The calamitous fate of calamine Kate

One for my Pop
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I hate being itchy. Pain I can take, itchy is another story. I remember when I was a little girl with the chicken pocks. I had been home from school for a couple of days and was beginning to get stir crazy. The sitting and itching was to much. I stripped my polka-dotted body down and ran out of the house. My mom saw and began to chase me down the street. I ran as fast as my 6 year old legs could take me, buck naked, with my care bear blanket clutched in one hand waving over my head like some sort of flag for the glory of my relief.

Pokhara
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I did not run down the streets of Nepal naked, but I can gaurantee I wanted to. Bed bugs crawled through the sponge-like mattress of my bed and had a midnight feast on me. My entire body itched. Everyone at the hotel had theories as to what bit me.

"Mam, is caterpillar. Little hairs when it crawl on you give bumps."

"Miss, is ants. The ants they are getting mad when you roll on them, so ouch, they bite you miss."

"Oh miss you need the wicks." At which point she held both of her hands up to her face and sniffed. "You know? Wicks?"

maybe this is what feasted
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Realization dawned on me that she was saying "Vicks" when she bustled out of the room and returned with tiger balm. They use it for everything here. She began rubbing the menthol balm into my 60+ bites.

"Now you wait 2 minutes, itch will be better. Your skin to soft mam, to much soft, make bugs want to bite."

2 minutes later and the spots had tripled in size, swelling to the size of quarters. I didn't get to enjoy much of Pokhara. I spent the majority of 2 days in bed knocked out on antihistimines and waking up with my nervous system on fire.