Murphy's Law

You have probably heard of "Murphy's Law." You might be unaware of "Murphy's Law of Deployment," which is similar to the original with a minor addition. (Minor in the sense that it adds few words, but the ramifications of these few words can be catastrophic.)  Murphy's Law of deployment states: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong the moment he leaves on deployment." Countless military wives can attest to the validity of this law. Some have had their cars break down the day after he leave, others have their houses flood, or washing machines that get unbalanced and literally fall down the stairs.  Good times. I have found that this law also applies to TAD assignments as well. (Temporary Additional Duty) In the 24 hours that Jared has been gone,  we have had some fun things happen. (insert sarcasm here) Van sliced his face open, not deep, but noticeable. So I grounded him from pocket knives. While he was up in his room quietly thinking about the consequences of "training" with real knives he decided that it would be a good idea to get one of DADDY's knifes and look at the blade. I was downstairs with Ava when I hear Van yell down, "Mommy. Mom!!!! Come here please!" (what a polite kid.) Then a millisecond later I hear a slightly panicked voice yell, "MOM!" I didn't even get an answer out to let him know that I was on my way before it turned into "Mom! MOM! MOM!" As I round the corner and start up the stairs I see him standing on the top stair holding his hand. "Van! What happened?!?" He was in a state of panic as he opened his hand and blood started dripping out.  I screamed and bounded up the stairs and grabbed his hand and rushed him to the sink. I was already going over the numbers I would need to call to reach the medical department at the embassy so that he could get stitches. As the water cleared away some of the blood I realized that the cut was not as deep as I had first thought, and knew stitches would not be needed. I hugged him and consoled him and grounded him from knives for the second time. This time around I got a little bit smarter and actually gathered up all the knives I could find (we have a surprisingly large number of pocket/hunting style knives) and removed the temptation. 

A few hours later I was in the kitchen preparing dinner when Van tells me that he found a scorpion. This is a game that he plays quite often because he thinks it's funny to watch me cringe in disgust at the mere mention of this dreaded creature. I didn't want to leave the stove right then so I played along, asking him all sorts of silly questions such as, "Wow, is it as big as your whole foot?" To which he responded, "No, it's about as big as my pinky." Weird... he usually comes back with some crazy retort about how it is bigger than the whole couch. So I kept on with the game: "Is it as black as pepper with red eyes?" He replies, "no, mostly yellow." Now I'm confused. So I asked him straight up, "Van did you really see a scorpion?" He replies all casually "Yep!" I still didn't quite believe him. It's the whole "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. So I finished getting dinner off the stove and asked him to show me where the scorpion was. He walked to the front entry way, and pointed. Sure enough, half hidden under my shoes was a big disgusting scorpion. I looked down at my bare feet, then over to the kids' bare feet, and ordered everyone into the living room. Van asked me what I was going to do, and I truthfully told him that I was going to kill it. Thanks to Jared's ingenious idea to let Van keep the half dead scorpion they found outside in a spiders web last month, Van was under the illusion that I was going to somehow catch this scorpion and we were all going to live together happily. Yeah, I squished that dream quicker than squishing the actual scorpion. After securing the kids and the puppy, I ran to the coat room and put on one of Jared's shoes. After several attempts at getting close enough to the scorpion to actually squish it, I slammed my foot down on top of the shoe the scorpion was laying under, and felt the crack of his exoskeleton, or whatever the hell it is that they have. I felt triumphant!!! Then I turned and saw that Van had followed me into the entryway, and saw his eyes well up with tears. Honestly, I was still pretty darn proud of myself for killing the evil home invader, but knew that I had to do something to help Van feel better. So I offered up a compromise: The scorpion was already dead, which is what I wanted, but I offered to let Van keep the body in a jar. Good enough for him. It was worse trying to pick up the dead scorpion with tweezers than it was to squish it with a big shoe on. I screamed several times, and Van laughed and laughed. I finally got him in the jar, and Van now has something "really cool" to take to show and tell. Yuck.

My point and shoot camera does not have a macro lens, so the picture is a touch blurry.  This is the dead scorpion in the bottom of a mason jar. So Gross.