Posse! My darlings!
::skritch,skritch:: OMG! It’s the dreaded Harvest! So much corn dust. So MANY bugs! So much CORN DUST!
Oh. Did I mention CORN DUST?
I cannot smell anything.
I cannot taste anything – I don’t think I’ve eaten this much salad since, uhh, this time last year (with ALLL the crunchy veg and nuts and I hope to hockey sticks my colon appreciates all this fiber … lordt.) I simply cannot countenance eating food I cannot taste, which is where salad comes in – all that cruuunnnch! takes the place of actual flavor (wanna know how bad it is? I can barely taste BACON!)
My eyes?
My sinuses?
You get the drift (of CORN DUST!)…
I’z busted.
wanna know HOW busted? I can’t really smell Lyric! Or Mitsouko! If you’ve smelled either of them, you know how dire this is, since normally I can smell those from the Space Station. I’m just taking a hiatus from anything meaningful, perfume-wise. Jean Nate and Jergens is about as complicated as I can get right now. Weirdly, I am getting TONS of compliments on that combo. It’s amazing – I can swan around in an Amouage attar and ain’t nobody got nuthin’ to say – but let me slather on some original Jergens? Boom! Every other person: “oooh! you smell GOOD!”. Huh.
It’s …. well, it’s like this every year. And since I now live here, I just have to live with it. Lots of saline flushes, Zaditor for my fancy new eyeballs…. long sleeves for those vicious little black bugs the size of a cracked piece of pepper (if that) armed with 4″ fangs – they are driven out of the fields during harvest and … well, I guess they’ve still gotta eat… so we are now on the menu. Honestly, though… how on earth can something so small have such a painful bite?!!!
Oh, yeah. The other thing I can smell is Cutter’s (insect repellant). But guess what?!! Those vicious little black specks ? They don’t care ’bout no Cutter’s. So I’mo ditch that since it… stinks. I think I’ll go back to Avon’s Skin So Soft, see if that’ll keep them at bay – it worked in Kenya… might work here in Central IL during Harvest Season.
A girl can dream.
What’s going on in your world? Are you being EATEN ALIVE by vicious teeny black bugs?
btw – those vicious little predatory bugs are Black Midges. Satan’s Midges is more like it.
Reading this I’m happy to be in England. I say England cos Scotland is midge party central.
We only get flying ants & then only for a day
Oh how awful! Harvesting where I live has driven out the weevils. They are evil as they get into food if allowed and they make their way into every room of the house. Also rogue male spiders are out and about, my daughter just killed one inside her tennis show–EEEEEEK! And all that on top of box elders and wasps everywhere trying to get in. Time to call pest control.
GHOSTBUSTERS!!!
They sound otherworldly, so… GHOSTBUSTERS!
I don’t wish our local manure stink on you. It has permeated most vehicles and the wind. It hasn’t rained enough to knock it all the way down.
OMG! Yep! When the Sale Barn was still here (burned down a few years ago) that smell! And I’m the girl who loves free horse manure !! But the urine can set your hair on fire!
What ARE those teeny black bugs? Midges? They’re the worst! Also you have 100% reminded me that I need to grab some original Jergens while erranding today, I forgot all about it! What a lovely smell. I hope the dust settles soon.
Oh! Satan’s midges! We don’t have many here (too dry) but we definitely have some! They find me out in the front garden in mid-summer.
Alas, it’ll be awhile. Thousands of acres of corn. And then the beans (soy). Which are even dustier, imo.
But yes – Jergens is absolutely lovely – and I’ve yet to find someone who doesn’t love it.
Wow! That sounds hellacious! Like one of the plagues that Moses unleashed on Egypt and the Pharaoh! Man! Here in the mid-Atlantic we’re being pestered by the spotted lantern fly. They’re the size of a quarter, they swarm around, and settle on people and everything. Fortunately they don’t bite. But they’re invasive, and we’re advised to unalive them if possible. Jergens and Jean Nate are both such nostalgic, old school scents for me. My grandmother wore Jean Nate, and mom wore Jergens. I’d be saying “Mmmm” right along with the rest of the crowd!
I think that’s a huge part of the compliments (not that they don’t smell great) but Jergens and Jean Nate are nostalgia scents for a lot of folks, unlike, say, an Amouage 😀
I agree! Plus something like an Amouage is decidedly complicated and vaguely ‘foreign’ (not culturally, per se, more just ‘not regular’) and that can be intimidating. Like Mitsouko.
Okay – it’s official: YOU WIN THE WORLD WORD WIN. ‘Unalive’ (as a verb) is now in my Forever lexicon!
I think “unalive” as a verb surged in popularity when Facebook censor bots would ban people’s accounts for using words like kill, murder, dead, etc.
Ugh. Midges are the worst. Clouds of the bitey little fuxkers. If they are the same variety as the ones in the west Scotland then yep, skin so soft helps reduce your appeal (but some, no, some will plough through )
We don’t really get them on the east coast. Too windy. We get cleggs.
I had to look up what cleggs are. Horseflies!!! OMG, they are nasty! Years ago, I was berry picking and some cleggs showed up. One or two got me in the calf – extremely painful, and I found out I’m allergic. My calf swelled to the size of my thigh.
JEEBUS! That’s a helluva allergy!
“large flies with blood-sucking females”
Great Green Gravy!
I think it’s still available — when I was a teenager summering in Maine, we used Old Woodsman insect repellent. Now, that worked on most critters — and boy did it stain everything and stink. Sigh, such memories.
How long does the harvest last? I hope things clear up soon.
That sounds even worse than the midges! LOL!
Alas, harvest lasts awhile. Thousands of acres of corn. Then it’s soybean harvest. You’ll see combines in the fields until late November (early December if they fall behind)
I’m sorry to read about that. Even the name Midge sounds evil.
New eyeballs? Did I miss something?
My FANCY NEW EYEBALLS (now that I’ve had the cataract surgeries)! You said you’re next… a few years down the road..
It is bad if you can’t smell Lyric or Mitsouko when you think about it. Right now, I have those stupid European hornets that like to haunt my back deck at night. Since the back deck is where I smoke, I can’t smoke there after dark with a light on. It’s been so dry in my neck of the woods, I haven’t been bitten by a mosquito since early August and normally I am covered with bites from May until mid to late October. But since we are getting a fair bit of rain in northern Ohio, the mosquitos will be back to feast on me.
Oh, I hate those hornets!
Would a fan help? I have two GLAM ceiling fans on the porch, as well as two standing/box fans and it’s a tremendous help, keeping the bities away