Category: Stream of Consciousness Saturday

SoCS: the fight of the bumblebee

It’s not often that I run away from something – okay, it’s not often that I run, period – but this past week, I did.

I was out mowing the lawn, using our electric rechargeable lawn mower, which I convinced my husband to get a few years ago so I could help with the mowing. I had trouble even starting our gas-powered one and wanted a lawnmower with a smaller carbon footprint. So, while I don’t have decades of experience with lawn-mowing, I’m not totally new at it either.

While we live in a suburban-style neighborhood, we and many of our neighbors have more rural-style lawns, meaning that among the grasses there are other plants, some of which flower. Depending on the month, our lawn has wild strawberry blossoms, violets, creeping charlie, dandelions, clover, and other flowers blossoming. Where there are flowers, of course, there are bees and we are used to seeing them as we mow. They generally buzz away from the mower to find another flower that isn’t in its path, with bumblebees being the mellowest, just moseying slowly away.

I was really surprised, then, when a bumblebee came around the corner of our shed and headed straight at me. Startled, I ran away, even tripping and falling in my haste – and getting grass stains on my pants.

I felt sheepish about being chased away by a docile bumblebee and, determined to finish the little patch of lawn left, went back to the mower. After a couple more episodes of bumblebee-chasing, I realized that they were flying in and out from under the shed, which meant that they must have built a nest under it. By that point, I was almost done and was staying away from the shed, so I thought I was safe.

But, no.

One of the bumblebees, obviously upset by my continued presence, followed me back to the garage as I headed back to it to plug in the the mower, got under my shirt-sleeve, and stung me.

In the not-the-most-mature reaction, I screamed, batted it to the garage floor, and hurried inside the house. I called my husband and told him I was scared and didn’t know what to do. Because my mom is allergic to bee stings, I had grown up being scared of bees and had only been stung once by a yellowjacket when I was a child. My husband, on the other hand, has been stung many times over the years. He calmly told me to take a couple of benadryl and ice the sting. It was getting near time to come home, so he said he would leave and be there in a few minutes.

The ice helped with the pain and, when he arrived, he made sure there was no stinger in my arm. He looked up some information that confirmed that bumblebees, unlike some other species, don’t have barbed stingers, so, good news – the stinger doesn’t remain lodged in the victim but – bad news – they can sting multiple times without dying. They also are not aggressive unless they are defending a nest. Yup. Got that fact right, too.

I am all healed up now and none the worse for wear. I haven’t needed to go back out to mow, but, if I ever have to run away from a bee again, I’m not going to go back out and try to finish.

I learned my lesson.
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This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. The prompt this week was to build the post around a word that ended with “-ay.” Join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-1515/

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SoCS: Saying good-bye to Jon Stewart

My last brush with enthusiasm was watching the last episode with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last night. It actually aired Thursday night, but for years my husband and I have recorded it for later viewing. We aren’t generally up watching television at 11:00 PM when The Daily Show is on in our time zone.

The audience was enthusiastic in greeting Jon, of course, and also the parade of returning correspondents, especially John Oliver and Stephen Colbert. Stephen got to do the official scripted tribute which involved copious, geeky Tolkien references, and then went off-script with a lovely thank you to Jon about how he was such a great example and helped them all learn to be better in their careers and as persons.

The audience was more subdued with the recorded segment on all the behind-the-scene people and Jon’s own message and good-bye, which was appropriate as it was more serious and because people love Jon and will miss hearing from him.

Our family will miss him, too, although I am glad he is getting to go out at the top of his game and to be with his family – and then he can do other things professionally as the spirit and opportunities arise. Jon is only a few years younger than I am and The Daily Show is pitched toward the young adult demographic, so it’s not surprising that he would want to turn things over to the younger generation, like incoming host Trevor and the current young correspondents.

The enthusiasm ramped back up at the end of the show, when Jon’s Moment of Zen involved a live performance by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. It was nice to see Jon and his family and all the correspondents jumping up and down and dancing. It was nice to have a happy send-off.

Thanks for everything, Jon! Have a great next phase of life, whatever you decide to do!
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “enthuse.”  Come join us! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/08/07/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-815/

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SoCS: ready or not

I put off starting to write this post, thinking I would surely feel more ready later on.

Well – no.

Sometimes, you wake up feeling ready for anything.

Today is not one of those days.

It’s more a day to peruse emails and play games and go for a walk or just sit.

Not ready for much of anything – or at least much of anything that involves deep thought.

Maybe tomorrow.
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This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. This week’s prompt is “ready.” Join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/31/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-115/

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SoCS: vision

Last week, I had my annual vision exam. I have worn glasses since I was seven. I was near-sighted as a child, but now I have far-sightedness, too, related to age.

And my in-between vision is not great either, so I have been wearing progressives, which try to help you see well across all distances.

Last year, I finally gave up and got a special pair of glasses called an office lens. This pair of glasses is not good for long distances, like driving, but they are really good for short and intermediate distance, so I can read with them and, most importantly, use them when I am at my desktop computer without having to tilt my head at a weird angle and make my neck get a crick. However, they still let me see clearly about ten feet away, so I can use them for walking around the house without having to switch glasses every time I get up from the computer. I really love these glasses and I find my eyes are much less tired at the end of the day because of them.

I am thinking of replacing my progressives that I wear most of the time with bifocals so that I will still be able to drive and read and do kitchen work and such. Using my desktop is my main intermediate vision task, so I will switch to my office lens for that, but have the bifocal for general wear and being out and about.

And, someday in the future, I will need to have cataract surgery and will probably see better with the new implantable lenses than I have seen when I was six.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is: “vis.”  the post should “use a word, or tie your post’s theme around a word, that contains the letters VIS, in that order.” Join us!  Details here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-2515/

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SoCS: flying

I used to like to fly. The first time I flew I was in my early twenties and I loved looking out the window at all the landforms I had studied in geology and the clouds I had studied in meteorology. Those were also the days when checked baggage was free and so were snacks and meals. I even remember getting hot towels to freshen up at the end of a long flight – and this was in coach, not first class.

Now, I don’t like flying as much. Flights are really packed and service is  – ummm – let’s say spotty. For example, on my recent flight back to NYS from Hawai’i we had blankets for the flight over the ocean in the afternoon but no blankets for the overnight flight from LAX to Philly. The airline sent me an email to order food for that flight, except they don’t serve food that late at night. Originally, I had a morning flight into Binghamton from Philly, but the airline cancelled it so I was in Philly for five and half hours before getting to come home in the afternoon.

I guess in a way it is lucky that I don’t fly very often. Less to complain about and more money for my bank account.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is: “fly/flies/flew/flu/flue.”  Join us!  Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/17/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-1815/

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SoCS: Is it really almost over?

Is it really almost over?

I have been AWOL from One-Liner Wednesday and Stream of Consciousness Saturday for the last several weeks as I have been visiting my daughter in Honolulu. Her husband has been away doing research for his PhD dissertation in London, as well as visiting his family there.

My husband came out with me for the first two weeks, during which time we stayed in a hotel. Then, he had to return to go on a business trip. I moved to my daughter’s apartment and have been staying with her for almost three weeks.

It is less like vacationing and more like living here, which is cool! I have been blogging about it, such as this post about settling into the Kaimuki neighborhood where she lives, but there are others to check out at Top of JC’s Mind, if you are interested. (Shameless plug!)

I fly out on Tuesday, but I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it. Just a few more days and I’ll be back – and six-hours-of-time-change jet-lagged – in upstate New York. Back to the stuff that is filling up my calendar back home – appointments and meetings – and the catching up on mail and errands and visits.

I’m not sure I’m ready – but it is what it is.
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Linda’s prompt for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “is” Please join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-415/

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SoCS: You’re leaving when?

I am almost ready to go to Hawai’i for five weeks. On second thought, that is almost entirely untrue.

In fairness,  I have been making preparations, beyond the obligatory travel arrangements. I’ve just been making them for other people – helping T move to Albany for the summer to start an exciting internship with the NYS DEC, getting things as squared away as possible with the elders, making plans for the spirituality group I facilitate to carry on without me, etc.

What I haven’t done yet are things like packing and making arrangements for the mail to be held and printing itineraries and copying important documents and emails into the cloud so that I can access them when I am 5,000 miles from my desktop.

So, now It’s crunch time and I have three days.

Ready, set, go!
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This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday. The prompt this week is: “almost.”  Come join us!  Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/05/29/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-3015/

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SoCS: What I would like

I would like to spend a leisurely time writing an amazing SoCS post. I would like to snap my fingers and get everything organized and accomplished because there are many appointments and obligations coming up in the next week and a half, including helping a daughter move to another city for her summer internship.

Obviously, snapping my fingers isn’t going to cut it.

So, short and sweet and on to the next…
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This week, Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “ke.”  Use the letter combination at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of the word you choose to base your post on.

Join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/05/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-2315/

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SoCS: growing up in the sticks

I grew up in the sticks.

It’s an expression I don’t hear much anymore. OK – I don’t hear it at all anymore. I’m not sure how widespread its usage was but it means to grow up in an out-of-the-way place. I grew up in a town of 200 people, give or take, in western Massachusetts along the Vermont border. We had a little general store which had the post office in it. We had a paper mill where most of the people in town worked. We had a school that went up through eighth grade. We even had a little bar/restaurant called “The Club.”

Everything else – big grocery stores, clothing stores, the high school, doctors, banks, etc. – was twenty miles away.

So, to me, where I lived was the definition of  “the sticks.”

I was surprised after I moved to Broome County NY – aka Greater Binghamton – that the definition of “the sticks” was different. In New York State, it seems that everything gets compared to New York City. There is The City, its suburbs and Long Island – and everything else becomes “upstate,” mashing together large cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, with smaller cities, towns, villages, and very rural areas, such as the Adirondacks.

So even though I live on the southern border of the state, just a few miles from the state line with Pennsylvania, I am “upstate.” I live in a town that is a hundred times larger in population than my hometown, about the size of the twenty-mile-away city that we used to go to for shopping and services when I was growing up. My current town is a suburb of Binghamton, which is a city with its own opera company, symphony, minor league baseball and hockey teams, and all kinds of other amenities that were much further afield when I was growing up.

Yet, because we are small compared to NYC, we are considered to be “the sticks.”

Go figure.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is: “stick.”  Come join in the fun! Find out how here: http://lindaghill.com/2015/05/15/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-1615/

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badge by Doobster @MindfulDigressions

 

when things come in threes

Three has been an important number for me.

I was one of three sisters.

Trinity has been one of the themes in my life, from church to a high school friend to the name of my younger daughter.

There are lots of sayings about events – good or bad – happening in threes.

“The third time’s the charm.”

This afternoon, on the third day since the events of the stream of consciousness post I wrote this morning, I read this call for submissions from Silver Birch Press, making it the third instance of dealing with the meaning of names in as many days.

I have to write a poem for this. It was meant to be.

I’ve already been through several drafts in my head and two written ones. I think I will be bringing it to my poetry group this week rather than what I had planned to bring so that I can have it in shape to submit.

Here’s hoping that this poem will be a good-thing-that-comes-in-threes…