This week: two days, two parks, two sets of friends. We arrived at approximately the right time and definitely the right place on both attempts. Yay us! Or yay me, since I’m the one driving!

At one park the kids mainly played on the playground. At the other they ran through the bushes and pulled on tree branches, collecting pinecones.

Pinecones which they piled in my purse. Pinecones which we brought home. In our car. Pinecones which, we discovered later, housed ticks. Ticks!

My children may have found the only tick-infested tree in suburban Southern California, and they collected its droppings.

Luckily we found ticks only in the pinecones and other nature-treasures they amassed, not on their persons, BUT STILL. Ticks. Ew.

“Wow!” said the kids. “Does this mean we get to go to the doctor?” Because you know how well that went the last time. I explained that they would have to get sick before needing to see a doctor, and would have to have a tick before getting Lyme disease, so no, we’re probably out of the woods (ha! tick humor!) on the doctor thing.

I shall now spend the remainder of the week resisting the urge to launder the car interior (where the pinecones rode!) or to overzealously re-check the kids’ heads for intruders. And possibly avoiding parks altogether. We shall see.