Brown Recluse

Jake woke up bathed in vomit this morning, only I did not know it. I went on a wonderful morning hike in the forest and meadowland park about 15 minutes from our house. Saw deer, squirrels and many birds. Wrote in my jounral, made new resolutions about food, exercise and weight loss, and felt very self-satisfied. Was on my way home to hit the computer for the first really good work day I've had in about 3 weeks when the phone rang. Mike called to tell me about Jake and ask if I could come home and watch him so Mike could launder all of the bedclothes and stuffed animals.

All day Jake told us about the stuff that had come out of his mouth, by coughing and making hand motions. By the end of the day the story including emphatic pronoucements that Daddy had cleaned it all up. Mike told Jake he could call for us the next time it happened, to let us know, and he nodded.

I ended up getting quite a lot of work done today, though I also added in time to give Mike some relief, and subtracted my plans to go into town and soak up some music. I also managed to clean out my car, call the dentist, and make cookies with Jake this afternoon, which he enjoyed thoroughly. And he even ate a few of them, making them his main source of protein (they contained eggs) for the day. He seemed fine, just was not hungry. He did have a new little red bump on his cheek, and in strong light, we could make out a small white pimple in the middle of it.

My poor child. We also found a scary looking spider in the bathroom during naptime, which had us both doing frantic internet research on what Brown Recluse spiders look like as well as their bites. They look like this:



Apparently they and black widows are the only poisonous spiders in this area. I shined a flashlight on ours, to see if he had the core identifying mark, an upside down violin, but he was not cooperating and went and hid underneath the bathmat, which freaked me out even more.

Had Jake gotten bitten and was vomiting his reaction? By the end of the day, it seemed not, as the recluse bites look really gruesome online.

So maybe he was bitten by a boring spider? I still have the one from the bathroom in a plastic container on my desk, in which Mike poked a few airholes. The website said recluse bites can only be identified if you have the spider, so we captured him earlier in the day when anything seemed possible. Maybe I will get up the courage tomorrow to open the opaque lid and check out his marking again. He looks like one through the plastic but apparently they are very hard to identify without a magnifying glass to count their eyes.

Oy vay, that will have to wait until tomorrow!