« Book Her, Danno | Home | Something New in Strumpshaw »
My mother-in-law, the big chicken, chose to flee England rather than live under the threat of a TV Licensing Enforcement Division invasion. In fact, I have no doubt that right this second she’s sitting on the couch in her home in San Diego, California, with her TV on at full volume, all her window blinds up, thumbing her unlicensed nose at the licensing officers that have me, her son, and our four-year-old triplets peeking through the mail slot in our front door at the merest hint of footsteps. She’s a rebel, that Grandma S. A rebel who has abandoned us in favor of a country that doesn’t have TV Licensing vans cruising the streets with special TV-sensing technologies probing every nook and cranny.
So now here we are, the rest of us Halversons, settling into a new routine with just two months left in our one-year stint in Lowestoft, England. As the sun is out almost all the time now, we have begun living outdoors again, and the freedom of running about wearing just light sweaters instead of parkas and thermals is incredibly heady. (Okay, we still occasionally have to don the parkas, but only for part of the day.) The boys and I have been playing in parks sometimes twice a day, we’ve been in our back yard the rest of the day, and we’ve been enjoying outdoor adventures with Daddy after dinner. Those after-dinner antics are the best, with us hiking about the local marshes or exploring the Brits’ wonderful web of back alleys or just having a lovely time with our bikes 
and trash cans. But this communing with nature carries a price: in the past three days, every one of the Halversons except me has been attacked by stinging nettle.
The first boy, whom I blogged about a few days ago, had to suffer without treatment, as we were clueless about what to do for a stinging nettle sting. Thanks to our asking around, our second and third victims were immediately caked up with a paste of baking soda and water—which did nothing but make a total mess. Victim #4, Daddy, tried the folk remedy of rubbing his sting with dock weed. Turns out that’s all it is, a folk remedy. His sting was unaffected, but the boys enjoyed the excitement of watching Mommy and 
Daddy crawling around the trail looking for dock weed. (“Is that dock weed?” “No, it’s dandelions.” “How about that?” “No! That’s more stinging nettle!”)
So right now, with his hand still stinging despite the dock weed, my husband is researching ‘real’ remedies online and declaring that tomorrow he’ll buy a tube of anti-itch cream containing antihistamines to tuck into the first aid kit. As with most things in the first aid kit, we are hoping we’ll never actually need to use the cream, now that everyone has learned first hand (or first ear lobe, in the case of one son) that stinging nettle is to be taken seriously. But if the boys can’t resist climbing through the stinging nettle for that Perfect Stick and modern medicine fails us, then we do have a backup plan: We’ll go back to folk remedies and start spitting on the wound. Yeah, I know saliva probably won’t work, either, but 
imagine the distraction value of spitting on one of the boys. Seriously, if he doesn’t laugh and forget his pain, his brothers will certainly enjoy it. Although, even that has a risk: the brothers might enjoy the spitting enough to start shoving each other into stinging nettle. “Mommy, mommy, spit on HIM now!” Hmm, let me see… watch TV or watch Mommy spitting on your brother? Which do YOU think a four-year-old boy would choose?
Yeah, me, too. Daddy, I think you better go buy that cream. We’ve got a lot more hiking to do.
