Bugs

As I am sure all of you have noticed, it has been a very buggy summer! Happy solstice, actually.  The bugs are darn awful this year!  I went to the beach today to enjoy the beautiful hot day after work, and the mosquitos were eating me alive!  Then I moved my towel from the deck to the beach sand and the flies and mosquitos ate me!!  How am I supposed to enjoy the beach when I'm being eaten alive??  I took a quick refreshing dip in Lake Michigan and walked back to my cabin, just before the rain started!  As I was on the phone with a friend, I FREAKED out at this HUGE spider on my porch.  I'm not talking Daddy long legs huge, i'm talking like tropical rainforest as big as my palm huge!  ICK!  I hate spiders but I can normally remove one from my space.  This one was bigger than any of the ones I saw down in Nicaragua and probably Costa Rica too!  I'm still breathing heavily with my bedroom door shut so I can't see it smugly sitting on front of my door on the porch, like it knows it gives me the chills when I see it.
As is always said though, this is part of living with nature.  I am, infact, intruding on their space.  Spiders were here long before I was, mosquitos like human blood and flies, well are just annoying.  As much as I wish I didn't have to do it, I know I'm going to be wearing DEET all summer every time I go to the beach and using more of it than I did in central america.  I wish there was a more healthy bug repellent though that didn't cause fertility problems.  The banana story is totally a myth... I tried it last week...
This leaves me to sitting in my bug filled and lined cottage for the rest of the evening, which is fine with me since it started raining and I enjoy the peace.
Other than the bugs, its great here!  Today I worked on drafting a management plan for our preserves based off of one from The Nature Conservancy!  pretty legit things I'm learning!