We went to the zoo this weekend. Nothing unusual there, animals, whining about how it's boring and a miscommunication wherein the two year old thought we were purchasing her a pony and not simply a pony ride. Things shaped up well, all was fin and we came home with a tube of plastic animals, a tiger puppet and a splinter.

The splinter was mentioned a few hours later and was reported to be from a piece of swamp grass Bri picked. We should sue. You may agree after the recounting of the pain and suffering my poor poor little five year old suffered upon removal of the teeny little spike embedded in her finger. This splinter was maybe 3mm long. It was a tiny thing really. Last time Mike got a splinter it was more like having an entire piece of trim embedded in his palm. You call that a splinter? This is a splinter. Anyhow. I wonder if perhaps the piece of swamp grass was infested with ergot or some other natural mold that makes you go into hallucinogenic delusions. I was in another room trying to keep Serena from interfering, but if I hadn't known better I would have thought they were attempting to drive demons from her in there. Several instances of "get away from me!" "It huuuuurts" "ow!ow!ow!" *scream* After about 15 minutes of this, I went in there to mention if it wasn't coming out, to stick a piece of duct tape on there because sometimes that will draw them out. Turns out, the screaming was from the mere extension of her finger. No one had actually managed to touch the splinter yet.

I distracted her with a tale of my childhood on how I once jammed a pencil lead in my arm and my mom decided to take me to the hospital where they proceeded to dig around in there with a razor blade with no freezing for half an hour and she didn't want that to happen to her did she? She thought not, and with a few more threats of sitting on her, held still long enough for Mike to yank the splinter out. It took maybe a second.