#beeees!!!

[fictionalred]

There’s a bee!??

[hellhound-wrangler]

I spent the last two weeks an anxious mess, certain I had forgotten everything about everything and would never teach again because I would be fired for hiding under the bed instead of going in to teach.

But I got up today. And I had prepared my materials last week, because that is what one does, even if one’s plans involve hiding under the bed. And I got dressed in my professor clothes and went to campus and taught three classes back-to-back and it was completely fine and nobody cried (on campus. I may have cried a little this morning after getting up). 

My students seem nice and I was actually well-organized, and I can already tell that my world lit I class is going to be AWESOME because my students are already a delight.  Also one of them is a student who took world lit II from me four or five years ago and she’s been waiting for to take this one until she could find a section I was teaching that she could make it to (she retired last month, so she could actually make a mid-afternoon class, which is now when they usually offer this course. The last class she took from me was at fuck-this-darkness-o’clock in the morning. I brought in my coffee maker and a bunch of styrofoam cups on exam days). Which is an enormous compliment and kind of amazing!

I have assignment sheets prepped and posted on the class website, and tomorrow I’m going to read stuff and polish up my lecture notes between morning training and evening muay thai class. My week has kind of a nice mind-body balance to it now, with professor days alternating with dojo days (interestingly, I did have a colleague from a different branch of the department show up in muay thai during buddy week, so I guess sometimes the streams cross).

On an unrelated note, I had the front door open for a few minutes this past weekend because of logistical reasons involving moving large things in and out of the house. This lead to a situation where I had to yell “No bees in the house! And no cats on the porch!” really loudly while doing a little barricade-dance in the doorway. Bees are not allowed in the house because bees are outside friends and also we have no flowers and two cats inside and that seems like a bad situation for a lonely bee. Cats are not allowed out on the porch because they like to explore and I have found two different bears and a large coyote in our driveway in the last eight weeks and I do not want my cats to be eaten. But I thought you might appreciate the mental image of me doing my little border-protection dance while struggling with a large plastic crate. It was a very impressive display of absurdity and poor balance.

[hellhound-wrangler]

Today involved several more visits from Very Important Bees (including one who earnestly followed me around and kept hovering right in front of my face, presumably because she wished to discuss something. What she wanted to discuss was unfortunately never clear) as I was working on the path I mentioned. Nothing super exciting, but I thought I would update you all on bee things. Also I was briefly chased across a parking lot by a large and aggressive wasp, which kind of sucked. 

I’m finally finished with the path! I spent ten hours today leveling ground and spreading gravel and placing pavers and packing sand and then going to get more gravel and pavers and sand. I had to make several trips because my station wagon with its tiny lawnmower engine can only carry so much before the weight starts to do alarming things to the suspension and handling. I added up the material, and I wound up carrying 1,410 pounds of supplies today, in 25, 50, and 60 pound increments. Sixty pounds doesn’t sound like a lot when you’re a basically able-bodied person thinking of sixty pounds of friendly dog, but sixty pounds of gravel in a sack is fucking brutal, even if you’re only carrying it about 20 yards. I had to get six of them today, and my shoulders and thighs are REALLY tired now. But at least I didn’t pop my ribs out again! 

[hellhound-wrangler]

So today I was doing some work on a project for my folks. I’ve been replacing the weird uneven mulch path we put in about 7-8 years ago with paving stones, to create a path that the dog cannot eat and that mom will hopefully find less of a tripping hazard. Today I finally got it extended down to the sloping part that runs between a flower bed and a bunch of potted plants on the back deck.

So you know how when you’re trying to put together a bookcase, cats like to come and help? Like “Hello human, I see you are touching these small things with your front paws, allow me to join you” and then they slap the little bits of hardware all over the damn house? Apparently bees also like to help humans when they see them working. Either that or there is a building code I was unaware of, and my work was deemed Important Bee Business in need of inspection.

Anyhow, there I am, heaving stone around and shoveling gross clumps of ancient mulch into a wheelbarrow and swearing as I attempt to make the ground slope evenly one handful of gravel at a time, and several Very Important Bees appear to investigate. Based on the way they kept circling my head, I think they were hoping that the purple hair meant I was some kind of very large and unusually mobile flower. Once they established that I did not actually need to be pollinated, they decided to help me with my earth-moving endeavors.

VIB the first landed on my shovel handle when I paused for a moment to stretch, although it was unclear as to whether she was trying to assist me with lifting the shovel or just trying to encourage me. A few minutes later, VIB the second decided to take a more directly helpful approach and land on the mulch next to me as I was trying to wrench a clump of it free from a bunch of weird little rootlets. Sadly, she was too small to actually lift the mulch and assist me, but I appreciated the sentiment.

Later, a group of several VIBs made a point of coming over to say hello (and to confirm that I was still not a flower) every so often, which was nice of them. None of them were aggressive, just kind of curious about what I was doing between their flowers.  So that was kind of nice. In general, while today was exhausting, I at least got to meet a lot of friendly bees of various types. (This is much better than that time last month where I accidentally damaged an unseen wasp nest while dismantling a pile of junk and had to run like hell when a cloud of outraged wasps materialized in front of me. None of them stung me, thankfully. I also confirmed that there is a pretty visible difference between bees and bee-striped wasps, especially at extremely close range.)

[hellhound-wrangler]

i would just like to tell you that you have become known in my in-person world as "that friend of yours who likes bees"

That’s awesome, and I immediately told some of my in-person friends, who all thought that was great.

[hellhound-wrangler]

Oh! After an epic ordeal involving scary phone calls and interacting with strangers and feeling guilty about putting off adult responsibilities, I walked up my driveway (which I had accidentally scared a coyote off of a few minutes before) and found a million adorable bumblebees who were very busy with important bee things involving some purple flowers.

Being bumblebees, they were pretty mellow little fuzz bundles. Which is good, because that meant they didn’t mind me putting my phone inches away from them as I tried to take some pictures. Because it’s hard to see my phone screen in the sunlight (and also because the bumblebees were unwilling to pose for photos), I don’t know if any of the pictures turned out OK. Sadly, none of them wanted to come land on me and say hello (probably because I’m not a flower).

So yeah, bees made my day better just by being bees, and the volume of bees per cubic foot makes me optimistic that the local bumblebee hive, at least, is doing pretty OK for itself.

[hellhound-wrangler]

I've been walking around the studio saying "bees" v quietly to myself. I think one of the karate guys heard me.

[hellhound-wrangler]

Hi! I'm not a bot. There are bees.

“There are bees.” is going to become my new ritual greeting when meeting new bee-people. Thank u new friend, that is a delightful new-follower present. Also welcome, and I am glad to learn that you are not a bot!