skeeters

the current bane of my existence is the mosquito. i have asked God on many an occasion what caused Him to decide, on the sixth day of Creation, that he'd put these things on the planet. i mean, seriously, God. far be it for me to ever challenge Your wisdom ... but what were You thinking? "hmmm. I've made the ox and the lamb, the peacock and the polar bear. time now for a blood-sucking insect that serves no other purpose than to annoy the mess out of people." for some reason, our back yard is infested with these things. they live near water, but there's no water back there. no creek, no puddles, no nothing. just dadgum mosquitoes. my two sweet children seem to be magnets for these things, but try as i might, i cannot keep them away -- even with three huge citronella candles lit on the deck and two ceiling fans running at full speed. and don't even think about going out to our new playset back in the wooded section without being doused head-to-toe with repellent. they're everywhere! tonight chris washed his hands before returning to the grill, and immediately got three bites on his palm, the one body part that didn't still have spray on it. there is one very interesting part of this increasingly frustrating issue. liam and susanna are both devoured on every square inch of their limbs, and yet, i have never once seen them scratch at them. they've never even complained of them itching. how is that possible? i get ONE bite and it takes every ounce of my willpower to refrain from tearing my leg off. they seriously don't notice the bites at all. the thing i'm sure they do notice is their crazy momma running around the kitchen, armed with a rolled-up newspaper swatting at the air and yelling at these evasive suckers. years down the road if i wind up in an asylum (which is not outside of the realm of possibility on trying days -- you moms of young ones know what i mean), that might be how my children answer when asked if there were any early signs of my mental demise. "yeah, mommy just started to go crazy one summer. screaming at bugs and wielding wadded-up weapons and smacking any flat surface she could find. it was really all downhill from there."