I love bees. Some day, I will keep bees. (Some day I’d also like to keep bats, but maybe I shouldn’t do both at the same time, mm?) Until then, I have to settle for taking care of the wild bees.
About a week ago, the weather finally started to warm up. Not one of those fluke 70-degree days in January, but a good, sturdy March day pushing into the 60s. These are the days when you know spring is really on the way in (especially when such days are preceded or followed by six inches [or feet] of snow).
My garden boxes, empty and covered with leaves for the winter, were suddenly full of prowling bees.
“No, bees!” I cried. “Stay home! It isn’t spring enough yet! There aren’t any flowers for you!”
I worry about the bees.
But the nice weather has persisted all week, and for some reason, the bees keep looking for food in my empty garden boxes. I imagine the moldering leaves smell sweet and possibly tasty, but I can’t imagine they actually are either of those things.
Remembering some info I read about bees in the past, I did a bit of looking and discovered that yes, bee keepers do supplement their bees’ diets from time to time, especially in early spring. With what? Sugar water! I can do that.
So I put out a frisbee full of sugar water (after perusing several apiary forums to make sure I wouldn’t screw it up and accidentally poison the bees). The frisbee (‘scuse me, “flying disc”) was bright orange, and I thought that might attract them. Y’know, like flowers.
I watched the frisbee and I watched the bees. They completely ignored it. They keep nosing around the dead leaves as if that was so much more interesting than a bright orange disc full of tasty, fake nectar. So I put a little of the sugar water on some of the leaves around the disc, and a few of the leaves into the disk. The bees immediately took interest in the water on the leaves around the disc.
I was running late for work, so I contented myself that they could probably figure it out from there.
When I came home eight hours alter, my frisbee was completely empty. I was confused. Had the neighborhood kids come over and spilled it all out? Maybe a dog had come by for a snack? Had the leaves I’d draped over the sides somehow wicked the water out into the surrounding leaves? It couldn’t have evaporated – only a few sticky smudges remained in the bottom.
Rather disheartened, I filled the frisbee again and set it out. Perhaps it had been eaten up by the bees.
When I left the house this morning, I nearly fell over from surprise. Apparently word had spread, and my bee-feeder was full of bees.
Huh. Somehow it looks less full of bees in the photo than I remember it looking. Here, have a close-up:
I took these photos when I came home at 11:20 to pick something up. No liquid remained in the frisbee by then, the bees were licking on the damp leaves to get whatever was left.
And down the hill, in the tree where I know they have their hive, the bees are flying happily in and out and I’m a little less worried that they’ll starve before the daffodils bloom.
Yay bees! Don’t forget me when it’s squash-pollinating time.
Soooo I had to make a call to a radio station with a billing question, and the gal who answered put me on hold. Their “hold music” was a talk-show program where angry men of one political alignment were bashing men from the other political alignment. I dropped my head to my desk and wept a little, because I am seriously depressed by the negativity of all public servants (and their pundits) in this world. I don’t care who’s bashing who – none of it is okay with me.
I put the phone on speaker because I couldn’t handle having that babble directly in my ear. The gal I wanted to talk to didn’t come back and didn’t come back and didn’t come back. Finally, the angry guys on the talk show wrapped up for a commercial break and I heaved a sigh of relief.
Then the commercials came on.
I didn’t pay much attention through the first few, but then one came on for environmental responsibility. The first bit of the ad claimed that if we wanted to be more green, we could consider riding our bikes to work instead of driving. If just 1 in 5 Americans did this, we would save X-hundred-billion barrels of oil a year. (Okay, that’s nice.) Other ways to be green included something something about reducing plastic use – “see how your life could improve if you just remove plastic from it!” and then – please understand, my attention was wandering a bit – the nice advertising man suggested I could try using dryer lint to make a new pair of shorts.
My jaw dropped and I turned my full attention to the phone — just as the person I was waiting to talk to picked up the line.
Now I will never know who thought I should make new shorts out of dryer lint, and I’m seriously bummed out about this. The commercial had to be some kind of a spoof, right? Poking fun at heavy-duty environmentalists? I tried googling it, and found out that there’s a very nice man who has a really nice mustache and all sorts of ideas about how to recycle dryer lint:
I’m considering calling back and asking to be put on hold again. Listening to those lint-heads flambe’ each other might just be worth getting to hear this again.
This story begins with an office party. There’s one every year, of course. It’s usually in January, the better to make sure everyone can be there. For the first several years I worked at the office, we had the party at a local restaurant. Five years ago, we had it at the Deadwood Social Club, which has a beautiful black box theater, complete with a stage. After eating our delicious meal, a few of us sat staring at the stage, pondering how awesome it would be if there was something to watch happening on the stage.
The the idea of the Office Talent Show was born. The next year we had the party at the home of some of the bosses, and the Talent Show was mandatory. There was a lot of grumbling, but everyone wound up participating. There was a kazoo band incorporating may of the humbugs, to magnificent effect. Other acts included a classically trained pianist playing ACDC’s TNT (classically), which was hilarious, several of our staff members who are in local bands playing original songs (impressively), some of our singers singing, one of the owners riding a unicycle, one of the owners doing a Monte Python sketch, and me demonstrating my infallible knowledge of Disney music (ending with a rousing audience-participation chorus of Mulan’s “Be A Man”).
The second year met with less variety in talent and much more grumbling. (“How can you force us to do this? It’s cruel and unusual punishment!”) But the show went on. There were ukuleles and card tricks and singing and Eddie Izzard and I demonstrated my proficiency in sign language, accompanied by a friend singing an opera aria she and I composed an hour before the party. It was a little lame, I confess.
The third year – last year – full-out rebellion set in. Our employees refused to come to the party if we forced them to participate in a talent show. So there was no talent show. The party was okay – there was food and drink and some chatting – and then everyone left. It felt very unfulfilling.
And so this year we re-instituted the talent show, under a “not quite mandatory” policy. And I like showing off, so I was happy enough to volunteer…
Especially when I realized I have an actual talent.
You see, there is a particular employee in our office who is well-known for whistling badly. Christmas songs, mostly. And one day I was walking by while someone was talking about his bad whistling, and I thought to myself – “heh, heh. Poor guy. I bet he wishes he was as awesome a whistler as I am.” And then it struck me – I really am an awesome whistler.
It is a talent I inherited from my Grandpa George.
I can whistle on-pitch, on-tempo, and I can trill, which isn’t too shabby at all. So, curious, I hopped over to YouTube and searched for “good songs to whistle.” Up came a slew of videos relating to the World Whistling Championships, which I didn’t even know existed. And let me tell you – there are some really amazing whistlers out there.
Finally, I saw an interview with the 2009 Whistling Grand Champion, and she mentioned that maybe next year she would tackle Bohemian Rhapsody.
…
Well obviously, if the World Whistling Grand Champion thought it was a good idea, so should I. And it fit the talent show bill perfectly – something talent-ish, but more importantly, entertaining. Everyone knows Bohemian Rhapsody, and it’s kind of a silly song. Perfect.
So I started practicing.
You know what? Bohemian Rhapsody is not a piece of cake. Normally, I can pick music up very quickly by ear. After listening to Bohemian Rhapsody for two solid days on endless repeat, I was still losing track of which key I was supposed to be in during the middle section, so I downloaded the sheet music. Turns out the song changes keys three times, and time signatures another three times. I complained to my friend Carlynn, a Doctor of Cello and Graduate of Freddy Mercury Week(tm), who said to my pain: “that guy [Freddie Mercury] was not messing around.” She also pointed out that the dude hates shirts.
True enough.
So I kept practicing, using my out-of-tune piano as a crutch. I’m glad I had a full two weeks to get it under control. I probably could have used one more.
Finally the moment arrived: the Not-Quite-Mandatory Talent Show that All But Three Employees had volunteered for. Suddenly, it turned into Only Three Employees who were interested in performing. Whatever. I had a talent and I was ready to go.
After a rousing accordian chorus of Louie Louie (Louis Louis? Lewie Lewie?), I was called to the stage, in front of my massive dining room table. I called for a B to begin my a capella intro to the song and launched into it.
(Disclaimer, in case you elect to watch the video: my accompaniment was provided by a laptop, making it rather hard to hear. Also, I especially love the bit in the video when Dan checks to see if I’m really whistling. )
My talent was received with exactly the enthusiasm I had hoped: delighted giggles from the first folks who realized what I was up to, applauding, and maybe even a little whistling along.
What I did not expect was the rousing endorsement I got afterward. Apparently, I really amazed my coworkers with what may be a legitimate talent. I promised that if I made it into the World Whistling Championships, I would invite them all along.
And you know what? The World Whistling Championships are hilarious. I looked them up after everyone went home, and here are some of the guidelines I found:
“You may not accompany yourself … [because the] judges need to watch your facial expressions and particularly the use of your lips.”
“But for serious whistlers whose goal is to become an international grand champion, they must enter both the classical and popular categories.” (Which leads me to believe there may be room in this competition for kicks-only whistlers. Also, it leads me to believe you can’t accidentally win.)
Regarding your selection for a Classical Entry: “Composers to be considered are usually those of Europe and the United States. … If Asian, African or South American compositions, a professional music authority must vouch for authenticity of your choice.”
Regarding your selection for a Popular Music Entry: ”…the choices are wide and varied from folk, blues, jazz, county, rock and roll, western, reggae, and many mixtures of music for the ‘masses.’ Your selection could be from ancient ballads to the most current pop song. When in doubt about your choices, you may wish to use the New Harvard Dictionary of Music edited by Dan Randel, or discuss your selections with musicians who have graduate degrees in music.”
That last one is really long, but it was so funny, I had to post it all.
All said and done, I have come to this conclusion: if the World Whistling Championships ever come to South Dakota, I am SO there. Or a state fair. I would almost certainly enter a whistling competition at a state fair.
Stay tuned, and if Dustin uploads it and it’s not too embarrassing (I did run directly into the dining room table when rocking out to the last section of the song), I’ll post a link to my awesome performance.
I hate it. Hate it hate it hate it hate it hate it.
I had to get that out of my system.
It is 6:15am. For those of you who know me, you know that is not a time of day that I choose to be conscious for. I’ve been up since 3:00, when the entire wrath of shifting pressure zones descended upon my neighborhood.
As I’ve mentioned previously, I have a really irrational fear of the wind. It’s twenty times worse in my new house because it’s an old house, and everything rattles. There’s the windows for starters. Boy, do they rattle. At 3:30 I got out of bed and went around the house closing storm windows to try and make it better. It did, a little. But then there’s other stuff that rattles, and I don’t even know what it is. We don’t have shutters, though I spend a lot of time imagining that we must as things bang around outside. And then there’s the mysterious thumping upstairs… (I’ve decided it must be branches falling off the massive, terrifying cottonwood tree that looms over our roof. There’s a whole ‘nother thing to worry about.)
After I got the windows all tightened up, I made a very good effort at going back to sleep. Every time I’d start to doze off, WHAM! The front of the house would get smacked with a proper clap of wind. (You thought only thunder clapped? You were wrong.) Then I got this idea into my head that the new storm window I’d installed in the attic earlier in the day was flapping from its hinges because I didn’t take the time to install hooks to keep it locked. Unfortunately, there are guests staying in the attic, so I couldn’t go up there to check. But I also couldn’t get the idea out of my head that this glass window was flapping around by two very measly hinges, so I got out of bed, went outside, and peered up at my attic window from the sidewalk.
It was just fine. Of course.
I’m not strictly rational when I’m half-asleep.
Also, it’s amazing that I didn’t blow away.
So I went back to bed and tried again. All the worrying about the wind had given me a serious crick in the neck which didn’t help. Again, I’d get so close to drifting off then WHOOSHBAM!
It continues: something started smacking around outside. For most of the spring, we had a trellis on the side of the porch that was loose on one side, and it would bang when the wind blew. Dustin screwed it in over the summer, but I became convinced that it must be loose again. If it was, I managed to rationalize that there was nothing I could do about it in the middle of the night, so I needed to just stay in bed and go to sleep. An hour later, however, I had convinced myself that the smacking was actually the storm door which I probably hadn’t pulled all the way shut the first time. No no no, that couldn’t be it – it would make much more noise.
But I couldn’t stop freaking out about it, so here I am, on the couch, with a mug of warm milk and the freaking dawn is breaking. (The storm door and trellis were both secure. I checked.) I fell down the stairs on my way to the kitchen and my toe hurts too, which really adds to the awesome of this morning.
I’m going to be useless today.
(In other news, I also found this photo while searching for the image above. I think it’s how I feel my house should look after a night like this.)
It’s been all over Facebook: RSVP now to the post-rapture looting party on May 21, 2011!
The idea that the world is going to end tomorrow, supported by those who follow the calculations of Harold Camping, has become a giant joke to the larger part of those who know about it. It’s far from the first (and certainly will not be the last) time folks have proclaimed that the end of the world will be on such-and-such very specific date. To me, it breaks my heart a little. People have quit jobs, broken their families, and left everything behind in preparation for an event which I, like so many others, am pretty sure won’t happen tomorrow. I can’t imagine the emotional state they’ll be in if dawn breaks on Sunday.
You have to understand that I’m coming at this from the perspective of someone who also believes the world (society) as we know it is likely in its death throes, and that Armageddon is a real thing that I sincerely hope to see begin during my lifetime. I am one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and we tend to take Biblical prophesies at lot more seriously than many folks in main-stream branches of Christianity. We do the same thing Harold Camping’s group is doing – getting out and warning people – but we’ve been doing it for so long (and mostly without megaphones), that we’re more of an ongoing knock-knock joke than a news item.
And Witnesses have had their run-ins with badly-chosen doomsdays too. The most recent was a date in 1975, but that didn’t pan out, and it left a lot of people broken-hearted. Perhaps that was a lesson that needed to be learned the hard way. It seems so clear to me, in Matthew 24:36 when Jesus says, regarding the end of this world as we know it, “Concerning that day and hour nobody knows, neither the angels of the heavens nor the Son, but only the Father.” If Jesus himself was not given access to that information, why should we be? We are, however, given plenty of opportunities to recognize that the time is getting close, as outline in the rest of Matthew 24.
As someone who believes that such an end will eventually come (though the end I anticipate bears very little resemblance to the end being trumpeted for tomorrow – no rapture, for example), I have undertaken to live my life simply, so that I will not be reluctant to let it go; to keep my priorities straight, so that spiritual matters and not material ones are kept at the forefront; to help any who will listen see that life cannot go on as it is and encourage them to form their own relationships with God. In such a way, I am capable of living in the “end times,” when life is difficult and disasters too abundant, with both hope and patience, without worrying too much about exact dates and times and what the implications to my faith might be if that doesn’t pan out.
So here’s hoping that if it’s not tomorrow, it’s soon. And to my friends and family: I understand that you may think I’m every bit as nuts as the folks who’ve cashed out their 401ks because they won’t be needing them after tomorrow, and respect that this is not the path you’ve chosen. Thank you for continuing to love and support me. I have every confidence that death – by natural causes, unnatural causes, or divine intervention – will not be the end for any of us.
This is big, exciting news. We’ve been waiting and waiting for a new floor, which was finally installed on Saturday. It is El Cheapo Paste-On Faux Parquet. Excellent. The plan is to totally remodel the kitchen some time down the road (probably a couple years from now), but for now, we just wanted it functional.
We’ve spent the last two evenings trying to clean all the dust, mouse remnants, and old junk out so we can start moving our stuff in. It is a SERIOUSLY disgusting place right now. So far, I’ve got all the upper cabinets, drawers, and half the lower cabinets cleaned up. Dustin’s done the windows and sink. All that has taken us two days. Whew. Hopefully tonight will be enough to get the rest done, because I really, really want to move in.
Just cleaning the place up makes it a whole lot cheerier, but take a look at what I will be spending the next two or three years cooking in:
It’s actually a very nice space – plenty of room to move around, decent counter space, appropriate work triangle – but it’s dark. This picture was taken mid-day with all the lights on. It’s gloomy and dingy. That brick business back there? It’s all fake. And it’s grimy. I can’t seem to do enough to clean it off. The cabinets block light from every angle. The counter is regulation 1978 mustard yellow Formica.
What’s a girl to do? I’d really love to slap some paint around to brighten the place up until I can start tearing things out and putting them where I want them. What do you think?
My first thought was to paint the cabinets white, which always seems to brighten up a kitchen, and maybe paint the walls sort of a nice lemony color. Something that won’t make you want to throw up when you see it alongside the counters. So, compliments of Sherwin Williams’ awesome paint-planning tool, here’s my white’n'yellow kitchen:
Yah, I’d like to paint right over the top of the brick. I tried bashing some of it off with a hammer last night, and it went rather badly. The main problem with my color adventure up there, though, is that the lighting in the photo is so bad that I can’t actually choose the colors I think I want. If I put on a nice creamy white and nice lemony yellow, it looks as if I’m trying to stab your eyes out with bright shades. So I chose shades about three times darker than what I really want, hoping it will show the colors the way they’ll actually look in the kitchen even if the paint is bright to start with.
Is it awful? I honestly can’t tell. I think the yellow walls might be awful. Let’s try blue instead:
Erf. You see what I mean about the bright? I think the blue is too bright for the lighting. But anyway, I think I like this better. You? I don’t really know if I’ll ever be able to convince Dustin to paint over the brick, but we’ll see.
Any other colors I should try? How about green?
Ooh, for an afterthought, here’s what happens if I leave the cabinets as they are and just paint the bricks white. It’s not too bad, really:
When I was in grade school, we played the game: “If you could have a superpower, what would it be?” Must’ve been in about third or fourth grade. All the boys wanted x-ray vision, heh heh heh (without really even understanding why seeing underneath girls’ clothes was so great), the nerds wanted to command armies of robots, and someone wanted to be able to teleport from place to place. I, fresh from having read Lois Lowry’s A Gift of Magic, was pretty sure I wanted ESP. I wanted to be able to read people’s minds.
“What??” declared the disbelieving teacher. “None of you want to be able to fly?” Oh yeah, oh yeah, we chorused in remembrance. We want that too.
I’ve since realized that the kid who wanted to teleport was the only one of us who was thinking practically. I mean geeze. Reading minds would turn into a huge burden, armies of robots always backfire, and flying is great but the troposphere is seriously cold. But teleportation? Do you have any idea how much of our lives we spend in cars? On planes? Trains and subways and the rest of it?
Skip to seventh grade, when I attended a superhero party. You were supposed to go dressed as a superhero, one you’d invented yourself. There were prizes for best costume, best superpower, best secret identity, and most useless superpower. My best friend won the prize for the last one. She showed up as Corn Lady, whose only superpower was the amazing ability to communicate with corn. With that stunning victory beside me, I can’t even tell you what I went dressed as on the occasion. I’m sure I had a cape.
Then one day last May I was in France, wallowing in disgust that I just ordered a carafe of “white water” instead of a carafe of white wine, and I’ve finally got it. I know what superpower I want. I want to be able to speak easily in any language. As we bumped along on the Metro that night, I honed down my wish, carefully considering how I would phrase it so that the granting genie could not possibly misconstrue my meaning. Here’s what I came up with:
“I wish I could communicate fluently in the language of the person I’m talking to at any given moment. “
What do you think? Is there still room for misunderstanding? I’m sure. I suspect all genies of granting wishes only grudgingly. I’d probably still only be able to speak to corn.
I puzzled over this for a good ten minutes, at the end of which I had truly convinced myself that someone was going to come up to me one day and actually grant this wish. I was making contingencies for different ways the wish could be offered – in case there was a price demanded or limits imposed…
When I remembered this was only a fantasy, that I did not have a scheduled appointment with said genie, and that the only way to pick up languages is to sit down and actually learn them, I was heartbroken. I felt like someone had just stolen my lollipop, but there was no mother to whom I could appeal to get it back. There just aren’t any genies – wanting to grant my wishes or otherwise.
Yet, I’ve started fantasizing again lately. I’ve come up with two other wishes which I’ve carefully crafted into phraseology that will certainly get me exactly what I want, when that genie asks. I’ve decided not to share the exact nature of these other two wishes. They deal with a personal fear and lack of enthusiasm that I think I do a pretty decent job hiding from the world at large, and I’d prefer to keep it that way for now.
When I thought of my second wish, I realized that I was onto something really good. It took me months and months to come up with this pair of perfect wishes. Imagine how I might have blown it if I’d tried to make three wishes on the spot, right after the genie popped out of his bottle. I might have wished for one of the foolish things that people think they want, but don’t really need. Money? It can always be earned, and it’s possible to be happy with what you’ve got. (Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t turn away a million dollars if someone handed it to me.) Health is great, but something else is always gonna get you in the future. Power? Who wants that anyway? Fame? Same icky deal as power.
No, I found that both my wishes were designed to balance out personal flaws. The not-being-able-to-speak-French-so-well thing may not actually be a flaw, but I see it as a shortcoming, and when you’re in the wishing business, why not overcompensate? So I began to wonder what other shortcomings I would choose to overcome with wishes, and very quickly my third wish came to me.
Three personal shortcomings that I could wish away, rather than devoting the years of hard work and dedication it would take to overcome them on my own. My tangled tongue would straighten out, my fear and unethusiasm would disappear in a poof of effortless purple smoke. I’d be a step closer to perfect through no actual effort of my own. Is that a worldly spirit, or what?
Since I’m quite sure (in my moments of lucidity anyway) that no genies will be popping up to grant these wishes, I suppose the thing to do is actually make a concrete plan to tackle my shortcomings and make some progress on my own. As soon as the purple smoke filling my brain clears, I’ll let you know how that’s going.
So what would your three wishes be? (No fair wishing for world peace. Go on… be selfish!)
I am celebrating by having Pi Pie. (Actually, it’s a cranberry chocolate tart with an almond spice cookie crust. Whoa yum. Recipe came from a Moosewood cookbook my mother gave me. Thanks mom!)
It wasn’t until a chamber mixer this evening that I realized how many people I know who are expecting babies in the next couple weeks. I know four of these women personally, and heard about three others at the above-mentioned mixer. Before I could stop myself, I said, “was there a storm?” Happily, I don’t think anyone quite understood what I meant (since one person answered, “yeah… the moon must be full”). But by then I was curious.
I’d like to share with you an excerpt from my Twitter history.
Today will probably be spent by everyone in the state in anticipation of the Storm To Come. 10:57 AM Mar 22nd from Echofon
** Does the Blizzard Dance ** 9:23 AM Mar 23rd from Echofon
No gloves or fuzzy hat. So much for that snowman. 12:37 PM Mar 23rd from Echofon
Only in SD when a blizzard is approaching would there still be plenty of milk and bread in the store but absolutely no ground beef. 3:09 PM Mar 23rd from Echofon
Snuggled in cozy at grandma’s house with a fire and a jimmied-up internet connection. Let the snow day begin! 3:10 PM Mar 23rd from Echofon
Going to make an epic trek over to the Gulch for some dinner. Yes we called. They’re open. Hehehe. 6:26 PM Mar 23rd from Echofon
I was worried the Gulch would be closed but it was the happening place to be! A nice man with a plow offered to drive us home. We walked. 9:23 PM Mar 23rd from Echofon
Blue skies, smiling above me! Nothing but blue skies, and a four-foot drift in front of the door… 12:34 PM Mar 24th from Echofon
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