heads which fly as a pair and get smeared across your windshield and hood (and their acidic insides can completely ruin the paint job on your vehicle) or fly into your front porch and make a graveyard for themselves. Unfortunately, love bug season comes twice a year (May and September).

We also have spiders. Big, leggy, crawly spiders that live outside, of course. We have seen two really big, ugly ones at our front door. Thankfully, my hero was right there both times to kill them and protect his damsel in distress.... and, yes, I was stressing!

And lastly, we have scorpions.  Not the big poisonous ones from the dessert. Little ones that live among the pine trees, but these can sting, and their sting can pack a punch.

And this is where today's story lies......

We have lived in our home for 6 years and Brian was the first to be stung by a scorpion back in April of this year (he had also been stung many times as a child, for the record). He happened to step on one in his bare feet out on the driveway, and danced around for five minutes because of the pain. He said it felt like a red ant bite times 10.

Oh, did I ever mention the red ants?

Last Friday, Ian had his one year appointment complete with shots. Because he had a really hard time staying asleep (and woke Addie up from his fussing), Brian decided to bring our mattress out of our room and lay it on the floor in the living room between the two couches, and we had a family camp out (the kids slept great......). We decided to leave the mattress there the following evening as well, but only Brian and I camped out.

Around three o'clock in the morning, Addie came out of her room, walked to the side of the bed where my head was and asked if she could camp out again. I was too tired to send her back to bed so I moved over, and in she crawled. After she finished getting comfortable, I put my arm up over my head, and my hand brushed the back edge of the mattress.....

.......and I sat up immediately holding my burning hand.

I quietly and gently shook Brian and said, "I was just stung by a scorpion."

It usually takes him a few minutes to really wake up, so I don't hold his next comment against him.

"Are you sure? If you had been stung, you'd be screaming right now."

This is the part where I chuckled (partially out loud and partially to myself) while still holding my burning hand.

I have delivered two babies, gone through contractions without medication for hours (with Ian it was close to 40 hours), gone through the recovery of 2 c-sections, and nursed one of my children for a year.

Yes, a scorpion sting hurts, but it's not that bad.

Brian got up, began looking for the little creature and found it on the side of our mattress, not too far from where Addie had been moments before.

And then he beat the living daylights out of that thing.

One look at my hand proved that I had been stung.

And Brian just kept saying, "I can't believe you're not screaming."