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Friday was absolutely gorgeous, so I shuttled Clara Jane out to the backyard. She's inherited my delicate skin issues, so I'm not sure why I torture her with forced outside time. But she had fun. I spent most of the time in my big Adirondack chair with my book. I felt the prick of bug bites two, maybe three times. Not enough to raise the attention a swellophile like myself.

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon. I spent the day clawing at the welts on my ankles and toes, cursing myself for wearing flip-flops during Friday's outing, wondering if it would be feasable to empty 20 bottles of anti-itch hydrocortisone spray into a foot tub for a soak.

While taking a shower, my hip began to wail at me as the water hit it. If I'd had a tree handy, I gladly would have rubbed my skin against the bark until both were stripped bare. I looked at my hip and found what I can only describe as one of those dishes of cottage cheese topped with a maraschino cherry like the ones from your elementary school cafeteria. Only imagine a big vat of cottage cheese dotted with around 78 maraschino cherries.

It's not nearly as appetizing and delicious as it sounds.

And no, I didn't get these bites because I was pantless in my backyard on Friday. These are bites from scientifically-engineered bugs with the biting power of sharks encoded into their DNA because they can bite through both yoga pants and underpants.

In other news, last night we took Clara Jane to The Great Forest Park Balloon Race. I think they're taking a lot of liberties with the word "race" because even though it was rather gusty, those balloons are pretty damn slow. I think it's safe to say that Richard Petty wasn't pulling any ripcords.

I spent this morning sitting my diseased ass on the couch, knitting a baby blanket while watching "The Alternative" on VH1 Classic. It was only afterwards that I realized that a baby blanket knit while watching videos by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and Echo & the Bunnymen will probably give the baby colic.

And ass-pox.