On Mosquito bites

This one's going to be quick.

I hadn't been bitten by mosquitoes in a very long time. In Nepal mosquitoes had a particular distaste for me, they sang around my ears and dance about my eyes and nose but they never came down to biting me. And when they did bite, the fat greedy bastards were always the one that got me it was easy to smoosh them splat and end that right there. Keep the blood stains around so the rest know who they're messing around with. My cousins and family got those small bite marks that got bigger as you scratched it. I saw people with legs and arms and face covered with bite marks. Poor sods, I thought to myself they don't know how to protect themselves from those buggers, imagining I had some secret mantra or trick of keeping myself safe.

It finally happened.

I've never been bitten when I'm in my domain. In my room, house etcetera. I was out of my domain for a short while. After I came to Boston last week, my room was temporarily occupied by a couple of woodbugs, in numbers enough to cause me consternation and make me not want to enter my room. Fumigating and spraying the room would take a couple days, I slept in SM's room instead. He took a rescue flight to Nepal and his room has been unoccupied for two months.

That's when they got me!

Small pokies on my feet, that's what they were at first. Things I would pay no heed to, something a matter of entertainment. Oh look, I said, I got bit by mosquitoes how charming. Figured the bitemarks would go away quick. Until they started itching. And I scratched. They grew. Bigger and bigger, itchier and itchier, scratched and more scratched. It was getting a little ridiculous, it's possible I could have eventually given myself sepsis that way.

But I took a stand.

Went to wegmans the other day, got calamine. It's an anti-itch cream, doesn't necessarily help with the wound care, stops it from getting bigger since you won't be scratching it. Every time there's an itch on my feet now, the target area gets a nice rubbing of the ointment. A few minutes later the itch goes away and my feet are saved.

Two days on and the huge boils of bites that I inadvertently created are receding, shrinking and drying into nothingness. It was my guess that the itching would go away entirely by now, but there's still the occasional urge. Not that I give in. That's when I know it's creanrubbing time!