Previews of the 2011-2012 DI Challenges are now at

http://www.idodi.org/index.php/2011-12-season/2011-12-challenge-previews

See the 2011-2012 Destination Imagination Challenge Previews!

I’m not a Tweeter, or a Twit, or whatever you call someone who is a geek for Twitter.  I have a Twitter account, and I find it interesting.  I enjoy following the Panthers and Destination Imagination to get the latest news, or Project Runway because I’m a fan and the tweets are so funny.  And I also follow April, because she’s the one who got me set up on Twitter in the beginning and gave me my limited knowledge of how to use it.  After she went to Samoa I figured out how to get her tweets on my phone.  She’s not an especially prolific tweeter; she usually posts something every two or three days.  And since our times are backward from each other, her tweets generally come in the middle of the night.  I actually love it when my phone makes that little noise while I am sleeping and she has said something witty.  I usually get my phone off the nightstand, read what she has tweeted, and roll back over and go to sleep, feeling like everything is right in the world.  That’s how desperate I am for contact with this child of mine on the other side of the world.  Just a 3am tweet is enough to let me know that she is alive and well and (usually) happy.

Last night around 3:30 my phone made its little tweet sound.  Already smiling, anticipating what she would have to say, I looked at the screen and saw “So the good news is that only one person has ever died from a pacific centipede bite.  The bad news is I’m thinking I might be number 2.”  This is not something to make me smile and roll over content with the knowledge that my child is safe and sound.  While part of me thought “Oh, April, aren’t you the funny girl,” the mom part of me kicked in with visions of large-fanged centipedes.  The next thing I knew I was up googling pacific centipedes and learning about their venomous bites.  It’s true, there is only one recorded death by centipede.  Did this calm my fears?  Of course not.  While she has been generally healthy for most of her life, April is my only child I have ever had to take to be tested for lead poisoning, or to the pulmonary center for x-rays because she had pneumonia.  She’s the only one of my children to be quarantined in Costa Rica because of a tropical illness, and the only person I have ever heard of being hospitalized for four days due to a raging eye infection.  So if there is to be a second fatal centipede bite recorded, my 4am self is pretty sure that the victim will be this kid.  So of course I tried to call her.  Phone service in AmSam is less than stellar so of course I was unable to get through.  I sent her a couple of those emails that all offspring hate- you know, the worried, you-better-get-in-touch-with-your-mama-right-now kind.  I finally heard back from her some twelve hours later (which is right away, if you’re on island time) and of course she’s fine.  She reports that while a pacific centipede does have a really painful bite, her toe is back to normal.  And so am I, although with a few more gray hairs and wrinkles.

And as a side note, last week a tenant called my office saying that she wanted to move because she had found a centipede in her tub.  When I told Steve, our maintenance supervisor, about the call, his reaction was “at least it wasn’t a millipede!”  I guess that’s the attitude I should take about April and her centipede attack.