If I Die of West Nile, Blame it on Safeway

Ok, I said no more posts from me this week. But I can't help myself and I have to wait for laundry to be done before I can pack anyways. Yesterday I went to the store to pick up a last few items I needed for girls camp. It never occurred to me that we would need more than one tube of toothpaste. Weird. One of the things that was on my list was insect repellent. I've heard horror stories of how terrible the mosquitoes are here, that they are giant and come in giant swarms and eat people alive and stuff. Personally, I don't really believe it. There's no way they can be worse than they were in Idaho, especially since it's not even really gotten warm here. Besides, mosquitoes aren't half the terror of chiggers, and no one hear has even heard of those. Maybe I am naive though, and the mosquitoes really do eat people alive. Plus, being pregnant, now is not really the time to experiment with the West Nile virus. So I thought I would buy some insect repellent. I went to the store and was having a hard time finding it (this is the store that puts cookies and crackers in the same aisle as the baby supplies . . . maybe that will make more sense to me in a few months). Luckily, there was a very observant and helpful worker who asked me if I was finding everything alright (I really don't mind wandering around the store until I find what I am looking for, but I think it makes other people nervous). I said I was looking for bug spray and she took me right to it, and I realized that bug spray is the stuff that kills ants and roaches and the like. Fortunately, repellent was on the same shelf. As I started looking through the repellent, the lady asked me if I was expecting. Now I know I am naive. I thought she was going to congratulate me, ask my due date and try to predict if I am having a boy or girl, which is still a novelty to me. I said yes, and then boy did she start in on me. I got the lecture of my life about DEET and how it affects fetuses. Really, I did check this out before I went to the store. I figured if the FDA and CDC have approved it for use by pregnant women, then it must be OK. Plus I figured a little DEET was better than West Nile. But I forgot to take into consideration the opinion of old women who work at the grocery store. I tried to explain that it really was ok, that I had made sure, I tried telling her that I preferred it over West Nile, and I think I may have even lied and tried to tell her it was for someone else. She would hear none of it. I thought maybe I could just browse around the area until she got called to a spill on aisle 3, and then grab the repellent and run for the checkout stand. Nope. She found plenty of things on that aisle to occupy her time. I finally decided it wasn't worth battling this women over whether DEET was safe or not, and I would have hated to have seen the look on her face if I bought it- like I had just left my infant child in the car with all the windows rolled up on a 115 degree day. So I bought myself a cute Alaskan hat instead and I hope someone at camp will let me use some of their bug repellent. I'll be sure to ask someone who is under the age of 65 though.