beary sad

 Last night, we had an unwelcome visitor. Clive, our semi-resident 400+ lb black bear, came to finish the job of demolishing our beehive (a job he started a few nights ago). We started our protection with a four foot high fence with a gate securing the hive, but that wasn't enough. The first night of terror, he tore the gate off the hinges and flung the super, brood box, and everything else about wherever he pleased. We were sad, but thought we might be able to save them. My husband jerry-rigged a new solution, which included zip ties and a metal fence panel attached to the remaining (wooden) fence. 

This morning, we woke up to find the devastation was complete. Clive had warped the six foot high metal fence panel in his desperation to get the grubs and honey, and had flattened everything within a 20 foot radius, except the pond, which was already flat. Even the 2' tall round, which my husband had difficulty moving, had been upended in Clive's destructive mood.

Seriously, it was like Clive just saw red and went crazy. It was too cold to have the windows open last night, or I am sure we would have heard him...though I wouldn't really want to confront a bear as big as Clive is. He's no brown or Grizzly, but I would not want to come upon him in the night without some serious defense mechanisms.  

I thought I didn't like deer...turns out I like bears even less. I would show pictures of the wreckage, but it would just make you sad.

According to other beekeepers in the area, an electric fence is the only thing that will keep Clive at bay.

So now I get to learn everything there is to know about electric fences and my husband's day will be taken up by installing one. I assure you, this is not how either of us wanted to spend our day today.

little suckers

Sometimes life is so draining that I literally feel like someone took two giant suckers and put them underneath my clavicle on either side and turned them on. They're not loud munching crunching suckers, they're quiet suckers that leave bruises in their wake and an empty feeling - like all of the emotional liquid in my body has been pressurized in a vacuum and is being carried away. Sometimes I actually look to see if there are little clear tubes expressing all of the emotional essence of my being carrying my emotions out of me. The thing is, if it was yucky, snot-colored, putrescent emotional essence that I saw leaving, I would think the pain and the sucking agony was worth it. But no, it seems like it's the clear stuff - the essence of "what's good and green in this world" - that is being sucked away, leaving all the nasty stuff inside.

That's when I stop caring about the suckers, stop wondering if they'll go away - because the ache is so bad I know they won't...not without a fight.

So I start thinking about what I can do to survive the next moment, the next hour, the next day. I put the tubes in my mind back underneath my shirt so I can pretend they're not there, and I start coping. I go for a walk. I kiss my baby. I cry, and cry, and write, and cry. I talk to my very understanding husband. I try to immerse myself in work. I call friends and ask them to tell me about their problems so I can focus on something besides my own emotional pain. I eat copious amounts of 86% dark chocolate.

Most of all, I pray, and pray, and guide my thoughts to better things with all my might, and live for the hope that tomorrow will be a better day.

walking in the sunshine
pushing the baby in the stroller
observing the trees shimmer in the sunlight
pondering the effects of their symbiotic moss industriously gathering dew droplets
remembering how the ducks looked on the pond earlier in the morning

I forget about:
no grocery
     friends
     school
     fresh fruit
and the upcoming nut shortage that will disrupt my blood sugar balance
             news
             mask shortage
             social distancing protocols

and reflect that living a life that's relatively unchanged despite a pandemic is a privilege...I can still walk and see the trees, I still have food to eat (so far), and although there are hard things, life is ultimately very good. And I am grateful.
            

Upset

If you were to demonstrate the word upset with a table, tablecloth, and set of plastic tea party dishes, you'd have the cloth laying neatly on the table, and the dishes 'set' neatly and nicely on top, minding their own business. Then someone (or multiple someones) would come along and grab the tablecloth and toss all the contents within the tablecloth in the air...hence the "up" portion of the word. The table is no longer set. The set of dishes, the placement of the dishes, and indeed everything that was on the table itself is literally up in the air, ruining the 'set' of the table: upset.

The thing about upset is that it might mislead someone into thinking that because the tea service is "up" things might be "looking up" - it might attain new heights, new spots of grandeur. The tea party is literally going somewhere - so it might not be a bad thing, right?

Oops. Whoever thought that did not take into account gravity. It's a real force, folks. With it, the dishes crash (thankfully they don't shatter because whoever set the table was thoughtful enough to provide plastic ware), the tea streams in a delightful fountain everywhere, the cucumber sandwiches artfully fall to the floor in an indelicate state of messiness, and what was neat and nice is suddenly NOT neat and nice and work needs to be done to clean it up.

Poor tea set.

Poor feelings that are like the tea set - scattered and dismantled. It's too bad that when feelings are upset, the only thing that is "up" is hormones/emotions. It's all downhill from there.