No sting, no gratitude

Last night was what my girlfriends and I call a "tiramisu night".

Once I brought this fabulous tiramisu from Piedigrotta Bakery in Baltimore.  Really fabulous. I'm drooling on my keyboard as I type. It's worth a trip into Litte Italy, Baltimore.

http://www.piedigrottabakery.com/subpages/history.html - the great story of the invention of my favorite dessert.

And more photos- great food shots. Oh, I so miss great food here in the land of steak on the hoof.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=pu.184318618300410&type=1



Well, back to my story- where's the sting? Why the gratitude?

 Tiramisu is a wonderful dessert made with lady finger cookies dipped in espresso with delcious real cream fluff and my girlfriends and I loved it and scraped the dish clean ..... and about half of us didn't sleep that night!  So... if you can't sleep, it's a "tiramisu night".

So last  night, without the benefit of a lovely dish of tiramisu, I just couldn't sleep.  I did all the chamomile tea,  the natural sleeping pill, the boring book in bed stuff.  About 3am I must have dozed off and almost immediately, felt a bug crawling on me. Yuck- get off!  And I swatted AT a yellow jacket.  Did not kill said yellow jacket that was down the front of my sleep wear.

 And it stung me.

Yellow jacket stings are painful.  They nested near a water spigot in Virginia and several of the family got nasty stings from those angry little buggers.  But never was I so lightly dressed and this particular stinging creep chose an especially tender spot on the female's torso.

 Hard to pack ice on your tender sisters but I did.  Finally after ice, drugs, baking soda poultices and a fair amount of moaning and swearing, I did get some sleep for a couple of hours.   The pain was really unbelievable -  it radiated up to my jawline and down my arm to my elbow. Crazy way to spend the early morning hours.

My angry bed companion

He died.

  I found another bed to sleep in after the attack. An unprovoked attack, I may add. I found my nemesis dead this morning but I was still a bit nervous.


Well, of course,  I lived and tonight as I carefully checked my bedding, I got to thinking. This is a "newsworthy" event in my life only because I am so rarely stung in my bed.

All over the world tonight, women will go to bed, put their children io sleep- maybe in a bed if fortunate, posssibly in a corner of a room  and will be stung by worse insects than a angry wasp.  Malaria is carried by annoying mosquitoes and millions die from it each year.  Tsetse flies carry sleeping sickness. Dwellings have scorpions,  tarantulas and snakes.

I had ice and painkillers and antihistamines. I attended to my wound in the light of electric lamps and looked up my options on a laptop computer.

I hopped up and down in real pain but I wasn't in mud or on dust or concrete. My feet were clean from a shower I took for granted. I drank water from my faucet that was refreshing, not deadly.

I even had another bedroom to move to and it had a bed with clean sheets and towels for my ice pack. The ice pack I keep in my freezer with my extra food.


You don't think in terms of gratitude when a yellow jacket stings your breast in the middle of the night. You think, "I'm going to die, I'm going to kill something, I need pain killers!"  But in the light of day, even with the lingering pain and discomfort, there is plenty of room for gratitude.

I don't know why I should be so fortunate to live with such an abundance of riches. I don't deserve to live better than 95% of the population on the planet.  I confess a tiny obsession with Pintrest and love to look at ways to make my little world even more beautiful and comfortable but at the end of the day, I have more than I need for life and happiness.

And I am grateful. Not just for the abundance but for the reminder, even a painful reminder, of the ease and comfort of my life.  Even with wasps, I have little to fear tonight when I lay my head down once again.  I am grateful.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep, For You alone, O LORD, make me to dwell in safety Psalm 4:8

And I have a dead bug. Justice.