It was about 90 degrees today. It was hot and humid, which clearly only meant one thing: sundress. Actually, fine, it means one other thing. Boob sweat. To my darling Isabella, however, it means…FLEECE HOODIE. Yes, it’s true. She wanted to wear tights too, but I have hidden them all. My child has a habit of never wearing the appropriate clothing at really any occasion. I mean, she’s totally a pants-optional kind of girl. And you know….THIS.

I try to explain to her that if she doesn’t want to wear underwear, she needs to learn to sit and stand and walk around and lounge like a lady. She is more lady of the night. We are working on this. I’m thinking finishing school.

But today she was all about this hoodie. So, you know, I’m a battle picker, and I wasn’t going to fight. We had to pick up last minute camp essentials at Target and hit a family birthday lunch at Cheesecake Factory. There were bigger things to worry about. You know, like, how it’s possible that my brassieres are all shrinking. There’s a good chance I am just really, really bad at laundry. Emily took one look at Isabella and after she stopped cackling, says “Aren’t you boiling in that hoodie?” which, of course, were my exact thoughts and I was pretty sure I was going to end up trying to stuff that sucker into my giant mom purse. Isabella turned to her and said, “Bowling? What? We don’t even have any pins! Gosh!”

Well, she showed her.

Also, I will tell you that I’m certain if she had said that we didn’t have any balls instead of pins that Emily’s retort most certainly would have been that’s what she said. It’s disturbing how appropriately she’s using that these days. Almost as disturbing as Timmy singing Gaga in his ill-fitted jammies. Into a goddamned banana.

So, something else that happens in Atlanta in June besides being hot (which I will never complain about because boob sweat and all, I LOVE the summer and the sunshine and I wish I was like this 365 days a year) is that sometimes when you play with your kids in the yard and then you go to scratch what you think is a mosquito bite on the back of your head it will not, in fact, be a mosquito bite. What it will be is actually a tick. A TICK.

I pulled the little mothereffer out of my hair. And then I consulted by boyfriend Dr. Google to make sure it wasn’t going to automatically give me lyme disease or something worse. And then I tried to kill it, but did you know they are impossible to kill and need to be combatted with a delicate combination of tweezers and matches?

Because I did not know this.

The only thing we know how to kill around here are the fish. We are effing gold medalists in fish-killing.

So, now I’m obsessively checking my hair for hidden ticks.

And never going outside again.

Maybe the girl with the hoodie has got the right idea.