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Anxiety, by George!

I’ve never been a scrapbooker—it’s too expensive, and I’m just not crafty enough.

However, a recent event inspired me to consider the hobby.

I was out in the woods, clearing away brush, garlic mustard, buckthorn and the pop cans the Tall Man threw out there 1992. While I was making progress with the invasives, a deer tick was making progress with me.

I hate ticks: They latch on to you like stalker boyfriends, then complain about the accommodations (“Phagh. I’ve seen better legs on a field mouse”) and end by leaving you with either a serious case of the willies or a rash.

So I found this deer tick—we’ll call him George, to make it easier—on me in the middle of a rash that looked like Australia. As most anxiety-prone people know, the rash comes after the tick bite, not during the event.

After a little reading online, I decided I had all the symptoms—and the long-term outcomes—of Lyme disease. Memory loss? Check. Chills? Depends, but probably. Fever? Who knows? The house isn’t air-conditioned. Bell’s palsy? Coming right up.

The next morning, I went to Dean Urgent Care with George sealed in a taped-shut Zip Loc bag so he wouldn’t escape. Or rather, so he would miraculously resuscitate himself, undo the Loc Zip, cut through the strapping tape and come out and kill me.

At urgent care, the nice Dr. Robert S. Steele took one look at me, one look at George, and one look at the rash, now the size of a continent, and gave me something for hives and an antibiotic for the slim possibility of Lyme disease.

Then we had a nice chat about garlic mustard.

Anyhow, the whole event inspired me to consider scrapbooking. I like to think I spend my days being darkly ironic, but the truth is I have a sentimental side. Why not a scrapbook page for the tick adventure? I’m thinking the Zip Loc bag O’ George would look best on yellow paper with a discrete floral background.

Then I’d get some of the fabric trim and shiny jewel thingies designed for the hobby and paste those on the page, too.

Of course, I’d need some stickers representing the visit to urgent care. I’m sure there’s a medical-theme package of stickers for just such an event.

Finding a rash-themed package of stickers might be trickier, but I could always just draw the rash—which now is shaped like a two continents detaching themselves from a medium-sized hardware store—right on to the page.

But that sounds like a lot of work. Maybe I’ll just take my doxycycline and cetirizine and go to bed.

They say rest is the best cure.