In Which Laura Is Viciously Attacked.

I took a week off from work to help Mum with some things she's been working on around the house. Also I wanted to be free of work, since the summer reading program has ended, and now is a good time to detox from the crazy schedule we keep during summer activities and settle back into the normal library year, school visits, ordering books, preparing story hours, and so forth.

The first official day of my vacation, I got the air conditioning fixed in my car. This was brilliant. Now I can drive all over...except I can't because my rear brakes are making a clicking noise. Why all the noise, car? Why so much clicking? Mum and I spent the afternoon picking up color samples for paint and laminate to go on the top of the new bathroom vanity/sink thingy. Also we scheduled someone to come measure for said vanity/sink thingy.

Then yesterday we decided we would scrape one side of the house, prime, and paint it. This was an easy job because our house is only one story. So we set to work. The Brother and I did awesome. We laughed. We had a good time. The cabinet man came to measure. We kept working. Darcy came out and sniffed a plant. We kept scraping. She avoided crossing the line of plants to come see me, but we kept scraping. Then I took a step to the right and felt something stab me.

And then I was covered with wasps.

There were at least twenty just on my leg, and a cloud of them surrounded me. I took off screaming a high-pitched soprano scream, running like mad, using all the speed training I did during the miserable winter on the treadmill.

I was very lucky.

I did not stand ON the nest. Our work must have disturbed the wasps, but it did not involve us putting a foot into their hole in the ground. It was still early morning and quite cool, so they were more sedate. Only part of the hive came out, and most did not pursue me in my mad dash across the yard.

I was wearing long pants. The wasp stinger had to get through dense Lucky Brand denim with NO STRETCH. This meant they didn't hit me quite so hard as they could have, if I'd worn shorts to work on the house.

I, while covered in wasps, was only stung three times. THREE. That is so lucky. They were all over my legs, on my shirt, in my hair, and I only got hit three times with their nasty butt-daggers. I am allergic to everything and the last wasp sting I got made me long for the hospital and a Benadryl drip, but I got one minor sting, one medium sting, and one severe. Just one.

We were also at home, so I could strip, jump into a bathtub filled with baking soda, take Benadryl, use my inhaler, and make a baking soda paste to stick on the stings when I got back out of the water. By the afternoon, I was doing okay. By dinner time, I was back to normal. After dinner, I went on a long bike ride with Mum and Dad.

It could have been so much worse. Even if now I'm afraid of everything that makes a buzzing noise, including small electronics.