positive affirmations for people worried about getting ticks this summer-fall
low - maintenance lovers! they stay right where you left them and never make a peep
you get them, and they get you! seems like a healthy relationship to me ! if you don’t mind a love language of physical touch.
they’re perfectly flexible, if you aren’t about love! they’re a calm platonic partner you can always count on to be with you. they’re a best friend staying over. they’re your biggest fan. they’re your teacher. they’re your student. they’re a perfect stranger. they’re an imperfect caretaker. they’re all of these and more! they’re none of these! they cater to you and your body only.
if it gives you a disease, you just must not be treating that lump inside of you how it deserves to be !
your bark is harder than their bite ever is and you know it
the only painful part is getting rid of them. why do you think that’s the case ?
they’re not afraid of you at all, and yet you’re afraid of them! how is that fair?
they’re happy if you’re happy! you are just one being after all, so it only makes sense!
if they give you lyme disease , just make lymeade !
just get used to them! they’re everywhere! get used to them! they’re everywhere! get used to them! they’re everywhere! get used to them! they’re everywhere!
Fuck Australia. No really, just... fuck this whole country
Okay. OKAY. Something terrible just happened to me, and since I’m a millennial, born and bred, I’ve gotta share. No privacy, we share our humiliations like men.
Sticking under a cut for the insect-adverse among us: the following story involves a nasty little asshole known as a paralysis tick. Also mention of semi-nudity, situationally excessive use of the word fuck; et al.
SO. There I am, chilling, with the family, watching some Star Trek. Like you do, on a perfectly normal Thursday night, when suddenly my right nipple starts to itch. Just mildly. And you know, it’s May, which means we’ve moved from giant mosquito season here in good old Brisbane, to tiny asshole midge season, so I figure, the inevitable has happened, no biggie, and go back to watching Odo do whatever the hell it is he’s doing.
Yeah. Nah. As the episode progresses, so does the itch. Like, it’s intensely fucking itchy, which still, par for the course for midgie bites, because of course I’m mildly allergic to the tiny unkillable shits. I go in for a little bit of discreet scratching, but ignore it.
It’s when the itch progresses to a kind of spreading pain working its merry way from tiddy to underarm that it finally dawns on me that something’s not fucking right here. Off I tootle to the loo wherein a quick look under my shirt confirms that yes, shit’s a bit fucked. There’s a delightful red splotch spreading out from a spot that looks like a giant black head nestled in amongst the hair follicles there. A blackhead with fucking legs. LEGS.
I’m not too proud to admit that shit got a little fuzzy for a second there. Just for a sec. I don’t mind bugs. I only object to the really large, really hairy spiders, and even then mostly only when they’re all up in my shit. I however REALLY FUCKING OBJECT to something with legs attempting to burrow into my fucking right tit. That’s just not okay, you know?
So, it’s in an awkward af position, and I’m not exactly confident in my own ability to extract this little fucker - they’re tricksy little devils, they like to leave their gross little mouthparts in you if you don’t yank ‘em out right. There’s also this whole ‘don’t squeeze them because you’ll squish MORE GOO and MAYBE EVEN TICK GUTS INTO YOU’ thing but honestly I stopped reading the wiki article after that point, for obvious reasons - so I cover myself as best I can when there’s a bloodsucking bug in my nipple, and summon my Mum.
Mum is appropriately horrified, which matches my HELL NOPE just fine, and goes for that age old home remedy of killing it dead with the can of Mortien bug spray, but, it’s still stuck on in there. Unfortunately for me, there’s a parental unit with the better eyesight and experience removing these little shits, and well, it’s not her. But to hell with whatever last shred of dignity I have left - and lord, I don’t have much at this stage - fine, Dad it is. Jesus Christ.
UNFORTUNATELY the pair of tweezers in the house that’s actually on hand - and yeah, you’re really REALLY not supposed to use household tweezers for this, but did I mention the spreading pain and the redness and the LEGS? - are blunt and kind of too big for this, and okay, so, I’m probably making it hard with the whole trying not to let my tits hang out around my Dad thing and the thing that’s not supposed to happen happens. The body pops out just fine, but nup, there, still embedded in my flesh are it’s gross little mouthbits.
This is the point where I figure, I’m just gonna down a bottle of vodka and let what’ll be, be, but Mum kindly reminds me I’ve got a uni trip to Paris in a fortnight, and I really don’t have the time for a rampaging tit infection. Or expiring from the sheer oh fuck off of this situation. So, fine, a bit more digging with the tweezers - on my account, this time, thank God - finally takes out what I hope was the last remaining little bits of that motherfucker. Everything fucking hurts at this stage, I’ve eaten half a box of bloody antihistamines because apparently these assholes like to cause major bloody allergic responses, and I’m not sure at this point whether something’s going on, or whether I’m just freaking out just a tiny wee little bit.
Unfortunately, the subsequent shower I took to try and a) drown myself to remove myself from the bloody indignity of it all and b) try and wash away any of its little buddies it might have brought with it, has utterly failed in stopping my skin from crawling so hard it might as well be crawling off my body, and off into the sunset to find a person and a country that’s not gonna expose it to this level of bullshittery at eleven at night.
Which brings me full circle to where I sit now, in a total funk because dear God, I had much better things to do tonight than expose myself to this level of embarrassment (and parentally witnessed nakedity, ugh) with a heatpack on my breast, because fuck, I did not expect that to be so painful, and yet here we are, and an inability to hit the liquor cupboard because I gotta be up early in the morning, and well, I’d like to make sure I’m not gonna drop dead of a belated reaction. ‘Cause I got a list of the ways I’m likely to go, and believe me, a tick ain’t one of them.
(Australia. So pretty. So full of bitey assholes. At least a snake has some cred to it, you know?)
