I know I’m not alone in wishing the mosquito population would die off in our area.
With local officials trying to catch up on Hurricane Beryl’s debris removal, it’s only natural that some things fall by the wayside.
I mean, mom’s chickens are thoroughly enjoying the bug buffet and provide plenty of minor entertainment on the front porch for the dogs, cats, and myself included.
However, it makes the task of taking the dogs outside to do their business a much more annoying chore than usual – and the rain doesn’t help in that regard either!
Plus, we’ve got varying levels of rain forecasted for the entire week to the point that any mosquito mitigation could quickly become a moot point.
You can’t fight mosquitos with several inches of standing water nearly as easily as you can with drier conditions.
However, I’m also of the mind that we might be cursing the rain right now, but in a month or less be in the drought index and suffering a wholly different kind of weather-related problems.
It’s almost like we can’t win for trying and since Beryl, I’ve seen quite a few folks planning to leave the Gulf Coast area.
I can’t say that I blame them too much, but even thinking of packing for more than a mandatory hurricane evacuation, long weekend, or tiny personal vacation just makes me shudder.
Even with my latest foray into deep cleaning, I still have a lot of sentimental stuff that I can’t part with and just glancing at my book collection shuts down my will to clean.
That’s another trait that Mike and I share despite not being blood-related - we both love books across several topics between fiction and non-fiction.
Granted, his are more factual history-based and a majority of the ones I have on hand shamelessly feature an abundance of fiction topics.
Still, we have some common ground where our literary tastes overlap and have shared several books between us when one of us finds a series we think the other might like.
It’s even more entertaining when my brother DJ shares books with Mike when their interests intersect in the science fiction genre.
And I say it’s entertaining because DJ was never one to be as much of a reader as I am!
Overall, I’m glad that DJ has discovered his own preference for books and is cultivating it to the point of designating a few series on his Amazon Christmas list.
To that end, we’re not even going to talk about my Amazon wish lists – I have them broken down by basic areas of interest and have one just dedicated to books I’d like.
I have to confess that the current “book wish list” features hundreds of entries marked and includes everything from cookbooks and art books to dozens of series and out-of-print books, too.
Not to mention handfuls of books that were recommended by friends or the lovely Amazon algorithms.
Admittedly, I do sometimes sit with my wish list and check the titles against what our local library has just to see if I can check something out and read it before purchasing it to make sure I enjoy it.
I don’t know if anyone else does that, but it definitely has saved me money on novels I found to be trash for free rather than eating $25 or more.
