NABLOPOMO! Also, deployment and tick problems

So it's Nablopomo(National Blog Posting Month) and I am in. That means I'll be posting everyday in November and then most likely not touching my blog until next November.I done this for enough years that I can't stop now. It's become a fun little snapshot of my year.

So, I wanted to write a little bit about what it is like to have your husband deployed to Afghanistan. There are hurdles that no one talks about, and you might not expect. I will tell you about one now:

(Oh, quick recap for my hordes of readers who aren't quite up to date on my life: I'm still living in Germany, Chris is deployed to Afghanistan, and the girls are now ages five, three, and one. I think that is all you need to know for this post. Oh, and the closest Americans I know of live about a 15 minute car ride away.)

A couple months ago I rubbed my neck and felt a weird bump. I did some exploration: not a mole. Something foreign. Maybe a tick? Ticks have been pretty bad this year. We'd been doing a lot of hiking and I'd removed several ticks from myself and the girls. But, there are only so many places you can check yourself without a spouse. I'd actually worried a bit about this and had even considered asking my visiting teachers to tick-check my back at church, but I think that might be weird.

I started to mildly panic at the thought of having a bloodsucking bug on me. I tried to see a reflection of it in  the mirror but I couldn't get a good angle. I tried to take pictures of it with my camera, but it was too close and all I could see was this unfocused black dot.

Finally I make Sophie, who is all of five years old, look at it. "Oh yeah, Mom." She says nonchalantly as she goes back to watching Barbie's Diamond Castle, "That's a bug on your neck."

I could have gone into the Health Clinic, except it was Friday evening and they were closed until Monday. There was no way I was waiting till Monday, or even another minute to get that thing off me. I grabbed the tweezers and tried to figure out where the little sucker's head was. I couldn't figure it out--I couldn't even get a good grip on the monster. I needed outside help, but because of the war in Afghanistan I did not have the resource I needed to removed the monster.

I considered my options, and finally decided to approach my neighbor Martina who used to work in a hospital and so maybe wouldn't mind. I tell you what, until you have tried to explain to someone in a foreign language that you want them to take a tick of your neck, you haven't really lived.

By the way, I chose well. Martina is a superior human being. She didn't even act surprised. She brought me into her house got a light to examine the thing. She even grabbed her son to come and give a second opinion (okay, honestly I could have done without the 12 year old boy being brought into the situation, but beggars can't be choosers). After much serious consultation and some light scratching she told me it was not a tick but maybe some kind of scab over a mole.

...

So this is why we shouldn't have war, so I don't have to ask perfectly nice people to look at my scabby moles. Sigh. Anyway, Martina was really gracious and said that ticks are really serious and I should always come over to her for stuff like this. I have really great neighbors.

And now I am going to bed satisfied that in my first post for Nablopomo I have managed to include the phrase "scabby moles."