Yesterday I became unwittingly involved in a duel, but at least I was the winner!

I was standing outside throwing out our old bread for the birds with my 3-year-old when I bent over to pick up some doggy-doo.  I noticed a few bees hovering about, but there have been a lot of them lately, and I’m never too worried about bees since they don’t usually sting away from their hive unless provoked…  unless you happen across a bee who is a little off his rocker or something.  So anyway, I went inside to wash my hands, and that’s when I got stung on the back of my neck.  Out of instinct, I slapped the little pest, and then I ran outside to get my daughter to safety away from the other bees.  When we got inside,  the bee was on the floor and still alive, so I triumphantly took it hostage.  I looked up how to treat a bee sting (it hurt!!!), as well as what they eat – I had not captured the thing to torture it, but I certainly didn’t want to let it go…  I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I didn’t want it starving in the meantime.  After finding out that it was indeed a honeybee, and that he would probably like some nectar before he passed away as a result of his stinger being torn from his behind (and implanted into  my neck).  I guess I just kind of wanted to see if what I thought was an old myth was true – do honeybees die after stinging?  From everything I read as well as my real-life example (he passed away last night), it seems to be truth rather  than fiction.  So goodbye to the bee that stung me yesterday, and farewell – I’m sorry it had to end this way.  The good news is, other than a marble-sized lump on the back of my neck, I don’t have many ill effects from the sting; the pain is gone and the itching is tolerable.  I traded my story with everyone I ran into yesterday because who over the age of 30 still gets stung by bees?  Surprisingly, it’s more common than I thought, and not just something that happens to reckless kids whose curiosity and carelessness often pave the way to childhood wounds and ailments.  After trading bee stories yesterday, I learned that a friend and her husband were stung by what they said were sweat bees while riding their motorcycle, but after further research and thanks to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index I found on Wikipedia, I’ve concluded that neither their nor my bee stings could be the work of sweat bees.  Honey bees are more likely the culprit, as the pain from their sting ranks much higher on the scale.   Since my husband found the pain index so interesting (and began looking up bullet ant stings on youtube, yeow!), I’ve posted it for your reference as well.  Yet another thing I love about living where I live –  we don’t have all the varieties of nasty stinging insects as are found in tropical climates, and the ones we do have at least give us a break over the winters.  I’m glad for that because after the pain I went through yesterday, it’s going to be difficult to let my little ones play outside until the bees are gone – thank goodness this happened to me and not them!  Oh, and if you don’t cringe or at least wriggle your toes when reading the following descriptions of types of pain, there is something wrong with you!

RIP, Bee!

Schmidt Sting Pain Index
* 1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
* 1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
* 1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
* 2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
* 2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
* 2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
* 3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to etaylhisvate your ingrown toenail.
* 3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
* 4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
* 4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

The English language is a glorious hodgepodge of a variety of mother tongues. There are bits of Welsh, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin and a bit of original English in this language. This is why there are so many ways to spell the same sounds. That and of course people would always spell the way they wanted to before dictionaries were invented. 😉

Since I have a very hard time remembering how to spell certain words, I am in favor of scrapping the current way of spelling things and coming up with an alphabet that allows us to spell words the way they sound.

I’m sure we could get rid of the C, Q and X. These can be replaced by S, K, KW, KS and EKS. Should there be multiple letters for the long and short vowel sounds? What about those the Th and Sh sounds? New letters? Maybe. The easiest to teach would be 1 letter per sound. If we keep everything close to the current looks of the alphabet, it would be easier to learn than the metric system. 😉 Just think no more I before E except after whatever…. No wondering if that was spelled with a C or an S or maybe a K. What are we waiting for. So to experiment, I give you the following (long vowel sounds will be replaced by double vowels and the Th and Sh and Ch will remain — No new letters on this keyboard.)

II was up laat tuuniit beekuz II fel asleep direeng aa balgaam. II wook up direeng thu last ineeng. The Tiigers wun. If thaa win tuumoroo, thaa wil bee the Sentral leeg champs. Goo Tiigers!!

Dang, that was difficult to type. Maybe the learning curve is steeper than I thought… 😉

Thank you sir!

I wrote a little blog on Winnie-the-Pooh, and my oldest daughter reminded me of the bear she liked. While I don’t remember reading Paddington Bear to my daughters, I do remember something about the little bear.

From the title, you can guess that maybe marmalade sandwiches had something to do with Paddington. You would be correct. I do believe that was his favorite thing to eat. He also liked to drink cocoa. Now, I’m not sure how well cocoa goes with marmalade, but he is a bear from darkest Peru.

Now as with all children’s books, the title character did not always do the right thing or behave correctly. He was always very polite, but trouble would occur. He did always try to do his best. Can anyone ask for anything more? Is this the appeal to my oldest daughter, a little bear that has a tendency to get into trouble?

Now of course if you know Paddington, you picture a bear in a hat, duffle coat and wellingtons. He almost alway had his hat , and received the coat shortly after he was found. The boots came later.

There are now books and movies (videos from tv shows) about Paddington, so it isn’t too late to introduce yourself to this little bear from darkest Peru.

Other famous bears (just to be fair)
Winnie-the-Pooh
The original Teddy Bear
Balou the Bear (from the Jungle Book)
The Berenstain Bears
Corduroy Bear
The Three Bears
Smokey the Bear
Gladly the Cross-eyed Bear…

Oh yes, and the Chicago Bears 😉

Which bears did I miss?

a woman and her four kids come into the store and use the ELEVEN W.I.C. vouchers she started the month off with at once.  Ordinarily, you would expect people to come in and use the last one or two coupons they have at the end but to use all of them at once.  Apparently, the customer’s husband was curious to know if she had any left.  Unfortunately for her, we were out of one dozen large eggs which are the only kind allowed… no 1.5 dozen, no jumbo, no substitutions or we risk losing our license to be able to take the Women, Infant, and Children certificates which are given to those in I believe it is more medical than financial need…(no, I can’t really say that because I know one individual who is in a totally financial situation who at first was too proud to admit that she needed assistance).  However, I had to question the need when at one time you come in to get 6 dozen eggs, 9 gallons of milk, 8 boxes of cereal, and other miscellaneous odds and ends at one time.  What have they lived on throughout the month if you need to be on the program.  She informed us that she forgot to use them.  And the program is changing as of tomorrow whereby they can start to get fresh produce items as well as the usual milk, eggs, juice, and cereal.  After I completed the large cart full transaction,  I was glad that it was nearly time to go home.  But not complaining, I do have a job 😉

Ok, I found an empty draft of a post (dated 21-Sept-2009), and I thought I would put something in it. I have no idea what I was thinking of at that point (the draft was empty). So let’s talk about the word draft or draught.

Draft in this case means a rough draught or is that ruff draft or maybe rough draft. Usually a paper or other writing before it has been checked or proof read.

Of course you can feed your draft horses in the drafty barn, drinking draft beer while waiting to be drafted.. Huh? Or maybe you could be a draftsman drawing up plans to determine how close you need to be to get the full effects of drafting while racing for NASCAR. Me, well I could check the draft on the fireplace this winter while setting up a game of draughts to play with my youngest when she comes home. But I really wish someone would make a draft on their bank and send it my way?

More on fun English words at a later date….

I was driving along one of the back roads of NW Ohio yesterday minding my own business. Of course I was looking for the deer that will run out of the fields as soon as the harvest starts, but I didn’t see any of those. Now in the normal course of driving one usually expects to have their own side of the road. For some strange reason the driver of a grain filled semi decided he needed to drive down the center line. There was plenty of room for him on his normal side, seeing that I only had to get my passenger side tires in the grass when he flew by. As Maxwell Smart says, “He missed me by ‘this’ much”. The ‘this’ happened to be about 2 feet at most. Not an enjoyable experience at all.

So after sitting on the side of the road for about 1/2 an hour or so, I continued my drive to see my daughter. I really was hoping that I could relax enough to enjoy the evening and them maybe drive home. As noted in my last post, I was able to relax.

In my years of driving, I’ve only had a few close calls. Each one affected me in the same manner. My nerves were a tangled mess for at least an hour or two. Only one of the close calls was my fault, and my reaction to it kept me from repeating my mistake. Now I am talking about life/death close calls, I’ve had my share of little fender benders, but the big ones scare me. And there I was taking the back roads hoping to avoid the traffic on the more populated routes.

Well, today there are three drivers that avoided a major accident, because of the alert action of two drivers (me and the guy following me). I wonder if the truck driver even saw us. I doubt it, since he kept right on truckin’.

So, I guess I’m just saying, “It is great to be blogging today, heck it is great to be doing anything today.”

Drive safe.

I don’t think State Farm could have helped in this case that fittingly enough happened in the state up north.  Until recently, a Michigan woman has been helping three of her neighbors by making sure that their children were safely put on the school bus for the 6 mile trip.  Shortly after the beginning of the school year, Lisa Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that her charity was in violation of a law aimed at unlicensed day care centers and she would be fined if she continued.  This for watching THREE children (not including her own daughter) who each had their parent’s permission.  They each spent about an hour at the woman’s home preparing for school.  One has to wonder how and why the authorities learned of this generosity.  I can understand a houseful of children but 4 children do not a houseful make (of course others might disagree).

At least after learning of this travesty, the state powers that be are in the process of changing the regulations allowing good samaritans like Mrs. Snyder to continue making sure that a few of her neighbor’s children make it safely to school.  I realize that not everyone can be trusted but this individual was just doing a good deed and known well enough and trusted to do it.

Yes, I’ve heard that reaction to sushi on occasion. I think it came from my children. For the most part when they were growing up, and for some even now, they never wanted to try new food. From the limited diet of their childhood (not that limited, I did experiment in the kitchen), I have a couple that will try new foods, and one that even enjoys some different tastes. As far as I know none of them are as varied in their food trying as their dad. (I’ve eaten bugs on purpose and some were tasty ….)

So anyway I took my eldest daughter and her husband out to dinner this evening. The reason is this was her first week back at work after some time off. I just thought it would help not to have to cook dinner for one evening. Yes, we did go to a Sushi Bar/Japanese Restaurant. We went to the Koto Buki restaurant in Toledo.

If you like sushi, you should go. If you don’t, but you like some oriental foods, you should go. In addition to the sushi and sashimi, they have other oriental dishes. It is rather pricey when you start ordering a lot of Sushi. If you want less expensive, I guess you could order from the sides and appetizers. 😉

Anyway we all ended up eating all we wanted (and more) and had a good relaxing evening. As they say in the commercials, it was priceless.

The Chicago Bears did it again!  Another 4th quarter comeback!

Next week we face the Detroit Lions which, with one win in the past two seasons, should be a cakewalk.  However, if I know anything about the NFL (do I?) I know that on any given Sunday either team can win the game.  So, I will not get too confident!

Jay Cutler, the Bears shiny new QB, looked sharp again helping to fade my memory of that terrible start in Green Bay.  At first, I was not very happy…  The Bears started down 13-0 and it wasn’t looking very positive.  I even had to turn down a friend’s invite for dinner (sorry Cathy!) because I was not feeling very social.

But just before the half the Bears scored a touchdown and provided some tension relief.  The rest of the game remained an exciting affiar and it ended the best possible way — with a Bears win.

So, there you have it.

CNN.com links to a blog called Mental Floss.  Usually involving tidbits about pop culture in a top-10 format,  these articles can be quite entertaining.  For example, I came across a few the other day about fast food:  Who Approved That?  7 Food Promotions Gone Horrible Wrong and 10 Secret Menu Items at Fast Food Restaurants and enjoyed both of those.  Note the NY Yankees reference in the failed Pepsi promotion in the first article (sorry Jamiahsh!).

Mental Floss has featured other lists in their articles that have interested me; of note is 10 Homeschooled Celebrities (Agatha Christie, Mozart, Alexander Graham Bell, to name a few), 10 Things That Have Deflated the Macy’s Parade, and 5 Weather Events Worth Chatting About.  It’s a well-written, entertaining blog (like this one, haha) – Just thought I’d share it!