BUGS! BUGS! BUGS!

Last night Baby Cakes was at the hospital again. He was having trouble breathing so I brought him to the walk in. I told the nurse clearly “He is in respitory distress” Due to the fact that there were 20 (thousand!) people in the waiting area I asked if we should go to the ER instead. She looked a little huffy and said “they’ll just send you back here.” So we sat and waited. When they finally got around to triaging him, they sent us right to the ER, where they immediately cleared a room for him. Isn’t the whole point of triage to see a patient immediately to know who can wait a bit and who can not? I said I told you so in a very nice and non-accusatory way and can you guess what the nurse said? “Well he looked okay through the glass.” If nothing else she may listen more clearly to mothers in the future.

Michelle once told us a story of a receptionist who was trying to get insurance information from a mother who didn’t speak much English, and kept saying “my baby, my baby.” Michelle happened to walk by and noticed that the baby was not breathing, so she grabbed her and brought her into the ER where she was successfully resuscitated. Anyway, Baby Cakes instantly improved with a treatment and is just fine today.

This morning I received a call from Rose letting me know about Bug Maine-ia taking place for today only at the Maine State Museum. Joshua was very interested (and I admit I was too) so I packed a lunch, picked up Noah and Katherine and headed down.

The exhibit was amazing. They had about 30 different tables throughout the building. Each table had several staff and LOTS of hands on bug related stuff. We held spiders, Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches, a giant African Millipede that was reported to be upwards of 20 years old, caterpillars, and army worms. We were able to learn about and see ants, bees, flies (and we learned all about forensics. Did you know that maggots grow three times as fast in the nasal passages of a coke addict?), water bugs, butterflies, moths, even baby snapping turtles were on display. We learned that Praying Mantis are protected in some states, that there is a fly that so closely resembles a bee that is takes an expert to see the difference (something to do with the wing shape), some spiders are able to store food in their abdomen and go up to 6 months without a decent meal. The ants in our southern states are South American Ants that will silently coordinate their attack, covering their prey and biting in unison, while the ants we have up north are European Ants, and not quite as coordinated. They can’t wait to dig in and they all bite at the first chance they get.

The visuals were great. We were able to look into an ant colony with a magnifying glass, and look at two queens and some worker ants through a microscope. The instructor said they had a species in the lab that had 70 queens and thousands of workers. Cool.

Tonight we ate some of our corn with supper. It was so yummy. Speaking of yummy my mother gave me a great (and so simple) recipe that I would like to share.

Turtle Truffle Pie

17 unwrapped caramels
¼ cup whipping cream

1 ½ cups semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup whipping cream
3 tablespoons butter

1 6oz graham cracker crust

Melt together ¼ cup whipping cream with 17 unwrapped caramels. Pour into a graham cracker crust. You may add toasted pecans, about a cup if you aren’t allergic. Put the pie into the fridge while you melt 1 ½ cups of semi sweet chocolate chips with 1 cup of whipping cream and 3 Tbls butter. Stir well and pour over the caramel. Refrigerate for several hours. Dollop with whip cream when serving.

I think this recipe would work really well replacing the caramel with a mixture of peanut butter and sugar. I’ll have to play around with it a bit.