Dear Kid,

(Actual Invitation)

Please join us for a lovely buffet dinner. Light appetizers. Specialties include knees, ankles, elbows, back of neck, and calves. Slight danger involved but this is too tasty to pass up. Expect unseemly expletives from the buffet. Bring your own proboscis. Men not invited.

Meet us in the backyard while Mom is gardening. No need to wait for seating. Attack at your pleasure.

Excuse me while I go take a bath in hydrocortisone.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

What a lovely weekend we’ve had so far.

First we visited you, YAY!

Yesterday, we did a lot of gardening. The never-ending weed pit we call our entire property gives us plenty of time to spend together.

Last night we were going to go to an event at the Observatory but Dad decided the cloud cover would make it difficult to see things which would annoy me and frustrate him. Unless it would frustrate me and annoy him. Anyway we didn’t go.

Instead we decided to do some nighttime gardening. Weeding by firefly light. Someone (me) thought it would be a good idea. Someone (Dad) thought we should wear long sleeves and long pants. Someone (me) agreed to wear jeans but absolutely refused to wear a long-sleeve shirt in 90 degree heat with 90% humidity.

Someone (Dad) suggested he married someone who was silly and stubborn. Someone (me) didn’t disagree and compromised by putting on bug repellent. Out we went.

Someone (the Puppy) patrolled the area, decided it was safe, and assumed guard position by curling up in the mulch and going to sleep. Never seen him sleep in mulch before. He actually slept for a bit, got up, turned around, rearranged the mulch to his satisfaction, and went back to sleep. Dad tried to take a picture but the pre-flash kept waking the Puppy up. Imagine him with his head tucked under his wing and little baby snores floating around his head.

Eventually it got too dark to see what we were doing so we went in. Someone (me) of course had been thoroughly munched. Someone (Dad) suggested long-sleeves might be in order in the future. Someone (me) pointed out that it wouldn’t have prevented the bite I got on my face and if he didn’t stop talking and start helping with the hydrocortisone there would be bigger problems than bug bites. Someone (Dad) compromised by lecturing while he helped with the hydrocortisone. Someone (me) very maturely thanked him while ignoring the lecture.

Someone (Dad) asked if I planned to wear long-sleeves in the future. Someone (me) suggested he was out of his mind for even thinking such a thing.

Someone (Dad) has perfected his long-suffering sigh. He’s currently online, buying stock in whatever pharmaceutical company manufactures hydrocortisone.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

I look like I have the measles.

Just to be clear, I don’t have the measles, small pox, chicken pox, or even a bad case of acne.

What I have are mosquito bites.

A lot of them.

Enough of them so that I expect to see a great reduction when I step on the scale.

Enough of them so that the Hoxworth Blood Center has called to tell me I’ve exceeded my donation level for the year.

Enough so that this year’s annual vampire ball is being moved out of southern Ohio.

Enough so that there isn’t enough hydrocortisone on the planet to handle them all.

Enough so that I look like I have the measles.

I did not invite the mosquitoes over for a festive meal. I didn’t invite them for a small nosh. I didn’t even invite them for a meal-free get together.

There was no inviting whatsoever.

Mosquitoes are not big on etiquette.

Or on spelling, since you can spell the plural mosquitos or mosquitoes and no one seems to care.

They are, however, big on helping themselves to whatever is in the ‘frig (and by “’frig” I mean my veins).

Dad was not sympathetic; Dad repels mosquitoes. Dad is a virtual mosquito umbrella. He says it’s because he was wearing long pants that he wasn’t bitten, but I was bitten through my clothing. Sleeves were not a deterrent. In fact, mosquitoes seem to have an affinity for red shirts. Or at least the shoulders underneath red shirts.

Excuse me while I go slather on a gallon or two of hydrocortisone.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

The mosquitoes are out. Really out. They are the size of wombats. Large wombats. Very large wombats.

Not only are they large, they are hungry. Swarms of mosquitoes buzzed my car on the way home yesterday.

Not only are they large and hungry, they have multiplied excessively.

A brown bat can eat about 1,000 mosquitoes in an hour. After several intense minutes with my calculator, I established that our backyard has enough mosquitoes this year to feed the entire US bat population for the next three years.

On the other hand, the mosquito menu here is limited. They tried to chomp on the car but it didn’t provide a lot of nutrition. So they turned to Menu of Mom. Home cooked Mommy. Mama a la mode. Parental Popsicle.

I’ll give you three guesses as to how I felt about being the dinner entree for billions of bugs.

Not nearly as unhappy as I’ll be if they think I’m breakfast when I take the puppy out for his walk.

I’m considering starting a bat breeding program. And a purple martin farm. And a rescue program for anyone else who eats large numbers of annoying bugs.

How do you feel about mosquito pie for dinner?

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

I didn’t do a very good job of documenting the cement pouring yesterday. Allow me to correct that.

First of all, our side of the planet is now heavier by 150 pounds and none of it has anything to do with my enjoyment of Oreos. Yup, Dad and Pi poured 150 lbs of cement.

Then someone got the bright idea (insert sparkling light bulb icon) of putting our hand prints in the cement before it dried. There were several reasons this might not have been the best idea of the day:

1. You people are no longer in single digits with adorably small paw prints. You now have impossibly large handprints that require you to squish your digits to fit in the cement-y space.
2. When everyone was available in the morning, we didn’t have enough cement. Once enough cement had been procured, everyone had scattered on various shopping and napping projects, meaning that the only time for immortalizing our prints was after dinner. Do you know who else is out after dinner? Mosquitoes. Large, ravenous mosquitoes. Large, aggressive, ravenous, unkind, biting mosquitoes who believe that with only one or two (or perhaps three) more meals they will be large enough to compete with helicopters for airspace.
3. Doggies do not get the concept of sticking their paws into squishy cement for human amusement. And washing off that little paw with cold water? Talk about adding insult to injury.
4. The cement didn’t really like the idea of holding hand (or paw) prints which made the whole thing even more difficult.

Did I mention the cement is going to be covered with several inches of soil once it’s dry?

The longest lasting imprint is going to be the bite the King of the Bloody Mosquitoes managed to land right in the center of my back.

I do not even want to contemplate exactly how that happened.

This is another reason I believe wildlife should be outside and not in our house. If yesterday’s spider had been out doing his job eating mosquitoes, I might not currently be yearning for a bucket of anti-itch cream.

A little to the left, please.

Love, Mom