As of July 2, I’ve been writing this blog for five years. Every week, I’ve come up with something new in an attempt to entertain my readers (save two weeks—one re-run, and one guest post by John Valeri), so that’s approximately 260 original blog posts.

My point is, sometimes I run low on ideas.

Using a fancy research tool I call “Google,” I went hunting for a good idea. It had to be funny. It should be topical—maybe something summery. A cucumber-pickling recipe, perhaps? I quickly realized that I was, in fact, good dill hunting. (I crack myself up.)

I found an inspiring post titled “Fantastic Ideas to Kick Off Your Summer Blogging!” I had high hopes. These hopes were quickly quashed like a child accidentally dumping her almond fudge chip ice cream cone, leaving a smear of wasted chocolaty goodness down the front of her Wonder Woman t-shirt. (Almond fudge chip makes me cry to this day.) Here are some of the bright ideas listed in the perky Summer Blogging post:

1.    Inspiring Vacation Locales
There are people in this economy who still vacation? Who are these people? Bank robbers? In the past five years, my vacations have consisted of weekend conventions at which I peddle books. Nine times out of ten, I don’t even make it to the lukewarm, bacteria-infested hotel pool. And that’s only if I’m not sleeping in my car. Want an inspiring vacation locale? Try “not sleeping in the car.”

2.    Best Summer Songs
In theory, this sounds like fun. In reality, when you’re stuck in Hartford traffic, listening to your car’s air conditioner wheeze its last dying breath, the last thing you want to do is hear a song that reminds you that it's 100 degrees out with 100% humidity. Back in January, I would scream when any song from Frozen came on the air. Now I have the soundtrack on automatic repeat. Yes I do want to build a snowman with my sister. Right now.

3.    Summer Movies You Must See
This would be a fabulous blog post idea . . . if I’d been to the movies recently. Wait, I did see Jurassic World. Raptors and body parts—okay, yes, that qualifies it as a must-see. Plus, I’ve been inundated with Minion Twinkies, Minion Cheese Nips, Minion cereal, Minion-shaped air fresheners for the car, and Minion Happy Meal Toys, so I feel like I’ve seen that movie. I guess it was cute? Or annoying. Hard to say.

4.    Helpful Sunscreen Tips
Are there people out there who don’t know they should use sunscreen with a minimum SPF of 30, and to re-apply it every two hours? Want a tip that’s truly helpful in the summer in New England? Make sure your heavy-duty tick repellant has sunscreen in it. Then reapply every ten minutes to be safe. I’ve seen those disease-ridden parasites eyeballing their tiny tick watches, waiting for the DEET in your repellant to expire. You know what? Just hose down your lawn with DEET to be safe.

5.    Summer Bucket List
Finally, an idea I could use. I have a lengthy summer bucket list. It includes:

• Not sleeping in my car
  
• Fixing the air conditioner in said car that I really don’t want to sleep in
  
• Reducing the amount of Minion-inspired merchandise in my home and car
  
• Hiding in my car to avoid ticks
  

Overall, I found the “Fantastic Ideas to Kick Off Your Summer Blogging!” blog to be insipid and uninspiring. I’m off to search for ideas on next week’s entry. Perhaps a post about creating decorative blankets to spice up the windows in your home.

You know. Good sill bunting.

It’s tick season again, and if you’re like me, you hate those bloodthirsty little parasites (who doesn't?). Luckily for you, gentle reader, I’ve had quite a bit of experience in removing ticks, having grown up on a farm with lots of long grass around (we called it “hay”) and from living in the very state that holds the town for which Lyme disease was named. I have more ticks than dandelions in my back yard. When those vampiric goons dig in, here’s what you need to do to get rid of them:

1.     Get out the peanut butter. There’s a popular old wives’ tale that says if you put peanut butter over a tick, the peanut butter will start to smother the little bugger, and he’ll release his lockjaw bite on your flesh. This is a total lie. The peanut butter is for the snack you’ll want before this is over.

2.     Find a pair of needle-tip tweezers. Nothing but needle-tip will do. I can’t stress this enough. Regular tweezers will cause you to rip off the tick’s abdomen, leaving its filthy, diseased head still firmly burrowed under your skin. Tick heads are infinitely more difficult to remove than whole ticks.

3.     Place the tips of the tweezers as close to your skin and the tick’s hellspawn pincers as possible, squeeze, and gently start pulling. Slowly, slooowly . . . pop! What the—didn’t I TELL you not to use regular tweezers? Now you’ve got a tick belly leaking your freshly sucked blood all over the place, and a half a tick still stuck in you. What happens next is of your own making, pal!

4.     Start sharpening the filleting knife. You’ve got a tick head that’s got to come out, my friend, and the only way to do that is to cut it out. Regretting not splurging on the needle-tip tweezers now, aren’t you?

5.     Using your crappy regular tweezers, pull on the tick head hard enough to pull your skin away from your body. I know it’s gross. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

6.     Use the filleting knife to gently saw away at the two points where the tick pincers have a death-lock grip on your skin. Luckily, I’ve found that the person with the tick often passes out from the pain at some point during the process, which makes it easier to saw.

7.     The heck with it. When “gentle” fails to get you very far, just start hacking away. You’re going to wind up with a hole in your skin anyway, might as well gouge it out yourself. Continue to do this until the chunk of skin with the tick head still embedded separates from your body.

8.     Stuff the gaping, bleeding hole that remains with gauze. Don’t use cotton. Hey! You saw what happened when you ignored my tweezers advice, didn’t you? Put that cotton ball down!

9.     Collect the tick abdomen and tick head (with your flesh still attached) and bring it to the doctor. Put it in a safe container, like an old pill bottle. Don’t worry, you’ll get a new pill bottle when the doctor prescribes antibiotics for you.

10. Enjoy a spoonful of peanut butter. Go ahead. You’ve earned it, and you’ll have a battle scar for the rest of your life to show for it.

I have never met a single person who enjoyed a good tick. Personally, I hate them. Everybody hates them. So why do they even exist?
I can figure out a purpose for just about every other insect in the world. Burying beetles take care of pesky decaying matter. Mosquitoes give bats something to eat. Even fleas give baboons something to snack on while they’re grooming each other. But ticks? Totally useless in the animal kingdom, as far as I can tell.

I won’t lie—I’m a fan of global warming, and I just sent Al Gore a nice thank you card last week for all the 80 degree weather we’ve been having in New England this balmy March. But the warm weather has given those  @!$$!* ticks a new lease on life, and they now seem to be out year-round. Jason made the mistake last week, one sunny day, of clearing brush without bathing in Deep Woods Off. The result? He managed to remove two ticks before they bit him. It was the third one, the one I discovered the next day, all hunkered down and enjoying himself a Jason snack, that was the problem.

I don’t remember the last time I had to remove a tick off of a human, and can’t even swear that I’ve ever had to do it. But I was ready and willing to go to battle for my hubby. Armed with peanut butter, rubbing alcohol, tweezers, and a filleting knife, I went in for the tick.

I had once heard that if you smother a tick with peanut butter, it will back out of where it has bitten you. This is a bald-faced lie. All it does is leave you with an oily tick that smells like peanuts. I wiped away the peanut butter and tried my next trick: grabbing on to the rotten little parasite and pulling. 
This resulted, of course, in a partial tick still being clamped tight to Jason’s skin while its headless body squirmed in a kleenex leaking blood all over the place. It was positively revolting. I told Jason to hang tight while I made myself a sandwich with the peanut butter and thought about my next angle of attack.

I wound up going in after the tick head using a pair of pliers to pinch up the skin while I sawed away at Jason’s stomach with the knife. Honestly, I don’t know how I managed it without getting sick. Jason was absolutely no help, as he was more concerned with staunching the bleeding than comforting me in my time of need. All in all, it was a pretty lousy way to spend the afternoon, and now Jason has to keep an eye on the gaping hole in his stomach to see if he develops a bulls-eye rash.

I’ll tell you one thing, though. Neither one of us will ever go outside without tick repellant again.