I finally felt confident that we had turned the tide in the pandemic when I started hard core worrying about other things. For 13 months almost all my family text messages were dire updates on the lastest Covid news.
It was as if I had morphed into the 21st century edition of my Grandma Stella. Back in the day Stella would mail her grandkids stories from the newspaper about impending doom and then just to make sure our reading comprehension wasn’t slacking she underlined the sentences she felt most worthy of our attention.
Because it’s 2021 I enjoy using the family group text for my freak outs. The more emojis I use equal the bigger panic. Over the last year I’ve inundated my husband and children with information ranging from mask wearing to how to get a vaccine appointment.
But, in what I’m going to call a historic moment, I’ve stopped my non-stop fretting about Covid and have segued to worrying about the “Tick Forecast” for 2021. Grab your bug spray people because it’s going to be a tick palooza this summer.
My first family tick text was two weeks ago. I alerted my loved ones that I was going to be so angry if we dodged Covid only to be brought down by a tick. I, of course, then included many articles about how to avoid ticks.
As usually happens with my family texts I got zero response. I’m talking not even a thumbs up. (Quick clarification: if the texts include any mention of money the response is almost immediate.) But I took solace in the fact that they’ve been warned and will be warned, again and again.
Because I’m always the one sending the worrywart texts, imagine my surprise when last week I received one from my husband. It was a solid Defcon 3 moment quickly progressing to Defcon 2 because according to his text our backyard was “thick with bees.”
I immediately came home certain that a swarm of killer bees had descended on my neighborhood. The tick palooza suddenly plunged to number two on my current “holy crap” list after I saw the volume of bees in our backyard most especially the ones camping out en masse in a tree. But I told my husband to never fear because I had a bee guy.
This is the point where I’m now going to share with you that in the many decades I’ve been married, the most impressed I think my husband has ever been with me is when I let him know I had a bee guy.
His face lit up and he seemed to be looking at me with something akin to awe. I basked in that glow for a moment and then called beekeeper extraordinaire Chad Gilliland. Chad said would come out late in the evening because that’s when bees start chilling out. Funny thing about that because by the time Chad got to our backyard there was only a small cluster of bees left.
Apparently, the multitude of honeybees (ahem – not killer) were using our backyard as a rest stop as they were enroute to start a new hive. That’s the good news. The bad news is our yard is now enriched with bee pheromones which means it’s officially on the bee list as a great place to recharge.
So, basically my backyard is now a QuikTrip for bees. Honestly, I am all good with that. I’d much rather have a summer of industrious, life sustaining bees pollinating like fiends over a ticktopia. But just to be on the safe side I did send a family text about five ways to avoid bee stings.
You can’t ever be too careful- right?
🙂 Snarky peeps here’s something to buzz about – the new Snarky audio book! Yes, my first Snarky book “Snarky in the Suburbs Back to School” is now an audio book available on Audible & iTunes. Here are the links.
iTunes: https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/snarky-in-the-suburbs-back-to-school-unabridged/id1564179737
Snarky in the Suburbs 