Vacation is over/bug sprays

We arrived home safely from vacation late Saturday night. It was truly awesome, and a good time was had by all despite the bugs.

Somewhat surprisingly, a mix of catnip oil, corn mint oil, rosemary, and glycerin worked very well as a bug spray^[1], no worse than the commercial stuff we also had.^[2] It has the additional advantages of smelling much better, and not feeling so icky as the more normal bug spray. How Mom thought to try it out, I am not really sure, though there are a number of mint and catnip based results in my google search. The idea, naturally, was to have a variety of bug sprays based on different things, since the bugs seemed to grow progressively immune in the few days we spent in Cayo Costa^[3], in hopes that as one stopped working, a different one would give us a few more days of relief.

Neither spray worked perfectly, and both had to be sprayed extensively, but those two were the only two we ended up using. The first few days we were not particularly careful, so all of us got a few bites, and Lauren unfortunately got more than a few, but after that we were more careful, spraying up pant legs, down sleeves and shirt necks, and anywhere else skin might be exposed as clothing shifts around.

Returning to my original thread, it is a huge bummer to return to work from vacation. It was very hard to get up this morning, not because of lack of sleep, I was actually well rested, but simply from lack of desire. Mom was in a similar state, plus a huge dose of nervousness as she is just starting at Paul VI today. Still, I feel so very much better for having been away for a week.