We left for Mom’s house early Friday afternoon and arrived in time to head over to Crossroads for fried catfish. After dinner we came home and I bathed Maly and Elise put her to bed. The rest of the night we watched TV and talked before going to bed.
On Saturday morning we woke up early and met Don and Linda at Tony’s in Sealy (a pretty good truck stop diner that I’m surprised I had never set foot into in the 8 years that I lived in Austin county) for breakfast. After breakfast Don and Linda headed on to Kyle for a family member’s wedding. The girls and I went to the new Wal-Mart in Sealy just to check out the new Wal-Mart in Sealy.
We got back to Mom’s house and put Maly down for a nap. Elise mowed the lawn while I ripped out landscape timbers that line the driveway and replaced them with new landscape timbers. I quickly came to the realization that I’ve become a city boy. After only a couple hours of “country work”, my hands were getting red and blistered, my legs were wobbly and my back ached.
Mom took Maly on a tractor ride and to look at the cows. We had roasted venison with veggies for dinner. We watched “Scary Movie” that evening and Mom turned in early. Elise and I stayed up and watched SNL (she fell asleep half way through) and went to bed at midnight.
This morning I went out to the driveway to remove all of the old nails from the landscape timbers. Maly came out and sat on my old skateboard and rode up and down the driveway while exclaiming, “da weee!”
When I was finally done with my landscape timber project, I took a shower and got dressed for our photos. Elise and I had planned on taking pictures to be used for our Christmas cards this year. Unfortunately by the time the camera was set and angled on the tripod and we were positioned on the swing that hangs from the huge oak in Mom’s yard, Maly switched into “it’s getting time to take a nap” mode. She didn’t want to sit still for a family photo. So we put her on the ground and let her play with the swing. She pushed the swing back and forth. At one point she stopped and started rubbing her hands together. Then she started to cry. Then she started crying uncontrollably and inconsolably.
Elise took her inside, thinking that Maly was just being cranky and needed to take a nap. Maly tried to go to sleep but again started crying in pain. Elise got Maly out of bed and tried to console her to no avail. Maly just kept crying in pain and rubbing her hands together. We looked at Maly’s hand and her index finger and palm were red and swollen. He forearm started to turn red as well. I nonchalantly FREAKED OUT on the inside and watched as Elise tried to comfort our daughter. Grandma provided momentary relief by giving Maly some homemade frozen yogurt. I went out to the swing with fingers crossed that I wouldn’t find a brown recluse or black widow spider underneath the swing. Thankfully I found neither. I did see a couple fire ants at the base of the oak tree and internally resolved that Maly just got stung by a rabid fire ant. In the meantime, Elise and Mom gave Maly some Benadryl, which seemed to help a little after half an hour of crying.
We decided to forego letting Maly take a nap at Grandma’s and instead had a quick, late lunch and then packed up and headed back to Austin. Maly slept almost the entire way home (which is very rare).
When we got home, we did our normal nightly ritual of dinner and a bath. Just before Maly’s bath, we were able to finally see Maly’s injury. She had a series of six or seven little bit marks in a very concentrated area of her palm just before where her index finger starts.
That’s when my anxiety attack started. What the hell kind of insect leaves bites like that?!? I knew that it couldn’t have been fire ants. Fire ant bites wouldn’t be that concentrated.
Right now we’re thinking she was stung by an asp. We’re pretty certain it was an asp, but not 100%. The not knowing is what is stressing me out. It’s the hearing my daughter cry in pain for nearly an hour because something stung her. It’s my anxiety that’s got the best of me - we put Maly down half and hour ago I can’t get the notion out of my head that she’s going to have an allergic reaction and go into anaphylactic shock at 3 a.m.
All-in-all, we had a great weekend. I’m just not going to sleep well tonight…
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