The Havoc of a Honeybee

So, 3 weeks ago we went camping. Actually, we went hiking and happened to camp while we were there. I say that because I do not camp for the sheer ecstasy of cooking food prepared over a fire that I had to build from sticks found in the woods and sleeping on the ground while critters scratch around on the other side of a thin nylon screen. I camp because I enjoy hiking and the closest place to really hike around here is Red River Gorge, about an hour away. It is not an unreasonable request to get up in the morning and drive to the gorge (by way of Starbucks), hike a 6-mile trail, and drive home (by way of Chick-Fil-A)....but who wants to do that?? By the time you get home, you're tired, you stink and inevitably, there is cat vomit to clean. So...we camp.

We were about 15 minutes into a 7-mile trail that day when I heard buzzing in my right ear. My right hand was otherwise occupied with my walking stick (yes, I use a walking stick in places other than Mt. Rainier. Shut up...) so I batted at the buzz with my left hand. It never occurred to me not to swat at it because 99% of the time it's the hum of those tiny gnats that like to fly in the breeze-free zone of your ear canal. Unfortunately, that's only 99% of the time. This was that 1%. And this is what followed....

Me: AGHGHGHGH!!! Ouch...(and then a string of words that would make Andrew Dice Clay stop and say "oh damn, I wish I had thought of that combination.")
Neal: WHAT??
Me: Stung! I've been stung!! (I'm clutching my left index finger and watching as the stinger, projecting from just above the knuckle, continues to sort of wiggle with its final injection).
Neal: OK, here...let me pull it out...(and then a chorus of groans, moans and exclamations of "get it out! It hurts! Get it out!!" It absolutely sounded like I was, as he says in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, "doing the sex" with John Holmes. But he did manage to pull the stinger out and we were on our way).

A few minutes later...
Me: I think there's something still in there...Can you get it?
Neal: Where?
Me: Right there...it looks like a splinter, but it's not...
Neal: Hmm...well, I can't get a hold of it. (So, he and I both started pushing on it like you would a splinter - press on the part that's buried in the flesh and hope to see it start to wiggle out).
Me: Oh! Oh! You got it! Yay. (Followed by 2 weeks of oh crap.....BECAUSE...apparently, when you are stung, you never want to push on the stinger as if it were a splinter because that actually injects more poison into the skin. But we did not know that at the time. We didn't even have a first aid kit with us. We just had my Girl Scout memories and Neal's Army experience, which did not serve either one of us very well in the moment).

At any rate, it burned (in the joint) for the entire night (which means that apparently we did not bring enough wine) and then itched until...2 days ago. Yes, 2 days ago. That is almost 3 weeks of itching and burning - alleviated only by some Calamine lotion (although someone suggested I pack on meat tenderizer. Um, yeah, no. No reason to tempt a bear...or my husband, hungry and home from work). Anyway, I have one tiny pinprick to remind me of the havoc created by one of God's tiniest creatures on one of God's top-of-the-food-chain creatures. That 1% has to happen sometime....

Dream a Little Dream

In case you were wondering what you get when you consume blackberry hot sake, white fish sushi, 3 glasses of pinot grigio and birthday cake with buttercream icing all in one evening, I'm about to tell you (and p.s. it is not a Wii-Fit that exclaims your weight gain because Neal and I have been working out like crazy people). First, a little background:

1) Furosemide is a drug used in the treatment of edema and congestive heart failure. It comes in pill form, but when I worked in the hospital pharmacy, we stocked it in tiny little vials for the nurses who could not get a pill down a patient. The vials are about the size of your last pinkie knuckle, out to your nail (depending on how long your nail is. If your pinkie nail is long enough to make the DEA look at you twice, then we're not talking about your nail.)

2) In the catholic church at home, it is not uncommon to see parents feeding the kids breakfast. I have seen everything from Cheerio's out of a baggie to just short of bringing a camping stove to scramble up some eggs. And yes, this all occurs during mass.

3) If you are not familiar with the catholic mass, there are 3 readings followed by Responsorial Psalms. Really, you just need to know that the deacon reads a scripture and then we, lead by the choir, sing a little song about it.

4) My aunt is a teacher. That means she is...um...not quiet and demure. If she has an opinion, she will speak it. Granted, it is not to the extreme of my dream, but perhaps this is what I fear someday?

Setting: A catholic church in Lexington. It is not the one I usually attend but one much bigger...like Christ the King Cathedral. And it is not a morning mass but maybe one in the evening - like the Saturday 5:30 pm service. My aunt and her husband, her son and his wife (who is also catholic) and their 2 sons, and Neal and I are all there...sitting about the 2nd row from the front. All is well until there is some commotion about 2 rows back.

Suddenly, during one of the Responsorial Psalms, my aunt began singing about the noise behind us. (Oh and the Responsorial Psalms generally only have about a 5-note range through the whole song so keep that in mind when you're envisioning this scene).

Auntie: This boy is back here.. (imagine the last syllable of each line drawn out for like 5 seconds)
And he is stacking his medicine...
And those vials should not be stacked like that...
Furosemide is very reactive...
Plus, children should not be eating in church...
(at this point, a couple of families get up to leave)
What are these parents thinking?...
This is not the breakfast table but a church. Can't you do something...
(and this is where everyone has stopped trying to sing over her and just shut up to let her speak..or..er...sing...sort of. And of course, more families are leaving. She continues this way until every family has left - including the one about which she was singing - and it is only we who remain).

Having no one left to hear mass, the priest turned and walked straight out the side doors, to his chambers, followed by the deacon and alter boys. Auntie then turned to look at me and said "what? I didn't do anything wrong." Having never been to that church before, I then spent the better part of the next 30 minutes trying to figure out exactly where the priest's chambers were so I could apologize...while the family waited in the car. When I finally found him, he was in bed (a Murphy bed that unfolded from a utility closet) with the Swine Flu. And then I woke up.

So, remember boys and girls...sake+pinot+sushi+buttercream = a dream where you give the priest of a major and popular cathedral the Swine Flu. And can you really sleep with that on your conscious??

Mii and the Wii

My Wii-Fit will tell you, as it did me, that when I turned it on yesterday, I had not used it in 136 days. And then it copped a bit of a smug attitude and said, "Well, look who it is! Welcome back, Ally!" (kind of like my mom does when she hasn't talked to me for a few days...also not really appreciated). So, I nodded in agreement, that yes, it has been awhile, but perhaps we should get the unpleasantries over with and move forward. It wanted to weigh me, which I did not want to do, but I thought it will be be a good baseline...so yeah OK. It asked for the weight of my clothes, giving me 3 options: light (0-2 lbs), heavy (3-5 lbs) and other (I have no idea). In retrospect, I think I should have chosen heavy, although I was standing there in yoga pants and a sports bra (and very much feeling like the Jenny Craig before photo). So, it calculated my BMI (which was no surprise...yes, I know I'm "obese", but you can't factor in this much gladiator-muscle without being "obese" on the BMI scale. It's so inaccurate. MOVE ON!) Then it calculated my weight. Then it said "OH! You've GAINED 7.7 lbs!" (thank you for breaking it down into tenths of a pound for me...because I wasn't sure if it was 7.6 or 7.8 but looks like you've cleared that all up). Then it said "do you know why you've gained so much weight?" And then it gave me a list of options: 1) I have not been exercising; 2) I've been snacking (which, for the record, I don't think should be a choice because I believe in smart-snacking. Otherwise you have a lagging metabolism and a muffin-top for a belly); 3) I've been eating too much; 4) I don't know. Those were my choices. There was no I was pregnant or I had such horrible morning sickness that getting off the couch to take a vitamin caused the world to spin so I opted not to run in place for 25 minutes...Just "I eat too much" or "I don't exercise enough." HUGE oversight on the part of Wii, I think. So, I chose "I don't know" because I haven't been eating too much, I was eating for 2 and I did exercise when I didn't think I would lose lunch over it. So, fine...I'm 7.7 up from when I started using Wii-Fit...which I was 5 lbs up back then. So, for all of you keeping score at home, that's 12.7 lbs. Not unattainable but certainly tricky during the October-November-December months).

Then I started my workout. It was a cardio day so I did some basic step aerobics - and apparently the Wii deemed me worthy to unlock the "advanced" step...which is appropriate, I think, considering I used to be a step aerobics instructor and then I ran in place for 40 minutes, which is much harder than one would think. And at one point, during one of my 10-minute "free" runs, the Wii calculated that I had run 1.6 miles in 10 minutes. Um...yeah...NO. I run a 12-minute mile, pretty much without fail. You could almost set your 007-watch by my stride. So, to say that I ran a 4-minute mile is well...utterly ridiculous. And if that is true, perhaps I should only run where I can be barefoot and cushioned by an oriental rug.

I don't use the Wii-Fit a lot (as indicated by my 136-day absence) but when it's raining outside and I'm crunched for time and will be eating out 2 of my 3 meals that day, it's better than nothing. But if I get on next time and there has been another weight increase (after all of my calorie counting and gym visits), Mii-heads will roll!

Traffic Tuesdays - Blogging About Bad Behavior

I am inspired by my friend, Cindy. She has "themed" days on her blog. Wednesday is not just Hump Day, at Tinnyanna's place, it's Wordless Wednesday (where she posts photos from the week - and let me tell ya, the girl has the eye of Anne Geddes without any of the creepiness). And now she has a new one, It's Not Me Mondays...as in: no, I did not wish the flu on the very perky Target cashier...no, I did not have a dream that I lost my passport and my iPod Touch on a European vacation and was more upset about losing my Touch...and no, I certainly did not walk out to get the mail holding a bottle of wine so that the neighbors in the cul-de-sac would keep from asking "how's the baby doing"...And in my skinnier days, I did not mow the grass in a bikini so that all of the neighborhood moms would be jealous that I had visible abdominal muscles. That's It's Not Me Mondays and I love it so much that I may institute it a couple of times a month because really...sometimes you just have to get these things off of your chest (which is why PostSecret is so popular and well worth your time if you are killing time on a Friday afternoon at say...4:45). And if you want to read Cindy's confessions, you can find her at http://tinnyanna.blogspot.com.

But it's not Monday, it's Tuesday. So, I'm having Traffic Tuesdays. This is actually inspired by my husband, who has driven a humvee down the middle of the road while oncoming Iraqi civilians wave frantically and scuttle their cars into the ditch to avoid him...he is immensely annoyed by Lexington drivers. He is frustrated by their seemingly mindless lane-changes and lack of courtesy while behind the wheel. I used to avoid leaving the house with him on the weekends because that's when the idiots come out to play. But it seems to be happening in the middle of the week, too, as we discovered while he was home 2 weeks ago. So, here you go, honey...this is my attempt to call out these fools publicly and shame them into better driving. But just in case, perhaps you should start memorizing the bus schedule.

It's a sad fact, but apparently, they have stopped putting turn signals in cars. We've particularly noticed it in the new-fangled, fancy-schmancy cars. Drivers of BMW's and Lexus and Mercedes are no longer able to declare their intentions. They simply have to take a quick glance over their left shoulder (while still holding the iPhone with the right shoulder) and check for any possible victims. The hybrid-driving, granola-crunching driver doesn't stand a chance. To an Escalade, the Prius is a speck of road dust, unable to be seen by rear view mirrors the size of my head. And with no turn signals to alert him, the unlucky environmentalist must test the agility of Toyota's breaking system. So, we ask that you write your congressman and let them know of this lingering oversight. While GM is restructuring, perhaps they can add the turn signals back in...because we know that if people had them, they would use them.

Have tent, will travel

The mountains are calling and I must go.
~John Muir

Like millions of other PBS-whores, we are watching with unfathomed enthusiasm the new series titled The National Parks: America's Best Idea. I am not sure why we are DVR'ing it as PBS doesn't air commercials, a very redeeming quality for a channel that is known to be heavy on the Appalachian programming. But perhaps we are too busy on Sunday nights to sit down and watch it properly, so we squeeze it in between CSI:NY and Lie to Me on a random week night. We watched the first installment last Friday, as we packed up our hybrid to head to the gorge...which is not really the same as heading to the mountains, but when you're at the bottom of the gorge and look up, there you have a mountain. It began with the story of John Muir and how he came to be so interested in a bunch of land that was in desperate need of saving.

Today, I have mixed feelings about Muir. Before Friday I just had canyon-sized annoyance. I think it has to do with the fact that when I was in high school, I was in the drama club. And by saying I was "in the drama club", I mean that I was a theater rat...a staging junkie...a harlot for hair and make-up. My fellow drama dweebs and I were entrenched in every production on the WHHS stage for 4 years. And then one year they brought in a man to portray John Muir. He sat on a stump in the middle of the stage, gripped a walking stick and told story after story about the greatness of nature. But John Muir was Scottish...so when you pair the thick brogue with a complete lack of set design and lighting plan, you've got me snoozing in the stage manager's loft. And that is how I've remembered John Muir for over a decade. He hugged a tree and never owned a Gillette. And that brings us to Friday.

The series is quite good so far and it gives you a firmer grasp on the birth of the national parks service and their struggle to conserve while still exposing. It's a delicate balance between sharing a national treasure with us and protecting it from us. President Bush had leave no child behind and Muir had leave no trace. Basically we shouldn't be leaving anything - as any army retreating from a battlefield will tell you. But even now you will find cellophane on the trail and Kroger bags in the creeks. The result of this behavior will, undoubtedly, be something sweeping yet asinine...like no food in the parks - and we're going to strip-search you when you enter the gates. Because it's the disregard of a few that sets the standard for many...

And there were many out this weekend. Nearly every campsite was full of couples, friends, and families that wanted to get one more weekend in before Kentucky turns its back on warm days. Neal wants to go polar bear camping (meaning we voluntarily sleep outdoors when there is ice on the cars...not pitching a tent with the help of a polar bear...which I also would rather not do). I say this is it, buddy. Get your kicks because we won't be passing this way again until May. I guess we'll see who wins. In the meantime, though, we hiked 7 miles, grilled pizza over the fire, drank percolated coffee, and melted cheese over the campfire (which you will, when paired with a water cracker, a basil leaf and a little sundried tomato pesto, slap your mama and declare yourself Queen of the Campfire). Here are just a few pictures from the past 24 hours. Enjoy and then go hug a tree for me...and hug one for Muir, too.

This is "Hidden Arch". Neal has re-named it "Hidden Hole" because although our picture makes it seem vast and voluminous, that is the beauty of a telescoping lens.

If you haven't seen Dirty Dancing, then move on...you won't get it.

A quick pic of the ONLY thing that will get me out of my Army-issued mummy bag on a 48-degree Sunday morning.

Good-bye campsite #10...until next May...or December...(we'll see who wins the arm wrestle).

Lady Allyson Learns a Lesson

I am reading The Other Boleyn Girl. The movie might be 115 minutes long, but the book is 661 pages. It's a process. I have, however, learned an important lesson about the Tudor period, and also, probably, about the British. They have mastered subservience and grace under pressure. The courtiers, for example, made it their life's work to know the moods of the king and to respond appropriately. It made no difference if it was a bad hair day or a family member had died or even if war was impending, the courtier's job was to be gracious when the rest of us would have thrown up our middle finger and stomped out in disgust. Americans don't really get that. When we came to the new world, we had Martin Luther and Quakers and a pope who was very, very, very far away. We had a government that did not rest on the merry mood of one half-grown man. And as I'm reading this book, I wonder to myself if I have learned the lesson of grace and subservience and kindness when it's easier not to be.

It is, I think, the greatest understated irony: that when times are most difficult, you are most called upon to be gracious and understanding. You are expected to receive those who are well-meaning, well-intentioned, but inexperienced at your pain. And you are expected to do so with smiles and appreciation. You can not, or at least should not, strike out and shout in martyred tones about how they don't understand..about how this path you've been asked to walk is full of potholes that twist your ankles in the dark. And above all, you are expected to suppress the tears that puddle so close to the surface because that...that is uncomfortable for your guest.

I am thinking on these things today because I received an email from someone who meant well but only made my heart heavy for our son. I read it and then I cried. I cried all the way down Harrodsburg Road. I cried all the way down New Circle Road. And then I sat in the parking lot of Meijer and cried some more. I cried until my head was throbbing and my eyes were bloodshot and all I wanted to do was lie down in the grass and take a nap. But instead I did our grocery shopping.

When I got home and had put away the cheese and the carton of eggs I took home by mistake (the woman in line in front me will be very cranky when she starts to make her breakfast casserole only to find that she is missing a key ingredient. And then she will turn her house and car upside down trying to find the 12 eggs that now sit in my fridge. If I knew who she was, I would bring them to her. But I don't so tomorrow we will have egg sandwiches)...I sat and thought about what I should do. How can I make the bleeding stop when the wound has been re-opened? I poured a hot bath, turned on the jets and opened a beer. I sat in the water, watching the jets jiggle body parts that did not always jiggle (I've always told the participants in my exercise classes: "there is a difference between jiggle and wiggle. You are here because you jiggle). I looked at the bathroom cabinets through the amber glow of a Corona and wondered what it would be like to look at life through golden glasses. Would I be happier or just yearn desperately for technicolor? And I wondered what to say to the person who was trying so hard to make it better but instead made it indescribably worse. And in the end, I decided that if I were a courtier, I would say nothing at all. Being gracious in times of pain is hard. But I think it can make us wiser when faced with another's grief. We may never find the right words, but we can certainly try harder to avoid the wrong ones.
*Post script: I know how some in my circle tend to fear that I'm upset with them when I post what others would consider to be private thoughts. First, if you are reading this then it is probably not you. Second, if it is you, I know that you aren't malicious, simply ignorant of the situation. Don't worry about it - you are not the first to make well-intentioned but instantly disasterous comments.

What happens when you forget that you're running an amusement park

A) I think technically right now I am supposed to be helping my husband make sure that all of the camping equipment works...but I believe that would rob him of his machismo and certainly his mojo...so I'm going to blog instead.
B) I found this story on USA Today this morning and I just don't feel like a true Kentuckian (which borders with Ohio, for those of you not smarter than a 5th grader, and is home to Kings Island) if I didn't say something about it.
c) I've been drinking wine since 4:30 because if I lived in central time, it would be 5:00 somewhere...like in eastern standard time...

I have never been to Kings Island during the haunting season. I'm really not such a fan any other time of the year, either. If I desire to eat greasy carnival food and then fall freely from the sky, all the while wondering if a screw will pop and send me crashing to an early death, then I will go to Frankfort's Expo and save myself $45 and still get to play "Count the Mullets". But I hear that it's a good time...if you're into that sort of thing. So, I was a little shocked to read this morning that Kings Island had decided to do a Celebrity Skeleton exhibit in the park...a little like Madam Taussaud's, but with a lot less class - perfect for the Ohioans (whoops, sorry Cindy). This is a just a small list of skeletons included in the exhibit:

• Michael Jackson (as pictured above) complete with sparkly glove, sans IV full of Fentanyl.
  
• Farrah Fawcett (I'm not sure how this was going to be completed, but I can only hope that good hair was involved).
  
• Sonny Bono strapped face-first to a tree and decked out in ski gear.
  
• Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams stuffed in a glass-door freezer (apparently he was cryogenically frozen after his death. I think this is only a tiny bit classier than having one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims hanging out of a Frigidaire while Jeff stood beside, licking his fingers).
  
• Steve McNair sporting a #9 jersey, eating from a Tennessee Titans snack bowl with a dress-wearing skeleton sprawled across his lap and a gun laying on the ground.
• And various others...i.e. Billy Mays (I hope he was holding a bottle of OxyClean), Dave Thomas, and Heath Ledger.
  

Someone somewhere along the way decided that perhaps this exhibit was in bad taste. In case you have ever wondered what would be the result of serving bourbon at your next board meeting, I can only assume that this would be it. I can hear this conversation now, "hey, you know what would be funny?"....And then they ended up in the USA Today.