Bitten

We had a lovely day on Monday — rode our bikes (T's newly purchased from an overly ambitious Craigslist seller for one third of its price) to the islands, both took long runs (in shifts, while the other watched our stuff), and lounged on the nudie beach (admiring some, evading others) — but clearly something entomological did not want me there. Since then, I have developed steadily more irritated clusters of bites, mostly on my thighs and stomach, that redden by the day and even possibly increase in number, though this last observation may be a symptom of my rampant hypochondria. Google offers little help, much panic: Carrions disease, the Pappataci fever virus, Leishmaniasis — all carried by the delightful (and needless to say extraneous to our continued well-being) sand flea. Of course, minor annoyance for several days is also a possible consequence, indeed the most common, but why settle for the mundane? An abiding fear is that they were not incurred at the beach at all, but are the result of a sudden, unexplained, and entirely coincidental infestation of bedbugs. I continue to monitor this possibility with utmost seriousness. I'm considering mapping the existing bites, or marking them with a Sharpie before I go to bed tonight, in order to be certain that there are no new ones tomorrow. I shall keep you updated — both on the developing invasion of alien insects and my dwindling sanity.