We have a wood playset in our backyard. Calfgrit8 saw a couple of “bees” under the upper level floor, so, being the superhero that dads are, I was sent out to confront the danger.
Now, I’ve been stung by bees and wasps a few times through my life, so I know how bad they hurt. I have a very healthy respect for the stinging insects. You might say I have a fear of them — they make me a bit jumpy.
So when I was looking around the playset, I was on a hair trigger. The boys hung around me, despite my asking them to stay back, and this caused me extra trouble. I didn’t want to be distracted by kids under my feet, and I didn’t want to knock down a child if I jumped back at seeing a bee six inches from my face.
Eventually, I got the boys to stay back far enough from me that I probably wouldn’t trample them when I ran screaming like a little girl. I didn’t see any bugs, but I did find a tiny paper wasp nest in one corner. It was so small it only had three holes in it. I easily scraped it away.
Then I found a round hole in one board of the playset. The hole was on the narrow side of the board, facing down. I examined the hole closely, terrified that a wasp would crawl out at any moment, land on my face, and sting me in the eye. I determined that this hole must be a wasp (whatever variety it is that makes holes in wood boards – there is one, I just don’t know its exact species) construction.
I pointed the hole out to the boys, and as I stood there wondering if spraying wasp killer up into the hole would do any good (and if it would render the playset off limits for the boys for the rest of the day), Calfgrit4 said, “How about if you stuck something in the hole so they can’t come out?”
That’s pretty smart for a 4 year old. And to show him how smart he is, I did that exact thing. I went in the house and got a small piece of paper.
Back outside, I rolled the paper into a semi-tight roll, and inserted it into the hole, as far as it would go. And as I pushed it in, I had visions of a wasp or twelve pushing it out and climbing out to attack me in mass.
We left the paper and the playset then, and played ball around the yard. A few minutes later, I checked on the paper. I could hear the wasps inside the board buzzing angrily from three feet away (although the recorder only picked it up from 12 inches):
For someone already very nervous about the whole thing, hearing those bugs growling like that, like they were totally pissed off and wanted nothing more than to sting to death the asshole who plugged them up, nearly make me tremble.
So I sent Calfgrit8 into the house to bring out the duct tape. He did so, and I taped over the hole, securing the paper inside. And that was it for the day.
I really hope those wasps can’t dig/cut their way out. My nervousness won’t subside until they stop buzzing. How long to wasps live without food? Please let them die soon.
Tuesday. A major part of my project is due by the end of the day Wednesday.
I had several things left to complete with it, but I figured I could get it all done if I worked through lunch and past 5:00 both days. I phoned Cowgrit to let her know I needed to work late. OK.
Around 1:00, I was told of something that required my attention at home, concerning our house hunting — we learn of a deadline we weren’t aware of. OK, I figured I could run home, take care of it, and run back to the office. I planned to leave at 4:00, and I could be back in my project by 6:00.
When 4:00 came, I ran out to take care of the issue. It ended up taking me 4 hours to get back to my office.
At 8:00, I was back to working on my project.
At 9:00, I was trying to update some files — about two dozen out of many hundreds. But something wasn’t working. Looking into the strangeness, I found that many of the files were corrupted. %$@^*&$F@^!!! (The corruption wasn’t my doing.)
So I spent the next hour correcting the problem files. At 10:00, I could actually get back to the real work I was needing to do.
At 10:30, I came across an issue that I needed a particular other person to help me with. But it’s over 4 hours past time that everyone else has left for the day. I really should have seen this one coming. I put that issue to the side to deal with on Wednesday.
At 10:50, I discovered some tasks for this project that I didn’t know about. Suddenly, my things to do pile doubled in size. But I’m down to half the time to do them.
At 11:40, the program I was working in crashed. I opened it again, and it crashed again. I had to restart the whole computer.
At quarter past midnight, I was too tired and punch drunk from the stress of the day to really be productive, so I went home. Maybe I’d get 6 hours of sleep.
When I got home, my computer was broken. Somebody messed around with the power button, and broke it. I spent 30 minutes fixing it and getting the computer back up and running.
Then the wireless keyboard wasn’t working. I spent another 10 minutes fixing it.
Things take a lot longer to figure out at 1:00 a.m. And I couldn’t just give up and go to bed, because I was so pissed at somebody breaking my computer while I was at work. I can’t go to sleep when my computer is broken and I know I won’t be able to fix it for another 24 hours.
Wish me luck for today, Wednesday. Maybe I won’t be in a fatal car accident on my way to work this morning. Though I do fully expect to be hit by a meteor.
I’m sitting on the sofa watching TV, switching back and forth between Star Trek: The Next Generation and some Denzel Washington movie about a bank robbery. Cowgrit comes into the den and asks me to come on to bed. I’ve been up late a lot lately, and she thinks I need to catch up on my sleep.
She has a point. I look at the clock on the DVD player: it’s 9:14. She asks if I’ve written my post for tomorrow. No, I haven’t.
I turn off the TV and get up from the couch. I head into my office to do my duty.
I sit down at the computer and surf to a few web sites. I can’t think of anything to write about, and I’m just distracting myself. I blow away 15 minutes.
I close the web sites and sit, staring at my blank post page for a couple minutes. I still can’t think of anything to write. I want to go back to the TV. Instead, I get up and go into our bedroom.
Unfortunately, Cowgrit has already turned off the lights. But when I turn around to leave the room, she whispers from the darkness, “What is it?”
“Give me something to write about,” I say.
“Huh?” she says.
“I can’t think of anything to write about. What’s happened funny lately?”
“Um,” she says.
I plop down on the bed, in the dark. “Come on,” I urge, “give me something to write about.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything funny. Did the boys do something funny today?”
“Um,” she says.
“Oh,” I say, “I’ve got it.” I get up off the bed, in the dark.
“What?” she asks.
“This,” I say.
“What ‘this’?”
“This situation.” I walk out of the bedroom and back into my office to write all of this. Then I get up and go back to the bedroom.
I ask Cowgrit if I can include the part of our conversation — the risqué funny part — that I haven’t included here. She denies the request. Understandable, actually. Probably best for all concerned, really.
I go back to the computer and note that I’m not allowed to include the funny part of this whole post.
My friends asked me if I was going to see Transformers 2, and I said, “No, Hollywood has struck out with me.”
Hollywood had what should have been three easy slam dunks for me this year: Wolverine, Terminator: Salvation, and Star Trek. But they completely failed to entertain me; they bored me. Me, a member of their core geek demographic. So I decided to not bother with anymore Hollywood in the theater this year.
But then later in our conversation, I mentioned that my family was going to see UP this weekend. “I thought you weren’t going to anymore movies?” They said.
PIXAR is not Hollywood. PIXAR has never made a bad movie. I’d go see a PIXAR movie even if they made a movie about talking cars or the life of a bug. PIXAR is exempt from my theater boycott.
So, all the Grits went to see UP Sunday afternoon. This was Calfgrit4’s first movie theater experience, and Calfgrit8’s first in at least two years (he didn’t like it when he was younger). I’m happy to announce that all Grits seemed to thoroughly enjoy this show.
It’s a real tear-jerker in places, completely silly in other places, and totally entertaining throughout. Frankly, I’m kind of surprised I liked it as much as I did. It’s a ridiculous romp, but it was up front and self-admittedly a ridiculous romp. It didn’t wrap itself in a cloak of realism or believability. There was nothing serious about this movie other than some of the emotions it pulled out of the audience.
In the beginning of the movie, there’s a series of scenes with no dialog at all, and Calfgrit4 asked, “Is this a commercial? Is the movie going to start soon?” These scenes laid the emotional groundwork for the old man character, and made me want to hold Cowgrit’s hand.
Later in the movie, both Calvesgrit were laughing out loud. The theater was filled to near capacity with whole families, and all the kids (and many adults) were laughing fully out loud through much of the show.
After the movie, during our walk through the parking lot back to our van, our boys were repeating lines and scenes from the movie, and laughing all over again. It does a parent’s heart good to see their kids so filled with humor and joy.
For someone already very nervous about the whole thing, hearing those bugs growling like that, like they were totally pissed off and wanted nothing more than to sting to death the asshole who plugged them up, nearly make me tremble.
Viewed: Theater
