Buzz

Should I end up losing my marbles (this assumes a fact not in evidence that I have not done so already), my biographers may ultimately point to this blog post as the first signs of my pending insanity.  So I'll just get right down to it:

I'm having trouble sleeping.  And it's a mosquito's fault.

Okay, so that doesn't sound all THAT crazy.  I've gotten mosquito bites before -- a lot of them -- so many, in fact, that my mother used to claim that my blood was just sweeter than anyone else's in the family (she did not make this gem of a line up, I can assure you).  So I'm pretty used to dealing with the itching.  I'm pretty good at sleeping through it at night, and grinning and bearing it during the day.

This is different.

This is, as far as I can tell, just one mosquito.  A super mosquito.  With stealth powers.  And camoflage.  And invincibility.

Let me try to explain.  Over the past two weeks, I've woken up in the middle of the night with mosquito bites.  This happened when I initially moved into my apartment -- it was still summer, it was humid out, and I frequently left my window open during the day while I was at work to let some air (and, it turns out, mosquitos) into my room.  As the weather started to cool down, I started keeping my window closed so as to keep the mosquitos out, convinced as I was that I had managed to kill all of the ones that had infested my room during weeks of open-window-policy.  It's been a few weeks since I've seen a mosquito in our apartment, so I think it's safe to say that mosquito season is finally coming to an end.

Except, it seems, in my room, and except, it seems, after I go to bed.  At first, evidence of SuperSkeeter's existence manifested itself in those middle-of-the-night bite discoveries.  I would wake up, feel the bites, get pissed off, eventually get back to sleep, and then -- wierdest thing -- wake up with no evidence that the bites ever existed.  They were, well....vanishing bites.

Now, bored of simply disturbing my slumber after the REM cycle has begun, SuperSkeeter has decided to up the ante.  He doesn't wait for me to fully enter the REM cycle.  In an apparent game of mosquito Chicken, SuperSkeeter has started to test the limits.  He waits until I'm lying in bed, lights off, eyes closed, and then BUZZ! right in my ear, and up I get, lights on, hands at the ready, eager to clap the fucker out of existence.  If I'm lucky, I see him for about a second and then, like Kaiser Soze, poof, he's gone.  In the past two nights, convinced that I've had him dead to rights, I've smacked the air vigorously, leaving nothing but ringing hands to show for my efforts.  Sometimes, I'm so close to sleep by the time he BUZZ!es that I just flail about, smacking myself in the face in the hopes that I'll get him out of literal blind luck.

And yet he endures, like the Energizer Bunny, his appetite for the destruction of my night's sleep (and my blood) as endless as my accuracy as a mosquito slapper is poor.  I used to have a rep with these guys.  My reputation as a mosquito killer rivaled that of the blue zappy thing.  SuperSkeeter has shattered that in a matter of weeks.

Last night, I tried setting a trap for him.  After several cycles of lights off, BUZZ!, slap, lights on, see him sort of, slap, miss, rinse and reapeat, I decided to lie down without turning the lights off so as to not have to waste precious time hitting the switch before leaping to attention when he made his fly-by.  Several hours, even more missed slaps, and many bites (none of which, of course, were still there) later, I woke up to the sound of my alarm.  I had finally fallen asleep, exhausted from my failed mission against SuperSkeeter.  The light had remained on the whole time.

I promise he's real.  I'm reminded of the episode of SportsNight when Casey is plagued by a metaphorical fly that nobody else can see, even on tape.  Let me remind all of you naysayers that in the end, the fly turns out to be real.  Many of you are probably grappling with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and therefore have little sympathy for me.  That's understandable.  But let me tell you.  SuperSkeeter is no slouch.