Lotsa Bugs Lotsa Water

We returned home from our lake camping trip Sunday evening. There were way more bugs this year. We were greeted with two crickets in the bathroom. The first one in the doorway was dead, so when I went to sweep the next one into the dustpan, it faked being dead and then it fought back. Of course I screamed! There was another cricket who got the coffee mug treatment from Chantel! We walked around that mug the whole weekend. Afer that I decided to ignore the rest and kept all my stuff off the ground.

We are all sporting many different bug bites...nasty chiggar bites, mosquito, gnats, a wasp sting and a mystery sting. Indy got the wasp sting on the first day - it hurt her so bad she just about cried and that's saying something for Indy! I got the mystery sting on the last day. Have no idea what it was, but it got me right below the elbow on my left arm. It felt like I was getting an electric shock but there was nothing there. I am really allergic, but because we had car problems on the ride up, I didn't want to take benedryl and have Indy be the only conscious adult dealing with the car shimmy and oil pump problem. (I had reservations about taking the van, but with the Volvo STILL out of action, we had no other vehicle.) Luckily the van made it but we're pretty sure we lost a part of the muffler on the way home! Geez, that baby is falling apart. I think there may be more problems than $$ to fix them. In the end, Indy had to drive most of the way home anyways because I was starting to get so out of it; I was like a drunk driver. When I realized I had to close one eye to focus on the lane in front of me and I was really about to pass out, I took the next exit but it was about 15 nerve-wracking minutes later. It was scary! Indy said I zonked out immediately. I took the benedryl as soon as I got home and slept for about 14 hours. I was out before Mike made it home. So he didn't even know I had been stung until Gib asked him later that night how I was doing with it. He came rushing in to see if I had a fever - which I groggily thought was kinda cute. So I am still dealing with the reaction, but I don't think this one will go into blood poisoning like it would if it was a bee or wasp sting. So I have no idea what got me. I still feel yucky though and every now and then the room tips and sways.

As for the Lotsa Water part? Well, that was fun, let me tell you. The water heater busted in the middle of the night. I woke up around 3:15 a.m., hearing this trickling sound and thought one of the girls is in the bathroom. About a minute later it registers that there is no light on and the trickling has gone on longer than humanly possible. So I get up and walk, no, SPLASH into the bathroom, which is under more than an inch of water, and about 5" from the carpet. I can hear the water is coming out of this part of the wall that is nailed shut. I tried to pry it open, but no go. I thought maybe one of the toilets is the problem, so I turned the water off at the thingy by the wall. I waded my way into the other part of the bathroom and now the water is seriously pouring out of the wall. So I went back to turn the water back on! Then I called the emergency office line. A guy shows up in a few minutes, but had to leave to get tools to get to the water heater. 20 minutes later he had it shut off and we got a new water heater the next day. We got keys to the cabin next door to use the facilities there for the morning. I woke up Indy to tell her what was going on, and that after listening to trickling water for an hour, I really had to go, but I would lock the door behind me and if I didn't return (it was THAT scary out there in the dark!) not to come looking for me. I finally got back to sleep around 4:30 am. In the morning she asked "did that really happen?" In the morning the other girls were all "Who were all the guys in the cabin last night?!" Nice to know everyone is so alert. We were a little late for our morning pontoon pick up to ride to the island, but they said we had a good excuse!