Bugged

Summer is officially upon us and that means...yes, chiggers. Many of you have heard me complain about these nasty little bugs before so I'm sorry, but here I go again. They are absolutely killing me this year. I mean literally getting under my skin. I refuse to put Amelia in the grass for fear she'll be chiggered alive. Do babies even itch? Because if they do, and they just can't figure out how to scratch, I'm sure that chigger bites would drive little Amelia to the brink of insanity before the age of 1. Not a chance I'm willing to take.
I'm making them sound like something out of a science fiction movie but I despise this little insect. Is the chigger in fact an insect? They are in the mite family, are mites insects? I don't know but if so they are like tiny baby (yes, they are babies) insect ghosts that find their way from the grass to your feet and make the long journey north up your leg (it can take up to 15 minutes) and up to the areas where your clothing is the tightest (a.k.a. underwear elastic and bra strap area...nice) where I've read they roam about for a while looking for the perfect spot to munch on a delicious meal of dissolved skin cells. Shortly after finishing their meal, they fall off to the ground where they grow into adults and live off of a diet of vegetation for the remainder of their days? Graciously and unbeknownst to you, they leave a large and very, very, itchy red welt that can hang around for up to 2 weeks, itching and itching until you've gone and itched it so much that you've itched it right into a scab. And sometimes, because one is just not enough, there are two bites right next to each other like one chigger said to another, "come on, I'll take you out for lunch, I know a great place over near the Hanes comfort band where we can just hang and talk and munch a while..."
And then, it seems most evenings (because that's when the welts magically appear, long after the chigger is gone), Ford and I find ourselves talking about our chigger bites to one another, to the point where it's become a competition to see who has the biggest or who has the most or who has the bite in the most uncomfortable location...like they are little annoying trophies to be shared with your friends.
So why just the one meal of skin little chigger bug?? What's the point? It seems to me that the only point is to make us miserable, to change our sheets from white to Calamine lotion color, to make swim suit season even more embarrassing than it has to be, and to remind us that mosquitoes really do get a bad rap, and to make us miserable...I said that already.
So to tie this blog into the theme of Amelia...I'll just say this "I'm sorry Amelia, that you have to spend your first summer cooped up in the house most days, far far from the chiggery grass.
"I hate chiggers." I say to Ford.
"Yeah, me too." he says.
"Hate 'em."