Down With the Sickness
Ugh. The best way to do this is to just make sure I get on and start typing. I have no problem with obsessively getting on Facebook and Twitter. This is more of a chore because there’s nothing here for me to check on, I guess.
Anyway. Yesterday, there were two reports of dengue fever in Pearl City, which is just the next town over. All winter, the mosquitoes have been pretty bad. Their numbers wax and wane depending on the rain, but at least one or two of those bastards are always present around this house, slowly sucking the life out of me. They’re so ubiquitous, that I feel like I’m slowly becoming immune to their bites. I’ll still get an itchy welt, but after 15 minutes, I’ll stop noticing the itch. Wait, that might actually be a bad thing, because they might suck me totally dry before I realize it.
So with the news yesterday, the mosquitoes went from itchy nuisance to serious disease spreader. I’m not in a position to get sick right now, so I took that information seriously. Death to mosquitoes!!!
There are buckets of rain water all around the house. The buckets’ primary purpose is to catch rain water for use in watering the plants. It’s not my doing. Believe me, I would dump those buckets in an instant if I could have my way. I’ve always hated the fact that mosquitoes ALWAYS breed in them. They’re the sole reason there’s such a big mosquito problem here.
I’ve been pretty proactive these past few months in actually using the water for the plants. So yes, the mosquitoes forced me to be useful around the house. And as soon as I woke up this morning, which was pretty late, I went nuts with the water. Every bucket was emptied! I don’t want to sound like a sissy, fishing for pity, but that was back-breaking work! And even worse, I still ended up getting bitten by mosquitoes! I need to go research later and see how long before dengue symptoms appear.
Despite being worn out, I kind of felt like I was on a roll. I ended up cleaning the back, front, and side yards. A combination of the strong winds making a mess of lots of fallen leaves, my dad trimming several plants and sort of just leaving the trimmings on the ground, and general neglect made for a big job. It was five hours of sweeping, raking, and picking up crap. My thumbs went numb.
So actually, I kind of lied, because by the time my thumbs went numb, I hadn’t done much cleaning in the front yard. I thought to myself, “this looks sufficiently clean,” and went inside to bring feeling back to my hands.
It’s fine now. There’s always tomorrow. I just better not friggin’ rain!
