lol… i feel the same way, but about chiggers!! i have 6 bites right now driving me insane!!!!!!!

My step daughter gets the same way with mosquitos and she has been told she has an allergy to them! We have purchased a portable, Mosquito-Deleto type of thing that uses small bottles of propane. There is a thing in the center that attracts them and then on the outside is a sticky film that they stick too. I thought it was a gimmick but we use it EVERY night in our backyard. We sit it on the patio table in the yard about 10 feet from the deck and we don’t have any problems when on the deck. It really is one of the best outdoor items we have ever purchased!

Secondly, my male German Shepard developed a large lump on his right side a few years back. I paniced (because thats what I do) and rushed to the veterinarian where I paid a boat load for an emergency visit only to be told that it was a fatty lump and he would be fine! In fact I was even told I could ouncture it with a needle and drain it! I opted not to do that since he really doesn’t mind the lump at all! I am sure that’s Dog just has a fatty lump too but I am completely with you about wanting to be sure…after all they are like our kids too.

Congrats on the MBP. My hubs just got a new MBP and loves it to death. I have a MacBook and a Mac Mini. And before giving “mister works-at-that-non-Mac company” JB your old MacBook, you could mention to him that MacOSX is actually *Unix* (insert singing choir of angels here) which is the most proven, robust researchy operating system known to man! While those poor old PC users are stuck wallowing in a kitchen-sink-confused-mass that’s still essentially built on top of DOS with all its stupid single-user constraints and limitations.

Sorry for totally geeking out on you there. But, OMG, we run C++ and Perl and Tcl and -csh programs on our Macs. If JB wants to do more than scrapbooky photo albums, I dare him to open up the Mac TERMINAL and type stuff at the COMMAND LINE like a REAL programmer! (Uhhh, whoops I guess I geeked out again. This starts to turn into a religious issue doesn’t it!!)

Get the Sting-Eeze stuff from REI or the grocery store. Dab it on as soon as it starts to itch, before it starts swelling into an itchy lump.

It stings (duh) but it stops all the itchiness right away. Helps BIG TIME with mosquito bites!

same thing for me–hot, horrible, huge, boil-y PoH’s. i read somewhere it’s because some peopel give off more carbon dioxide, and mosquitoes are attracted to that… and that those people that give more of it off tend to be more allergic than the average bear to mosquitoes. what works for me? well, a paste of baking soda and water… really works. but it’s messy and doesn’t stay all the time. sting-eeze works well but it stinks and can sting if you already scratched. still, sweet relief. also works: benedryl itch cream (antihistimines! anti-itch!) and shit, even cortisone cream. i’ll use anything if it will stop that infernal itching/burning. (ah, minnesota, where the mn state bird is the mosquito…hahaha…heh…ok)

Well, since you asked (rhetorically I’m sure), I’m kind of sore at you. I’m sorry to be so off-topic but – I just finished Operating Instructions and it left me with a sour after-taste. Maybe Anne Lamott is too cerebral for me, but reading about her fuckedupedness didn’t make me feel better about my own. I actually found her frightening.

THEN, I went to Lululemon – thrilled to find out I have one about 5 minutes from my house. Until I realized that I better not even bother trying them on, unless I want to be buried in them, because my husband would kill me if I spent $92 on yoga pants. That I can’t even wear to work.

Finally, I saw the pictures of you in the bikini. haha. Thanks a lot. My baby is 3 months older than yours and my “figure” is….NOT to be photographed in a bikini and posted on the internet.

Is this all some sort of message that I am living my life a little too closely to your blog posts? maybe. Still – I feel badly about your bug bites and dog lumps. Thanks for sharing – I’m off to shop for a Macbook Pro.

Okay, so to summarize so far, we have:
PoH
snotacular teething
doggy anal glands
rampant itching resulting in…
nighttime skull scooping
mosquitos, ticks, chiggers, and other assorted human-eating bugs
fatty lumps
the occasional geek commenter dissing DOS (again)

and one of my new all-time favorite lines

“sometimes an itchy butt is just an itchy butt.” Amen, sister.

God I love my lunchtime blogs. Throw in a penis or two (or the new euphamism I read for that this morning– some “tackle”), and we have a GD smorgasbord of delight.

Thank you all.

‘Sometimes an itchy butt is just an itchy butt’. Oh my.

I have been anti-MAC for a while. Now, I want one.. I am such a sell out.

Not allergic to mosquito bites, thank goodness, because I attract the little fuckers like you wouldn’t believe. I *am* allergic to flea bites, to the extent where one emergency room (!) resident exclaimed admiringly “Wow, I’ve never seem ’em like this one!”

As for the Mac thing, I run a Winders-free zone here at the home office, thank you very much. I am jealous of your new NacBook Pro! I have been suffering with a 4-year-old TiBook which to my great annoyance continues to function acceptably and refuses to break, dammit.

I was going to suggest Benadryl also, but a few people beat me to it. Yesterday I bought a topical Benadryl gel that comes in handy stick form. You just dab it on there. So far, so good.

As for the dog’s butt – if he keeps it up, ask the vet about it. If not, maybe it’s just an itchy butt. :-)

My husband got bitten by something horrid last year and got this awesome ring around it so we were convinced it was lyme disease. Turned out to have been… well, we still don’t know exactly what it was, but a steroid cream worked wonders.

Our cat did that butt thing for awhile. She, uh, needed some trimming back there. Little bits were hanging on, so we got to wait for her to poo and then wipe her butt with a wet cloth to keep her clean! Ah, memories…

Oh so much to comment on…..

Keep us informed on DOG, you know how much we love her!

I too suffer from PoHs, and here’s my disgusting-but-it-works secret: if you scratch them until they bleed, and then squeeze the blood out, they’re stop itching.

OK – I read the linked-to article. And well, I am still trying to understand how someone can scratch THROUGH bone. It isn’t making sense… Although very creepy, I am having trouble imagining how it is even possible.