Eaten Alive by Mosquitoes

I am so going to catch West Nile. Over the past two summers, we've really let the yard go a bit wild. Last year, while pregnant, Evelin wasn't much in the mood to be out in the hot sun gardening; this year, well, it's hotter and more humid than normal and the mosquitoes would drain every last drop of blood from Celeste in a matter of minutes.

Since we seem to have been running crazy more weekends than not this summer, that or it's been raining, it's been a little while since I cut the ogräs that passes for grass in our yard. The front yard looked a little unruly, but the backyard was off the hook. All was going well until I got into the backyard when, all of the sudden, the mower stopped. It's electric and I thought I might have cut the cord (again), but it turned out we had a neighborhoodwide power failure.

Waiting for things to right themselves, I did a bit of weeding near the back fenceline. When Evelin hollered out the window that the power was back on, I stepped out of the bed to find a dozen mosquitoes happily feasting on my legs. About half of them were too sluggish to fly away before I swatted them.

I tend to hate to use insect repellant, sunscreen, etc. Basically, I'm stupid or something, and I don’t like the way that stuff feels. Evelin had no sympathy for me or my itching.

Is Rice a Finger Food?

The week before we went to Montana, Evelin and I thought about trying to go out for dinner with Celeste, but it didn't work out in terms of when we would get to Samantha's (our favorite Salvadorian place and where Celeste was almost born) and when Celeste started fading.

So, this morning, we talked about trying to go for an early dinner there. We headed out at 4:30 p.m. and Celeste started yawning in the car, which worried us, but we persevered and ended up having a very nice meal.

We brought along some food for Celeste and also fed her off our plates. She tried the black beans, rice, pinto beans, a bit of pupusa de queso, some corn chips, and assorted vegetables Evelin picked out of her sopa de pollo. The pinto beans and pupusa went over well, along with the rice and black beans. The vegetables were offered a bit late in the meal, so she ended up throwing more of those than not, and the corn chips were chewed but not with much gusto.

The funniest bit was, after feeding her some rice with a spoon, Evelin decided to just put some rice on the table in front of Celeste and to let her feed herself. Celeste looked at the rice and leaned over to try to put in her mouth without using her hands. She soon figured out that this bit of rice wouldn't jump into her mouth the way the spoon-fed stuff did and dug in with both hands.

Looking at the floor and table around us, I think for the near future, when we go out Evelin and I need to adopt a policy of tipping at least 25% to help cover the clean up costs.