West Nile is not a Vacation Destination

I haven’t been sleeping well lately.  Yes, my To Do list is longer than this election process feels and I am under no delusion that I will complete everything before we somehow manage to eliminate our national debt. In other words, I’m screwed.  Mr. Dingo is always telling me that I take on too much.  To prove his point he sent me an email that listed all the things I said I was going to accomplish that day, all the things I wished I could accomplish that day, and then, for kicks, because he’s silly like that, he added on a few things that no one in their right mind would think was doable in the amount of time that I have.  I, never claiming to be in my right mind, added them to my To Do list.  Yes, it is possible to learn Italian before I go to Florence, to train Dingo Girl so that we can win the Obedience Competition this Fall, and to find Osama Bin Laden before summer break begins.  I. CAN. DO. IT. ALL!!! 

I feel as if I am in a constant state of motion.  I can’t slow down or I’ll fall behind.  I don’t even know who or what this thing is I’m afraid of falling behind.  Whatever it is, though, all I know is that I don’t want to get behind it.  Maybe it poops a lot. Or drives down the highway with its left turn signal on.

The other night I woke up from a nightmare in which I dreamt that my English Literature Subject Matter test was in November and not only had I not started studying for it but I hadn’t even begun working on my applications to Ph.D. programs.  And then as the blood started pooling on the bed as I frantically pinched my arm harder and harder to wake up from the nightmare, I realized it was not a nightmare. 

For those of you who don’t know about the English Subject Matter test, it’s a test that you have to take to get into most English Ph.D. programs.  It doesn’t test you on the things that you’ve learned in undergrad or grad school.  Oh, no, that would be too easy.  Instead, it tests you on arcane literary devices and novels, essays, and quotes that no one who wasn’t alive to smoke opium with Poe would ever know.  Things added to my To Do list this past week: read every single Norton Anthology; write a personal statement for my Ph.D. applications worthy of the Pulitzer Prize, memorize and/or tattoo onto my inner thigh esoteric poetic devices; break into a big blubbering puddle of tears; eat Entemann’s.  I’m pretty sure I can accomplish the last two without much effort.

If my To Do list was all I had to do, I could do it.  I would be a raving, foaming at the mouth, hopped up on amphetamines unwashed, disheveled bitch, but I could do it.  I would not be happy, Mr. Dingo would not be happy, Dingo Girl would put herself up for adoption, and Not a Dingo would go on as usual, sleeping on my keyboard and only waking occasionally so that I could drop a treat into her mouth.  I. CAN. DO. IT. ALL!!!  But I can’t do any of it without sleep and I haven’t been getting much of that. 

No, it’s not these worries keeping me up at night, Valium Xanax meditation helps me with that.  It’s the damned mosquitoes.  Yes, you read that right, mosquitoes.  I am a magnet for bloodsuckers. 

As I sat down to write this, I counted 31 mosquito bites on my body.  No, I am not exaggerating.  No doubt by the time I hit Submit, there will be more.  The itching and scratching keep me awake at night and no amount of hydrocortisone or calamine lotion helps. 

During the day the itching is bad but I can sometimes forget about it in the frenzy and activity of my life.  At night, when the world is silent except for the mosquitoes buzzing above my bed like a cult of Satanists ready to drive their knives into my veins to bask in my blood, it’s all I can do not to climb out of my own skin.  It’s not just summer, although that’s when the fuckers are at their worst, but year round.  Mr. Dingo thinks that it’s somehow a point of pride that I am the only person in New York City who can be bitten by a mosquito in December.  By the way, Mr. Dingo never gets bitten.  Ever.  Mosquitoes find him thoroughly unappetizing.  He is the rice cake of the mosquito world.  Sometimes I wonder whether he is one of them.

The mosquitoes can’t just bite me and be done with it.  Oh no.  As it happens, I am allergic to mosquito bites.  Whereas most people get bitten and have a small red bump to show for the experience, I swell up like a bloated corpse.  By the end of the summer, I will be covered with enough mosquito bites that people will think I am in a Tyler Perry movie.  And because I can’t stop scratching, I have a scab or two.  And then, because my skin hates me, I don’t heal well so I have scars that will not fade until the next appearance of Halley’s Comet.  Am I creating a lovely visual image for you?  Aren’t you just picturing a misshapen mass of a woman with enormous bags under her eyes from lack of sleep plugging away at her keyboard stopping occasionally to pick her scabs and shoo away a swarming mass of nature’s vampires between bites of Entemann’s?

Mr. Dingo and I have done everything short of having me bathe in Off.  I am hesitant to wear a chemical barrier to mosquitoes 24/7 because that can’t be good for your skin and it smells.  But I’m running short on options and on unbitten skin.  Then, this morning, in an answer to our burnt offerings (my last two turns at the stove ended short of calling the fire department but that’s a story for another post), I received an email from a friend about how to get rid of mosquitoes.  This is the text of the email:

The best way of getting rid of mosquitoes is Listerine, the original medicinal type. The Dollar Store-type works, too. I was at a deck party awhile back, and the bugs were having a ball biting everyone. A man at the party sprayed the lawn and deck floor with Listerine, and the little demons disappeared. The next year I filled a 4-ounce spray bottle and used it around my seat whenever I saw mosquitoes. And voila! That worked as well. It worked at a picnic where we sprayed the area around the food table, the children’s swing area, and the standing water nearby. During the summer, I don’t leave home without it.....Pass it on.  Also can be used to dab any bites you receive. It will stop the itching quicker and go away faster.

Really?  Listerine?  As it so happens, we have Listerine on hand.  Is the orange-flavored kind okay?  I’m not sure exactly where we should spray it.  We have already saturated the areas around our doors and windows with Raid, Off, and any other chemical repellant that, in two years, will be found to cause irreversible brain damage.  But I am open for anything at this point and have spent the day dabbing at my skin with the mouthwash.  Should I make a body spray out of it and douse myself with the mediciney smelling concoction?  I didn’t wear Off because I didn’t want to smell like a chemical factory, but will wearing Eau de Listerine make me smell like an alcoholic trying to hide her addiction?  Because really folks, if I can’t find some relief and get some sleep, I’m going to have to bring my buddies Jim and Jack out of retirement just to get some shut eye.  And then I would have to add another task to my To Do list: Rehab.

Update:  Several bottles of Listerine later and I have discovered that the email I received about repelling mosquitoes with Listerine is all a hoax!  Snopes.com, that faithful debunker of urban legends, has dashed my only hope of emerging from the summer months without looking like a life-size Connect the Dots.  They don’t say who started this rumor but I’m eyeing Pfizer.  Mouthwash sales down?  Start a rumor that has people filling their swimming pools with your product.  I smell a conspiracy.  And Listerine.