I even have a problem writing it. So I have said a prayer today, asking God to please give me fortitude to build the willpower to tone it down to, say, only two glasses per session, ya know? Just something I needed to get off of my chest, I guess…after me and the office staff (the dogs) had an excellent little party out by the pool last night until 1 a.m….and I had to roll out of the bed at 4:30 to caption the news. No, there was no hangover to deal with -- alas, I was still drunk. I feel like a stupid idiot. My husband was awesome; told me he loved me and to invite him out the next time I was in a party mood. He keeps me sane. When I lose my mind, he finds it for me. Good stuff.
Wait. I’m not through. I’m blaming that damn Ipod (part of that confusing Christmas gift assemblage) on that party. I spent some time yesterday downloading new music…Alice in Chains and Joss Stone. Now, how is that for bipolar? I was just listening to that stuff, shaking my a$$ off. Music makes me go all tribal. I have a theory about that, and it involves the Souter side --
Aunt Margaret died? She fought one heck of a fight with cancer for at least 20 years and finally had enough of that crap.
As soon as I came downstairs from my noon show today, I heard music but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. I went back upstairs and checked to see if I’d hung up my audio
line -- check. I strolled through lairs of the children. Usually they leave everything on and open and un-flushed -- but check that off too. I finally traced the sound to my front street.
My neighbors are getting their ginormous house painted. The music sounded kinda polka-ish, and I was wondering what was up with that, since they are Mormons. There was a gaggle of happy Hispanic guys out there, having a gecko of a good time… sashaying around, slinging paint, singing (very loudly) to some very, very nice traditional mariachi music. My guess is, these fellas have a second job singing mariachi at restaurant and party events. They were good. No, not good: GREAT. It was all very lively and entertaining -- and I‘m sure had the Mormon group all ratcheted up.
I just had to pull away at one point, because the perceived leader of the group, perched atop what had to be the tallest extension ladder I‘ve ever seen, started bopping to the beat, belting away about his “corazon” all the while, swooshing away with a tiny paintbrush at the shutters. Despite all of that “heft” up front, he was somehow still capable of balancing, bopping and painting from a very, very precarious height, reveling in the fact that his cervesa fund would be nicely secured for just a while longer. Especially reveling in the fact that he had just won our business next month.
Our house looks like an acid rain cloud came over and let loose. That is life in Houston. Also, these aggressive birds have been clawing and yanking the vents from under the eaves in order to nest. These painter guys really are good. They will calk, repair bird damage, power wash, the whole shebang, for a reasonable price. I am thrilled. Those guys should get hazard pay for that job. Plus I will be serenaded for a couple or three days. Good stuff.
Speaking of hazard pay, and along those same lines, a few years ago we had to have a beekeeper come remove a 40-pound honeycomb from inside the crawlspace between the two levels of our home. If I ever so much as hear a single bee in my wall/ceiling…ever…again…my sphincter will lock down permanently -- because those buggers do mean business.
Let me tell you more. I was sitting out by the pool one beautiful day, the kids and their friends were swimming. I wasn’t exactly looking up, but I looked out over the pool and there seemed to be a cloud, though it was not a cloudy day. The air started shimmering and I seriously thought that a small plane was approaching. I looked up at the sound, and it was like a movie set. No other way to describe it, really. A real, live bee swarm was over my children in the pool. I started screaming for them to get out of the pool -- and every single one of them wanted to know why, of course, so I start going in after them. By then the noise is crazy. They look up, mouths open and aren’t moving an inch.
Finally, we are inside, looking out. This huge cloud swarm, about the size of our pool, slowly moves into a large pine tree behind the pool and settles in. The tree is now “shimmering.” Seriously. Let me say something here. I had been hearing a lot on the news that year about Africanized honeybees from Mexico being a problem in Texas, Houston area especially -- swarming dogs and killing them. Swarming old ladies going out to check the mail box. Swarming the random farmer on his tractor. I knew these things could mean serious business.
The kids didn’t care too much for my hysteria and were totally enthralled. I had to stand in front of the door to keep them inside. I got on the phone and started calling the 911, which, in hindsight, was really an embarrassing lapse of composure on my part. They gave me the fire department, the fire department said that they could not come unless we had been stung. Said there was nothing that they could do but assured me that the bees would eventually move along, just to stay away. Surely enough, eventually the big bee cloud drifted out of the tree and around the corner of our house, whew. Done deal.
A week or so later, we started hearing a buzz above our bed. We thought the fan was acting up, then we heard more buzzing eventually. The bee cloud incident just a blip in the memory radar. We hem-hawed around, thought maybe these bees would just…go away. That this was natural; bee season, I suppose. I just don’t know. When I started seeing mounds of bees crawling around in our ceiling light fixtures, buzzing around behind electrical plates, whizzing by my head while I was washing dishes in the kitchen…I knew we had a problem, so I started calling around for help.
I started with exterminators, who were all eager to come fog, or whatever, but then in the process of calling around, one exterminator said never, ever, ever have an exterminator take care of bees; call a beekeeper.
There really aren’t many beekeepers alive anymore, period. Mine showed up in a rusted and ratty old Sanford & Son pickup -- and I haven‘t been able to get that catchy show music out of my head since. (our cousin Chris has the S&S song as his ringer for his cell phone - hilarious) In the bed of the old truck, the beekeeper had three things: A ladder, a water hose and large wooden crate. He and I had already had several lengthy conversations over the phone, because at the time I was putting together a draft for a book, and beeping was to be a big part of that book. I showed a genuine interest in his trade, he was extremely helpful and talky, and I felt that he and I had established a friendship or sorts. Over the phone, that is. I could not help but notice that he had a big, strong Jimmy Stewart voice -- so I was a little shocked when he got out of his truck kinda of slowly and looked to be about 95 years old.
I am not lying to you when I tell you that the first thing out of his mouth was, “Young lady, I expected you to be a fat woman!”
(Wha?!) It was one of the rare occasions that I did not have a ready comeback.
He continues. “I’m retired, from the IRS, have been for years now. The only intelligent women I’ve ever known were the big, fat ones.”
Thank goodness he didn’t say anything else, simply turned and walked toward the back yard. I didn’t even have to tell him where “they” were. This guy was a bona fide “Bee Whisperer,”. He walks back around the house and he starts in about all of this new construction that was encroaching upon the natural bee habitat; that the bees had every right to take back what they could. He had me feeling so guilty over my new home.
So he goes back to his truck for the ladder and hose. The first trip up the ladder was done without the benefit of a bee outfit. Bees were swarming everywhere, covering his shoulders. I’m convinced that this is a 95-yr-old beekeeper’s way of showing off for thin, intelligent young women.
He slowly comes back down, dons the bee gear and then gets down to business. I made sure to stand back against the fence… a long, long way back. He knocked out a section of my Hardiboard and began reaching in. He hauls out a big wad of angry bees and dripping comb. “Looka heeeah, young lady!” he calls out. Like that shit was my fault. He kept every bit of that stuff, but in sections. He was all very gentle about the process, because he needed the worker bees to stay on the larvae. Turns out, he had a honey outfit on his farm -- and he had just hit serious pay dirt behind my siding.
The buzzing, he explained, were the workers flapping their wings in order to keep the nest cool and the keep queen fat and happy. He finally had all of the comb boxed up and admonished me that if I’d had an exterminator “Poison” the bees, I would have had an extended-release nightmare on my conscience. He conjured up dead larvae smells and apocalyptic biblical prophesies: Honey and bee carcasses dripping down inside the walls of my home, into the baseboard. Later would come the rats and insects that the mess would attract. He put the hose in the crawl space and hosed it all down and out into the yard through the weep holes. He said to leave the hole open in the side of the house in order to let everything dry out in there, but that he couldn’t guarantee that we wouldn’t have a mold issue on our hands. Thank you very much. He told me not to worry about the thousands of residual bees that were still swarming around; that you kill or take their queen, every single bee in that group will die. She is their heart and soul; their only reason for living. The queen actually looks different, like a fat hornet. He tried to show me the queen, but I wasn’t having any of it. I kept my distance, checkbook in hand.
As he was driving away he rolled down the window and warned me to calk everything tight later because the wax was like a musk type of magnet to the bee kingdom. Once it’s in the wood, misplaced bee tribes would smell that spot from miles around and try to colonize there. That I’d just better pray that it did not happen before the gaping hole was repaired, then he drove away, wearing the expression of someone who had just finished shoveling turds.
Upon reflection, it was all a very cool, “we-lived-to-tell-about-it” experience. I’m not sure about the relevance of telling that story to you, other than those painters will finally be calking up that side of the house -- three years after the beekeeper’s stern admonition. We are next. I’m glad but irritated about letting go of money for that sort of necessity. It seems when there is a little extra left at the end of the month, there is a reason. But I’m just grateful to get it over with. Thank you very much.
I’m sitting outside right now. I wish you could be with me. The weather is amazing and everything is blooming. The dogs are chasing lizards. Big, black male lizards are perched on certain parts of the house. It is a territorial thing They are usually green but today they are black. I think it is to attract the girls, haha. Who’s yo Daddy! The much smaller bright green “girls” are just running all over the side of the house, about mid-level, trying to keep away from the males on top and the dogs on bottom. It is hilarious.
I have a lizard house. I am serious. Not my actual house, but a little contraption that I figured by accident. I had a small terra cotta pot that I left on the porch last year. I had put a slightly smaller pot inside of it. The clay dish that catches the water was cracked perfectly in half but still held together because of the large sales tag on the bottom that I had not removed, so I laid it on top of the pot, meaning to come back around and throw the whole mess away. Six months later, haha, I was on the front porch and decided to finally do something with that mess. I noticed a tail slowly disappearing inside the cracked lid. I lifted one side of the lid, which is so very, very, very brave of me, since I am a chicken of anything with a tail. I nearly jumped out of my skin as lizards jumped up and out everywhere. I was stunned. I lifted the lid the next day, same thing. I still keep that thing on the porch and the lizards keep going to it. I think they like the cool space inside between the two pots and also the fact that there is a roof over them. I hope the dogs do not figure that one out. It is very cool to have a lizard house on the front porch. Maybe that will be the gimmick that I need to capitalize on, that will make me rich beyond my wildest dreams…alas.
Well, I need to pinch things off right here in mid-dream. I’ve got people to see, places to be, things to do, and daylight is burning.
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