Lovely Spring

Susan lives with seasons.
Real seasons where everything is either blooming or dying or covered in snow waiting to bloom again. Sometimes a season comes early, or stays late, or seems to forget to come at all.

Currently, Susan's immediate area of the universe is experiencing the first warm weekend of spring.
Susan hasn't had to wear her winter coat for a while but neither has she been able to leave the house without some sort of protective outerwear. And maybe a scarf, which is mostly for decoration, but one does not wear scarves in warm weather is her point.

However, this weekend everything was transformed.

Windows were opened, wind chimes were hung, elderly mongrels were shampooed, patio furniture was scrubbed clean, sunscreen was busted out and the yard was turned from a giant toilet back to a restful retreat.

Oh, and a tick was removed from a middle school baseball player.

Susan had never seen a tick before because she doesn't go places where ticks are. And she doesn't check her children for them either. This particular tick was red and looked like a teeny little boiled crab.

The baseball player was a friend of Susan's son who showed up with the thing already embedded in him. He was very casual about the situation impressing Susan who was busy coordinating the tick extraction while trying not to hyperventilate.

Susan has read that ticks burrow into the skin and if one just yanks them out they will leave the submerged portion of themselves behind. That's no good. She has also read that if one places a heat source, such as a lighted cigarette, up to the tick it will reverse course and back the hell out of Dodge.

Susan has not had a pack of cigarettes in her house since that long ago day when she peed on a test strip and it made her pregnant. However, she and the husband like to smoke cigars periodically and he usually has one or two in the house.

The husband lit his cigar, took a few draws and held it close to the baseball player's skin, burning it ever so slightly. The tick began to move but met an untimely end when it succumbed to heat stroke. Susan removed it with a pair of needle nosed pliers. Even in death he hung on like a sonofab*tch.

Susan would like to say a few things about her son's friends;
That she has yet to meet one she hasn't liked. Well, there was one a few years ago that she wasn't too crazy about but he moved away.
That the son's friends are polite, helpful and very boyish. Susan has listened undetected while they've interacted and has always been happy with what she heard. Fortunately for them she doesn't care too much about conversational cursing.

Boys and warm breezes and lilacs just beginning to bloom,
is there anything better?