owie.

A few days ago, I went shopping with CB while W was taking a nap. I got a spa pedicure, went to Target, and then I had to stop at Bed Bath and Beyond. As I was walking out of BB&B, I wasn't paying much attention. I tend to do this a lot while walking. I guess it is one of the consequences of being blond. It's hard to do 2 things at once. Walking and thinking is just too much for me. I relearned this the hard way as I was jerked out of my day dream and back to reality from this excruciating pain in my foot. The pain started small and then quickly grew until I was almost crying. It was a weird pain that I had never felt before.

I immediately thought that I must have stepped on a hypodermic needle so I looked down to make sure there wasn't one sticking out of my foot and then I saw it. A bee. I had been stung by a bee. First of all, what is a bee doing on the asphalt? This is why I don't do nature. Nature hurts you. A parking lot is not nature. The bee shouldn't have been there! I don't invade its territory and hit its hive with sticks, so it should stay out of my territory and leave me alone! Fair is fair! Common courtesy is so lost these days.

Anyway, I'm 25 years old and had never been stung before. Because I had never been stung before, I didn't know if I was allergic or not and proceeded to freak out and overreact accordingly because bee allergies run in both side of my family.

Of course, because I was freaking out, my heart started to race and I started having trouble breathing. I tried to rationalize and figure out what to do because I was sure I only had 60 seconds to live. Don't ask me where I got this number from. I'm sure it's something I thought I learned in 7th grade biology. Since in my mind I only had 60 seconds to live, I needed to think fast and figure out what to do with the baby. I limped as fast as possible to the car and tried to put her in her carseat. I didn't want her to fall out so I had to buckle her in, which caused a huge screaming fit, but that was good. At least she would draw attention if I became unconscious.

Then I called my sister, who was supposed to be nearby, to come and help me out, but she was too cool to answer my call so I called my parents. Since I had only 30 seconds to live now, I was trying to talk fast, which made it so no one could understand me. I wasted 15 seconds repeating myself and then my dad finally told me what to do. I had to go get a knife and flick the stinger out of my foot. Ok, sure. Where in the heck was I going to get a knife? Unfortunately, I had forgotten to put my switch blade back in diaper bag after I had cleaned it in a fit of boredom the night before. Then as the world started to spin from me hyperventilating, I saw the 25 foot sign and remembered that I had just come out of Bed Bath and Beyond. Duh! That place sells knives. Awesome. But, there was no way I was going to hobble my dumb butt in there. My foot hurt too much and I couldn't leave the baby. I didn't want to walk with her in my arms because if I fell, she was coming with me. She's too pretty to have road rash.

So I flagged down some unfortunate woman who made the bad decision of parking next to me. She must have thought I was downright insane because I yelled at her to come to me and when she did, I handed her a wad of cash and asked her to go buy me a knife, just like I was some 17 year old kid standing outside a liquor store asking someone to buy me cigs and booze. Then, before she went inside and called the cops, I realized it was probably a good idea to explain that I wasn't a crazed, red faced and nearly hysterical woman who was going to go stab her ex's new lover but I had been stung by a bee and needed to remove the stinger.

A few minutes later, I was still breathing and had calmed down a bit after finding that my death wasn't imminent. The girl still wasn't back and I figured she had decided that stealing my $6 was more fun than helping a stranger in need. But she finally came out of the store with an accomplished look on her face. Apparently, people don't need single knives these days. They only need $300 sets of knives. This poor girl couldn't find a knife that wasn't in a set except for a knife for spreading cheese and a grapefruit knife. So she bought both. I chose to use the grapefruit knife because it looked more menacing. I was going to get that stinger even if I had to ruin my nice smooth feet and gouge the thing out. Thankfully, the 3mm stinger was removed with a slight flick of the wrist and it didn't even hurt.

By then, my sister, who happened to be in the store next to me the entire time, showed up just to delight in my misery and laugh at me. I still maintain it hurt second only to getting a cavity filled before the novocaine has taken effect. I did get my revenge, though. My sister gleefully stomped out the bee that had caused me so much pain. Before you call PETA to report us, consider the fact that we did the bee a favor, as it was already on its way to the big bee hive in the sky. We just hastened the process.

I now know that I could have used a credit card to get the thing out, but that would have been easy and everyone knows that I don't do things the easy way. Funny thing, though... I could have spared humbling myself and asking for help if I had just opened my eyes and saw the plastic knife that was sitting on the passenger seat that came with the grilled chicken breast I had ordered 20 minutes earlier.