song of costello

I started work on Tuesday. I work as an excavator for the National Board of Antiquities at an archaeological site. The site is in a forest next to a place where they dig for sand for one reason or another. We're digging what we're estimating to be a prehistoric site and we expect very few findings beyond some quartz left from prehistoric people carving things out of them. Maybe some burnt rock here and there. I'm going to be working there till the beginning of July.

Anyways... I'm fairly sure the seventh circle of hell has black flies and Dante just forgot to mention this. When I dig, all I can hear in my mind is the lyrics: "This is hell, this is hell, I am sorry to tell you, it never gets better or worse".

On the day we started work, a heat wave began in the country. So it's around +30C ( 86F) or warmer all day long and we have 8 and a half hour long days. It's hell when you are doing physically straining work outside under the sun, with barely any shade. Alone this actually wouldn't be so bad (pretty bad, but I think I'd survive somehow). What makes it hell are the god damn bugs, namely black flies.

We each always end up with a big swarm of black flies around us (if you don't know what black flies are: they are teeny tiny flies that like to swarm. They bite and it usually hurts since, unlike mosquitoes, they actually bite off a piece of skin. So you end up bleeding and the bite gets swollen and itchy. They will search for places with thin skin and they will do anything to get there). We have repellent that should work on them but apparently they are hungry enough to ignore it almost completely, no matter how much you use it. At one point, I swear they only got excited about it! So there I am, covered in sticky and icky smelling repellent and it does nothing (not gonna stop using it though - it works for a very short time sometimes...I need that time. And I might have seen a couple of them die while trying to eat the repellent covered skin).

The bugs are driving everyone nuts. It's hard to try and eat, they get into your nose when you breathe and they get at your eyes. My friend swung an axe at herself in a desperate attempt to get rid of some of the flies! Yes, with the sharp end, yes she actually hit herself with it. Yes she's okay ... she later proceeded to hit herself on the head with a bucket trying to do the same thing. My other pal almost did the same with a trowel.

And the other night, before falling asleep, several people actually hallucinated a swarm of them around their heads! I was one of them. I almost started swatting them with my hands but then I realized it was a hallucination. And while yesterday I was not hallucinating them, I still felt like flailing my hand around to get rid of them. I swear they will haunt me in my dreams for weeks, I'm fairly sure since I still have a lot of time to spend at the site. Wednesday a large portion of both of my arms were swollen because of the bites.

I HATE THOSE GODDAMN BUGS! AND THE HEAT! DEAR LORD THE HEAT!
HEAT AND BUGS AND PHYSICAL LABOUR.

I'm fairly sure that if anything could drive me
into becoming a psycho killer, it's the black flies.

I really miss winter. I am not a summer person. A week of +30C (86F) is slowly but surely killing me. I'm just ridiculously happy it's Friday and I have the weekend off. I get to rest my aching muscles, I get to let my sun burns heal properly and NO BLACK FLIES for a while!