Personality

SO.....I haven't blogged in a long time, I know, I'm bad, but I've had too much going on and then too exhausted to think clearly. Now, however I realized over a month has gone by and I had to sit right down and write myself a letter.

Living up here in the country you see neighbors helping neighbors, people doing for others..of course one still encounters rude, self-serving idiots, but what can you do? This past month two friends needed some help. One, needed a place to stay for a few days due to some marital strife, so we had a house guest for a few days until he got himself re-situated, the other, got caught in a bit of a car accident, and after my other half and another friend fetched her from the side of the road, took her to the hospital and waited to learn of her broken hand. Since she couldn't drive or do too much, she too wound up here for a few days.

It rained nearly every day in June, and every time we went to check on our new bees, the weather wouldn't allow it. I was able to do one cursory look when the new, beautiful copper hive tops arrived, and I snuck a few minutes to remove the old ones and install them, but that was it.
The bees don't like wind, rain, thunder or lightning, and since we had one of those every day, I just couldn't open those boxes.

Now last year, the hives we had were so docile. During an entire year, I was stung once. Most of the time, they buzzed around me crawled on me and were not remotely threatening. They didn't survive the winter. The colonies we have this year, are nothing like that. Virtually the minute I come near they buzz wildly, fly around in a snit and dive bomb my hat and veil. I nearly asphyxiated myself puffing smoke around me to drive them away. I did manage to do the majority of what I needed to, but I could have gotten more accomplished if the two of us were here with two smokers to keep the little buzzers at bay.

Macavity, the orange cat did a little investigating at one of the hive openings and was smart enough to walk away. Cyrano, on the other hand, suddenly took off like a rocket, so I think HE may have not been quite as wary as the cat...so much for that old adage about curiosity...this time it got the dog.

It is interesting to ponder how every bit of fauna seems to have a fairly distinct personality. I've encountered plenty of animals, and more than enough people. This is petition season, the time we knock on doors to put candidates' names on the ballot in November. As people come to their door, it is always interesting to see how they respond. I only go to doors of people who are registered to the same political party as the candidates on my ballots. I generally knock on the same doors every year. It is amazing to me who remembers me from time to time, who is clueless, nasty, one can see in their faces when they answer how their words will be.

And somehow, what I can't get out of my mind is: the police who raided the gay bar in Ft. Worth and threw people down, arrested them and made lies about a "former bartender" who called in a complaint. We know it wasn't a former bartender, because the place had been open one week and had its original staff. Then there was the sheriff's deputy in San Diego, who threw a woman in her sixties onto the floor, and twisted her recently operated on shoulder when he got a "noise complaint" about the fundraiser in the woman's house for a politician. And then he sprayed the guests with pepper spray when they objected to the woman being treated that way. As for the noise complaint, it was early in the day, before the time a noise ordinance took effect, and the neighbor was shouting down the politician while she tried to speak at the party.

And personality comes into play, when I get nasty, sarcastic and petty and wonder why our president wants gay people to wait for civil rights until the "time is right" while he appeases the religious right who will never accept him anyway. I want to know why Mr. Obama can't grow a pair of balls as big as his ears and just do the right thing? if Truman could understand where the buck stops and integrate the armed forces with one presidential order and not wait until the joint chiefs approved, then in 2009 Obama can do the same thing. If he had the personality of my bees, instead of my dog.