Worst Day Ever?

Today had the potential of being the worst day ever on the new house. Somehow I lucked out, and the badness was limited to about 15 minutes. So we have been working all over the yard, and this is Texas. Texas is famous for, among other things, a high number of nasty, stinging, biting, poisonous things that would as soon kill you as look at you. Today I ran afoul of one of them: The dreaded Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta. There are currently lots of bare areas in the yard including the native grass/wildflower meadow which has a few things coming up (mostly weeds I think), but has mostly big, empty, dirt patches.

As we were reviewing one of the grasses coming up in great force in the yard (yellow nutsedge), I noticed four flat areas of hive activity. Jay thought they were termites getting ready to swarm. A few minutes later I stepped in one while trying to save our cow skull, Scully, from being overrun with them. I didn't notice right away--not till they were swarming up my ankles! Then I started swatting at them and trying to brush them off (while jumping up and down and squealing and telling Bobby to squirt them with the hose) and they were on my hands and arms. I finally got my shoes off and my feet rinsed clean of them, brushed most of them off my legs (they got up past my knees under my skirt) and brushed/squished the rest from my hands and feet. It still wasn't enough so I went in to the house and immediately pulled all of my clothes off in the hall... and then saw the worker out the side window studiously Not Looking At Me. We were both pretending No one  saw nothing...

After I was naked and the bites were starting to come alive, I went into the bathroom and tried to think what I read to do the last time I got a lot of bites. I remembered vinegar and alcohol, and I found the alcohol first. What luck! I scrubbed at my legs, feet, and arms with a defoliating pad soaked in alcohol, and when some extra alcohol splashed out, I mixed it with salt from a bath bar made of solid salt and rubbed it all over my legs, feet and arms. Now tonight I don't have any itches, and though I bites on top of bites, my skin feels fine. We'll see wait it looks like tomorrow. As of now (several hours later) none of the bites bother me in the slightest.

Now it's time to turn into a pumpkin (as the spouse snoring gently beside me on the couch would say) and give in to the tremendous predisposition of my eyelids to close and stay closed. Like my gently snoring spouse on the couch next to me. It was a long day for everyone.