Mosquito Bites.

I am the indignant sufferer of mosquito bites, all on my foot. Two of said mosquito bites are on the sole - one on each.

Since moving to the East Coast, I have started suffering rather more severely than in the past from mosquitoes. At the beginning of the summer, I was horrified by the dragonfly sized mosquitoes that insisted on suckling my blood while I was asleep. It was during a camping trip with Ryan when I fully came to realise exactly how much more flavourful I must innately be than he, because for every 1 bite he had, I had 7.

And not just 7 little bumps. These were giant welts that were painful. It's not that they didn't itch - the itching and all the indelicacies of scratching the itch came later. First was sore, aching pain as my immune system went into overdrive.

These giant winged monsters, however, have proved nothing compared to the gnat sized mosquitoes I encountered the other day, whilst walking through the woods near my house.

At firsts I thought that they seemed more like the mosquitoes I was used to, out west. Small, irritating, but not of the agony causing variety.

Not so. I smacked one, absently on my left arm, just below my elbow, while looking at something else. I know that killing them mid-suckle is usually a bad idea because it makes the bite that much worse, but I felt a small tickle and I reacted to it. I had already found and killed one eating my right elbow, so had become a little reactionary.

Within minutes both bites had spread into flat, white, raised bumps, which would have been a quarter inch in diameter, if they had been more circular. They had, instead, bumpy and uneven edges.

That evening, my left arm was swollen. The next morning, it was a third again its normal size, red, and inflamed. My elbow ached. I spent the morning looking up things like "Really horrible mosquito bite" and "mosquito bite inflammation" on Google. I self-diagnosed myself with skeeter syndrome and moaned a lot about it to my husband.

I was finally back to normal when yesterday morning I woke up scratching the bottom of my feet. One bite in the very middle of the arch of my right foot and the other on the side of my left foot.
There is no more irritating a place than the bottom of your foot for an itchy insect bite. People can tell you all they like that "scratching just makes it worse!" but try not scratching an itch that you are reminded of every time you stand up. Or put on shoes. Or bring the bottom of your feet in any contact to anything.

Then, this morning I sat down to read my email, only to discover a second bite, this one on the bottom of my left foot. Swollen, uncomfortable and itchy. When I notified my husband of the new development, he had this to say:

You ought to stop sticking your feet out from under the covers. Don't give the little bastards the opportunity.