On Sunday night I went to a BBQ at my brother-in-law's Dad's house with my sister's family. It was a nice night, warmer then I thought it'd be and we sat out on their back deck all evening. The mosquitos were out for what seemed like the first time all summer. Fitting that they come out in mass during the "last" weekend of summer. rude.
We had the bug spray out to try to protect ourselves, but most of us were still getting a few bites. After a while Jack, Terry's dad, came out with a big can of Raid and started spraying the perimeter of the deck. Terry leaned over and asked, "How long do you think it would have taken your mom to say something about this?" Mom was known to rise up in protest under most circumstances when any sort of 'unneccesary fumes' were emitted into her atmosphere, (once walking out in protest of a spinning class when the instructor oiled a squeaky bike during class), but we thought she might have let this one slide.
I ended the weekend with several bites which I could have received that night, or during my big dirty bike ride on Sunday or at the final Labor Day party I attended Sunday night at Sho and Nigels. All were in their own way celebrations of summer and full of the potential of receiving bites.
But last night as I tried to remember how to stop the itching (thank you, hydrocortisone) I recalled the summer when I thought I had the West Nile Virus ( I still think I did). I had called mom to drive me to the doctor b/c I was feeling too feverish to drive myself. For some reason I agreed to wait for her out front of my building on Chicago ave ( a pretty busy street any time of day). I saw her coming and stepped out to the curb. As she got closer I could see a look of total disgust on her face and then noticed an old truck in front of her spewing black smoke from it's exhaust. When I looked back to mom's car she was gone. As I scanned the road I caught her speeding around that truck and on down the road ahead. Had she forgotten she'd agreed to pick me up? As I wavered between walking down the street in the direction she'd taken off or wandering back up to my apartment to just go back to bed, she pulled up across the street and waved me over impatiently. I made my way through the traffic and as I got into the car she explained that she'd been so angry by the fumes that she wanted to speed by to give the driver a dirty look and to get out of the smoke. In her efforts to prove a point to this polluter, she'd momentarily forgotten to pick up her feverish daughter on the corner.
The point of this is not to say that she didn't care that I was feverish, but to show that, man, she hated polluters.
And I hate mosquito bites. scratch, scratch.
:: bright and sunshiney Harms Woods. Home to many mosquitos and the big dirty bike ride Molly and I took this weekend.
