Wednesday in the Park with Amy (and $#%@! Mosquitoes)

I will NOT let the mosquitoes thwart me!

…Or, maybe I will. Check back in with me at 2:00 a.m. when I’m awake because tonight’s newly acquired bites (4 or 5?) are itching so badly that I can’t sleep.

And what noble endeavor are the mosquitoes trying to keep me from accomplishing? Visiting as many local parks as I can.

This is the path where the most intense mosquito attack occurred.

After 4 months of not venturing outside of my neighborhood very often, I decided it was time to start exploring some parks. At first, I was thinking of well known or iconic parks. Yes, after living in Minneapolis more than 20 years, I have only given beloved spots such as Minnehaha Falls a cursuory perusal. What better time to remedy that than now, when COVID has freed up my calendar?

Ah yes, COVID–I’m usually not a fan of crowds in ideal circumstances, but certainly want to maintain social distancing now, even if I’m outside. Would this be a problem I’d encounter while enjoying the great (tamed) outdoors?

Why yes, yes it would. Not really a suprise when I was at Minnehaha Falls, but I did NOT expect to see an actual sporty GAME being played tonight by 20 plus people breathing heavily on each other at a Long Lake Park in Ramsey County. (I was too freaked out to look at the scene too closely to even see what they were playing–something with a frisbee?)

So yes, I was at a less iconic but very lovely in its own way (and mostly quieter and peaceful except for the berserk people congregating near the pavilion) park tonight which demonstrates that I just want to get out and take in whatever nature and novelty I can.

This post is like a tangled knot of necklaces in my jewelry box–the topics are so intertwined it’s hard to tell where one starts and one ends. So let me at least identify the topics:

Mosquitoes
Personal growth and horizon expansion
Chagrin it’s taken me this long to do these things
Pride at not getting lost in a park
Mosquitoes
Nature (see also “beauty of” and “spiritually calming effect of”)*
#$%& mosquitoes
Fears of COVID
Discovery and exploration
Anger at people oblivious to COVID
#*@#$ MOSQUITOES!!!

And yes, I do use mosquito repellant spray, I’m not an idiot. At least I’m not an idiot after the last time that I didn’t use spray and got several bites. But tonight I strayed off the paved trail (okay maybe I am an idiot) and the mosquitoes flew up my clothes and bit me. And I would take photos of the bites and how swollen they are to prove that I’m not a wimp (or not a total wimp) but they are on my back…and ass.

So, continuous improvement! Next time I will spray dangerous chemicals on my bare skin AND under my clothes.

Because, bitching aside, I am finding this obsession pretty darn cool. Okay, maybe by tomorrow I will have lost interest, but still, I’ve been to FOUR parks in ONE week which is way better than my rate of visitation in 22 years.

If I were a better blogger (or at least one with more time to both get to more parks and write about them) I would get into more details about each park experience and its unique delights and challenges.

So selfies and railing against mosquitoes and the universe that created them will have to suffice.