Mother-Guilt meets 1967!!

5am and we are woken again by the not-so-gentle humming of our dear neighbour and her lawnmower! This time Mr Beehive has had enough, so dressed in his Sunday best (not! but at least vaguely dressed!) he goes to confront her, and that is a scary image at 5.30am in the morning!!!!!! Ahhhh peace reigns, at least for the short while until small Beehives decide to awaken and add their harmonious chorus to the birds and lawnmowers. All I can say is thank f*** I don't live in suburbia!!

This week has been crazy even for The Beehive. I am going to rewind to last Thursday at 3pm US time when, unbeknown to me "bezzer mate", I am heading to JFK to fly to the UK for celebration of her 40th (OMG - no longer 18th or 21st parties - I am going to 40ths!!!)


This has been an ongoing plan since around February of this year, conspired by her hubby, myself and Julie (the pseudo-Spaniard!) and has involved boats, much alcohol, wax, airplanes, Soft Cell, big hair big hair mega mega big hair, many, many kleenex, a diet or two, a trail for some rather vampish looking red shoes, eleven absent children between 4, a group age of 145 between 4!! a sliding glass door, a fantasy about a trick with a strawberry somewhat reminiscent of Pricilla, Queen of the Desert, a rather large mosquito and Buffy the Vampire Slayer - only not necessarily in that order! I am not going to divulge more than that for fear of incriminating those involved - you know who you are.........and you should be ashamed..........hee hee !!

Typically, however, I don't go away often, probably one weekend in a 52 week year and that is if I am lucky......this being the one weekend that Little Miss Beehive falls poorly before I leave. Just signs of a cold, low grade fever, needing to be with me all the time, a continuous slug trail on my trousers, generally out of sorts, but nothing we can actually pinpoint. Mr Beehive assures me she will be fine with him and I am to go. after all, I am only away for three days.

By Monday morning, I notice a rather large red mark on her lower back, initially I put it down to her sitting against something firm and it leaving an imprint, but by Tuesday morning when it hasn't gone and in fact looks larger, alarm bells start to ring. By Tuesday lunchtime we have it confirmed that she does in fact have the dreaded Lyme Disease that is so rife in this area of CT agggghhh! Luckily, we are reassured, we have caught it early enough and that she did in fact have the Bullseye rash so they were able to diagnose it. If left without diagnosis, I understand that is when the problems can arise as it can attack the nervous system and cause muscular pain, arthritis and even dementia in serious untreated cases. The downside for LMB is, three weeks of giddy juice!!!!!!!! Amoxycillan - the pink candy antibiotic! We are already halfway through the first course and the second course, as suggested to me by a friend, I am going to ask for capsules that I can break up and put in her food to try and reduce the additives and colouring that she is reacting so beautifully to right now from her vantage point on the ceiling!

Of course, now I have become paranoid about the little buggers. We didn't even SEE the tick on LMB, despite checking her every night at bathtime as always. However, I have since removed one from Master Beehive the younger, and from his fellow canine companion.........all bedding both human and animal has been thoroughly boiled, to ensure anihilation of the critters. But my poor kids are now suffering freckles being dissected, routine scrubbing of all suspect black bits and a crazy lady chasing them around the house with a pair of tweezers on a daily basis!

These ticks are sometimes only the size of a poppyseed, which makes for really hard observation. Apparently although they originate on deer, it is actually the mice that bring them into the garden. Killing the mice just means that new mice come in with fresh ticks, so we are contemplating trying ticktubes - which works like Frontline for Pets. The mice take the stuff to their nests and end up coated in it, or consuming it, the tick then bites the mouse but it makes it infertile, hence the tick population in our garden dies out..........great in theory.....the alternative is to spray the lawn with chemicals which aren't great for pets or children!

And we didn't want to live in Oz because of snakes and spiders.....................fools!