I should be sleeping...

I'm awake, and I should be asleep.  I realize that many stay up this late on a regular basis, but my problem is that I already went to bed two hours ago....  

Many of my local friends have now been privileged to see the grotesque condition of my feet, ankles, and legs.  Late Saturday evening I apparently positioned my feet directly in the path of hungry, vicious, man-eating parasites commonly known here in the mid-west as chiggers.  Being from California, I have never been formerly introduced to this microscopic parasite, but I do believe that now I have received the most welcome introduction anyone would care to have.  I would give anything at this moment to be dealing with our friendly blood-sucking mosquitoes rather than these chigger bites.  The desire to itch is intense and almost painful, and apparently when I am sleeping, my sense of control is lost and I just scratch and scratch until I wake myself up, realize what I am doing, throw control out the window, and continue to scratch until I think I might be bleeding at any minute.  So here I am, awake.  I managed to make myself stop itching, get out of bed, and smother my feet in anti-itch gel.  It helped, but I still am fighting the urge to scratch and scratch, and I think that if I go back to bed I'll find myself repeating history.  Somehow I will survive.  I don't know if my feet will, okay that's a little dramatic, but I hope my feet survive without too many scars.  I'm not sure they will.  I'm hesitant to post the pictures I have taken for documentation-because they are hideous, but I'm sure you are all curious, so okay, but please, leave me lots of comments of your deepest sympathies-I need them.  And yes, these really are my feet.



p.s. Kristine, I now know what misery you went through when this happened to you.

Will history repeat itself?  YES.

The hours go by....

I went back to bed at 1:30am......

I got out of bed at 4:30am after 20 minutes of scratching.

Indi Zoo Part 3-Finally The End

Adelynne got to pet the bearded dragon. I was surprised that she pet it since when we were at the Lafayette zoo she refused to pet the one that they have. And then she pet the snake, but only after daddy pet it first.

We were walking along when we noticed that an elephant show was going on, so we strolled over to catch the end of it. Amy seemed pretty intrigued by the massive elephants.  It was neat to watch the elephants doing tricks like you would see at a circus.  Adelynne really enjoyed it too, and at the end she and I got to go pet the elephant.  That was the first time I have ever touched an elephant.  

After the elephant show, we stopped to play at the playground.  After about 15 minutes we went to see the Tigers.  My favorite words from Adelynne from the entire day was what she said when she saw the tigers.  In her cute 3-year-old voice and lisp she exclaimed, "Wow!  Dat is bery cool.  Dey hab stripes like the zebwas!"  As we were looking at the tigers it began to rain, but just a light drizzle.  But it was rain enough to pull out the umbrellas.  Amy insisted that daddy let her hold the umbrella, she threw a tantrum otherwise.  

The Indi zoo's special guest for the summer is the koala.  Adelynne was happy to get to see him too.  I think one of the best things for Adelynne was that she was able to recognize all these many different animals and actually get to see them in real life.  I'm sure she doesn't remember our past trips to the zoo, so this was essentially a first for her.  And of course it is a proud moment for Dustin and I when she proves to us that all of our teaching has worked.  We really can't wait to go back.  And it will be fun in the future to see Amy do what Adelynne did.  

Our last stop before heading home was to the White River Gardens which is adjacent to the zoo. The admission is included in the cost of the zoo.  Adelynne enjoys seeing and chasing butterflies at home, so we thought she would enjoy seeing lots of butterflies all in one location.  There were many butterflies, and Adelynne did enjoy herself, although she was upset that she wasn't allowed to catch any.  I know the butterfly picture is blurry, but you get the idea.  It was one butterfly of many.  Unfortunately, (okay maybe not, after all of the hundreds of pictures you have endured through the last three posts), my camera battery died during the process of trying to get it to focus on the butterfly and not the hut roof behind it.  So this is the end of my tale from our trip to the Indianapolis Zoo.

Indi Zoo Part 2-desert and safari

On we tracked through the zoo.  Our next stop was the desert exhibit.  Adelynne saw it all, and she was not even afraid to walk through the dark hallway to see the snakes.  She wanted to see each and every snake.  Next was the safari animals.  The first animal we saw was the zebra.  One of the best animals, I think, is the giraffe.  You can feed the giraffes for a dollar; we didn't do that, but we could still walk up to them and watch other people feed them.  Giraffes are such unique and beautiful creatures.  


Adelynne was only disappointed when she would see an animal that was laying down. When she saw the kangaroos just laying there she asked me, "Do the kangaroos want to bounce?" She was also very anxious to see the lions, but the view of them wasn't very great, and they too were just sleeping. We had some fun when we went into the Lorikeet house. The exhibit is an enclosure full of different Lorikeet birds, and you could also feed them for a dollar. But we were just looking at the birds when some girls came up to us and gave Adelynne the cup full of bird food. So Adelynne and Amy got to feed the birds.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com