the week before vacation

Man, am I tired. This week has been truly nonstop. A short recap: Monday and Wednesday we had Flash class after work, from 6 pm – 10 pm. Tuesday we raced from work to the grocery store, shopped for stuff for the party tomorrow, raced home, showered, and went to a late dinner at the Macaroni Grill with Kathryn, Brett, Arushi, Shyamal, Rachel, and Brittney. That was a lot of fun. Tonight we went to the liquor store to get beer and wine and stuff for the party, to Central Market to get some soy ice cream, and then once we got home I started cooking: focaccia bread with sun-dried tomatoes, a cranberry-orange cake, cream cheese icing, artichoke-spinach dip, meatballs, teriyaki tofu triangles. My back hurts and I forgot to eat dinner. Actually, that always happens when I cook a lot — I don’t get hungry, and often I don’t eat at all. Oh, I also had to run out and get the tofu from Hong Kong Market, because they don’t sell pressed dry tofu at the regular grocery. Doc kept busy cleaning up the house, even though he actually has two separate headaches going on at the same time.

More stories:

I have always been somewhat phobic about bees and wasps and other flying stinging insects. When I was little, I used to wish that someone would invent a bee suit, so I could walk outside and not have to worry about bees. The suit would be made of a clear hard plastic, and it would fit my body perfectly, hovering always about 1mm away from my skin. I could breathe through a mesh screen placed across an opening over my mouth and nose. This way, bees could land on me and try to sting me, and they couldn’t. I would be protected.

My fear probably started, or at least was exacerbated, by a nature story I read in a kids’ magazine (maybe Highlights or Ranger Rick) about the African killer bees that had invaded South America and were moving northwards towards the United States. Well, I knew enough to know that Texas was basically the bottom of the U.S., so the bees would probably reach us before anyone. This was about the worst possible news my six-year-old mind couuld imagine — flying stinging insects that CHASE you ON PURPOSE. Everyone always said that bees are more afraid of you than you are of them — well, not with THESE bees!

There were also some bee incidents when I was little that scared me. On two separate occasions, Mike was attacked by multiple wasps; once, at the end of our block where there were some fields and vacant lots, and again at my dad’s company picnic near the horse rides. The company picnic incident may have been someone else entirely, and my memory has turned it into Mike; I’m not sure. But I think that the end-of-the-block incident involved blue wasps (maybe there’s no such thing, but that’s what I remember) and they got into his pants or his little toddler jumpsuit or something like that.

Another incident happened in Plano when I was walking to elementary school. I distinctly remember that I was wearing a rainbow-striped terrycloth tank top with white spaghetti straps, and a fucking ENORMOUS bumble bee landed on me as I was walking across the teacher parking lot, and it crawled up my arm and into my ARMPIT, and I just stood there with my arm raised in the air, completely immobilized with fear.

The only time that I have ever been stung by a bee, though, was when I was older. This was in Plano, before we got the swimming pool. I was walking in bare feet in the backyard at night, WELL AFTER all flying stinging creatures are supposed to have gone home, and I got stung on my little toe by one of those giant red wasps that was crawling through the grass. I stepped near him, or maybe even on him, and he stung my little baby toe. It hurt like hell. I’m sure that I cried like a baby. I was actually a little insulted, because they aren’t supposed to be out at night! Nighttime is supposed to be safe for the bee-phobic!