cold-blooded, ya’ll

Today was the first time in a very, very, very long time that we have all been home with nothing on the schedule. And when I say nothing on the schedule, I mean nothing besides sorting donations and packing suitcases and buying last-minute supplies and treating our clothes with insect repellant and checking the passport status website every five minutes.

You know. A free day.

Once again, thanks to our amazing friends and a pleading status update on Facebook, we have four huge suitcases full of supplies to take to Haiti. This pretty much makes up for all of the time I have wasted on Facebook over the last year. (Mark, please do not comment on that sentence).

The last time I took a small child to Haiti, I was worried about spraying chemicals all over my cherubic young daughter, so I opted for using chemical-free bug spray. This is what happened:

This time, I will be going industrial-strength on the chemical bug spray. Today, I treated every piece of clothing AND the carseat with fabric bug repellant. Karis may grow a third arm after this trip, but she better not get a malaria-infected mosquito bite.

Speaking of pests, we had a little excitement at the house today. As Mark and I were working in the backyard, we heard a blood-curdling scream coming from the entryway of the house. This screaming was so piercing and so manic that I thought surely someone had been mortally wounded. Had India been impaled? Was there a drive-by shooting? Did a UFO land in the yard?
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Um, no. This is how India screams any time she sees a fly/spider/bug/lizard. Today, it happened to be a lizard in the entryway. India continues to scream loud enough to bring the neighbors running, while I try to calm her down, and while Jafta sets about to catch the lizard. Jafta valiantly removed the lizard into the yard, but before I knew what was happening, I hear Jafta say, “Look, mommy, there is a worm there now!” I turn around to see something large, writhing on the floor. And before I can intervene, India sees it, and Jafta simultaneously realizes what’s going on. Time moves in slow-motion for a minute, as I try to hand-motion to Jafta to shut the hell up, and as he gleefully ignores me and announces to his sister (and all concerned neighbors): “It’s the tail! It’s the lizard tail! STILL MOVING!”
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At this point, I feel my own blood-curdling scream forming in my throat, because this is quite possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever seen – this tail, moving on it’s own. Somehow, I managed to supress my terror, because the last thing I need is for India to see her own mom losing her marbles over something small and harmless.
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I think she’s a little traumatized, though. After we put her to bed, I heard her screaming bloody murder, again. I went into her room, exasperated, wondering what could possibly be wrong. A moth? A fly? What?
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“There’s a lizard, mommy! A lizard!”

IN THE ROOM, INDIA? There’s a lizard IN YOUR ROOM?

“No, mommy. Before. There was a lizard. Before.”
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Okay. So just the memory is causing her to scream like she is being kidnapped or something. And now she is totally hypervigilant and scared of every little noise she hears. Seriously – I know phobias in children this age are fairly common. But she is killing me with the drama.
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In other news of drama, we also have to go back to the airport, because I SPILLED WATER ALL OVER THE PAPER TICKET that we were issued for Karis. Because I am awesome,

Also, we have no passport yet. In the morning, I will make the trek up to LA, and sit there until I have one. Things might get ugly. But I’m gonna do my best not to scream.