Country Mouse Monday: bees are just yoga, man

This was one of those weekends that was all bees, bees, bees from beginning to end, a blissful playing with and talking about them, first on Saturday at Glide, where I think we taught about 30 interested strangers, to yesterday when my friend Fredo came over for lunch and hive inspection.  Super-duper fun.

Somewhere along the line on Saturday afternoon, standing on the roof at Glide Memorial in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, one of the students, all geared up in her full-body bee suit turned to me and said,

"It really helps if you stay calm, right?"

Yup. Exactly.

Click to read more ...

hair of the dog, new tricks

Even though it's such a firmly engrained part of my life, still sometimes this life-long learning thing manages to surprise me.  

I mean, I'm expecting to continue to learn new things in my usual ways -- from books or classes or teachers -- so when I learn new things about, for example, such a ground-breaking heavy topic as my hair, then, well, color me surprised.  I think I just never expected new k-nowledge to come from this quarter.

And what's crazy is how ok, yeah, it's super chick-magazine to even write about your hair, but hot damn, this new thing I learned really has changed my day-to-day life in profound ways.

Who knew?

Click to read more ...

Taking the time it takes

It's Week One, Day Three of my six-week disability leave and I'm standing here at the kitchen counter, eating toast, drinking coffee and thinking and enjoying.  I could sleep all day if I wanted, but instead I'm trying to keep to a schedule, getting up at around 6, later than Joe but while the coffee is still hot.

Standing and typing is a habit I developed when I was too uncomfortable to sit.  The kitchen counter is just the right height, and honestly it offers everything I could ask for.  Enough room for all my tools, not least of which are coffee in my favorite mug, toasted Dave's Killer Bread (also favorite), space for phone, notebook, calculator, books, pencil, etc.  And the light's just right.

I was just reviewing a list I made yesterday, a shopping list for our bees, and realized suddenly how much things have changed.  We started keeping bees in 2009, so now we're starting our fourth season as beekeepers.  It's the fulfillment of a long-time dream and I love it, but that's not to say it's been without challenges.  Or without expense. Or that I almost quit.

Click to read more ...

maybe it's my head what needs operatin'

Yesterday was a long day of working things out at the hospital, doing all the advance work for surgery on May 16th, one week from today.  Yes, back surgery in 7 days and I couldn't be more delighted.  Seriously.  I mean it.  People think I'm being sarcastic, but honestly, if you've ever had a an infected tooth and prayed for a root canal and an end to the pain, then I think you must know what I mean.  

Or maybe that's just me.  

I hate pain and will do anything to obliterate it.  Which is interesting since for me it was SO important to have a natural childbirth which, luckily and thanks to my youth at the time possibly and everything lining up just right, I was able to manage.  Twelve hours of increasingly, unimaginably excruciating pain, like an earthquake happening to little old me, tectonic plates grinding apart.  Just twelve hours of that, and I was high as a kite for days (and not from the demerol administered during the critical sewing-things-back-up phase).  Nope, I was 24, I survived a 12-hour-labor and safely delivered a gorgeous 9-pound baby boy into a sunny patch on the birthing room bed.  Hear me roar.  Childbirth, in my opinion, is a pain that should be felt whenever possible, safety of the mother and child of course coming first.  That one pain and maybe only that one, when it comes to physical pain.  

Childbirth and heartache: the only two kinds of pain I endorse.

Click to read more ...

Competitive yoga: who you calling "moron"?

We're pretty competitive in my family.  Actually, I don't know about my parents -- I just know that my sisters and I are fiercely competitive when it comes to games, and now that I think about it, I don't really know where that comes from at all since I don't remember a childhood full of board games.  In fact, I remember only playing board games (except Monopoly, yawn) at other people's houses which always seemed to be stocked with items we didn't/couldn't have, like Chutes and Ladders, which may be, I suppose, a common grass-is-greener memory that everybody has.  [Note: we did have sugar cereal and pudding cups. I am not claiming ever that my childhood was deprived.]  My point being only that I don't think our uber-competitiveness came to us from our parents or immediate childhood environment, unless it was the constant punning and riddling at the dinner table.  That is, when we were allowed to speak, during the commercial breaks so as not to interfere with dine-time watching of Gunsmoke or Hogan's Heroes on the tiny black & white tv at the end of the table.

Click to read more ...