Beauty & The Beast

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
- Rumi, from "Let the Beauty we Love"

My trip in search of sunshine and splendor left me with an unwelcome souvenir when I woke the following morning to a tick working its way into my neck. It had piggybacked either on Maggie the mothership, (or myself) lending a practical and ironic reflection on the quote above.
I have been a total pain in the neck and its been a difficult three days. No doubt the tender neck/collarbone location being a primary factor. How something so small can inflict such pain in such a short amount of time is a mystery I set out to solve and thought I would share. I started researching and reading on Google ...yikes the pictures alone were enough to inspire horror and panic, in spite of the fact that the tick had just begun to make himself at home. I learned that they emit a super glue like substance (and numbing agent) that combined with their barbed legs make removing even before they have burrowed, difficult at best. Each new fact and image convinced me this was not how I wanted to be spending my quiet Saturday night, and shut down mr computer. I will be so much more cautious if not paranoid the next time I head out into the great outdoors for my next dose of beauty.