John and I have lived inside for months, it feels like. The heat has finally arrived that I've waited for since 2002. We can't go out for long or the mosquitos eat us alive, day or night. We haven't set up the screen house this year, so we're trapped in the house, huddled in our shelter from this tiny foe.
I've bought some gardening clothing. I got easy-breathe thin nylon pants and a long-sleeved nylon shirt from REI that I suppose would be good for hiking, but I'm using them to spray with DEET and cover my limbs when I garden. The comfort difference in hot weather is remarkable. The shirt has mesh venting and gusseted armpits and the pants even have tiny ankle drawstrings. I wear a hat that I spray with DEET as well. The point of all of this is to explain that going into the yard for any length of time is treated as going into a war zone.
We rashly courted the bites for a while, but after a weekend where our primary recreation was scratching pock-marked ankles I am starting to take our conflict seriously. Going through a period of West Nile hyperchondria encouraged me as well.
I haven't yet invested in the BUZZ OFF clothing largely because I doubt it will help. We did buy the repellant pad lantern but I couldn't really tell if it helped. In fact, I can't see that anything we do to repel mosquitos other than cover our skin helps. It is hard to be scientific because weather affects the mosquitos quite a bit.
The problem, of course, is that the Asian Tiger Mosquito stays out all day, instead of limiting itself to dusk and dawn. Old paradigms no longer apply. My youth was spent outdoors - I can't imagine being a kid in Dowden Terrace with these bugs.
I know this is a rather un-Susanly rant for my first blog entry in a million years, but I thought I'd document our struggle for posterity. :)