holy shit! i guess i could call myself a beekeeper now. this is a crappy photo, i keep meaning to take more but as soon as i open the hives up, i forget all about it. i never had a hobby before, where you forget all about the outside world. well, except reading, but you know. so passive.

queens jolene and josephine are thriving and laying eggs just fine, i believe. it's so neat to find her, so different amongst thousands, but hardworking in her way as well. jolene is more aggressive and the workers bang against my veil trying to attack. josephine nicely chills out, though it might have something to do with the fact that i usually open it up second and by then my smoker is going a little stronger. eh. maybe, maybe not.

i stole my first taste of honey yesterday from some comb i had to rip off. oh. my. god.

all in all things are going fantastically, i couldn't be more pleased! if they continue this way, i might just get a few jars this year instead of the none i had been planning on.

like any new mother, i am nervous and scared kinda shitless, for soon 18,000 odd stingly flying honeymakin insects will be my charges. also i am nervous because this DEMANDS that i not just dabble in a renaissancelike knowledge of things, like all "lah-tee-dah, that's cool to know, i could totally ace that jeopardy category," as i am wont to say to myself. if i want honey (uh, YES) and if i want the bees to thrive and go forth and multiply (yeah!), i probably should know what i'm doing a little. and i just....DON't. right now, anyway. books can only take you so far, and to be honest i've been damned lazy about the reading in any case.

i am hoping it IS sort of like parenting, and you quickly get the basic hang of it or just suffer. they will for the most part take care of themselves (i hope the queen kicks ass).... and for the most part i will learn this year and not get any honey for meself. some pro at the meetings said after 25+ years you still realize how much you don't know. so that's ok. that's good.

i'm just feeling sort of like "what the hell did i get myself into??" ---all based on some romantic view i had of dancing insects, flower juice, and hexagons. god.

paul once asked me what i love about buffalo, and it was during an i hate buffalo ebb. after thinking real hard, i answered "the houses." you could walk for hours, and spot hundreds of nifty little details you wouldn't find repeated elsewhere. there are some gems here too, but i really miss that about buffalo. god i could never live in the south, where so much is new.
for fun, i sometimes browse e-house plans but have been having some disturbing realizations come out of it. it's almost impossible to find one without the palatial master suite, which says a lot about homeowner/mom/dad/queen/king type stuff, and entitlement. then the outsides just look like monstrosities. it is the kind of "luxury" that is so barf-o-rama, new money & tasteless. i don't really get the whole "let's have an open floor plan downstairs" mentality when your bedrooms are compartmentalized and often, the "master suite" is set so so far away from the kids' rooms. if they cried in the night, they would have to mop up their own tears in their own bathroom, or run about 2K to the parents' room. that is so so sad.

i love this house, it's feeling more and more like ours (it's beginning to absorb us now)--- but i do not think it is the last house i will live in. i do not know where life will take us, maybe we will stay or go...if we stay eventually i would love to build a house, one i laid out a floor plan for myself, maybe partially dug into the earth. it would be so odd to live in a house no one else ever lived in.

....is about to get worse. we now run a small-ish grocery store and have taken a big hit as far as wheat, milk, eggs, etc.--- in short all the things we use to make the rolls, cakes, pizza, etc.-- people are balking at raising the prices but the flour for these things literally tripled in one week. all your basic goods have gone up so so much.

now, to make things SO much worse, it will be insanely expensive to have the cup of coffee you have when you sit down to bitch about such things. coffee, store brand coffee, is apparently going to skyrocket to like $10 a can according to one of our reps. not even maxwell house, STORE brand. ich. STOCK UP NOW, people. starbucks is about to get a whole lot richer.

insomnia is the worst fucking thing, i would not wish it on an enemy. all the livelong day i feel somewhat akin to a slave, albeit to children i love and adore, but still, i am working hard and putting in hours, and then at night..... nothing. very little, and struggling to get it.

i went to see an acupuncturist, it was INCredible

---

wowo... i haven't felt so relaxed, i think ever in my life, than i was on that table. for two days i felt calmer and better, now i am back to the crazies. it would be nice to get an acupunture treatment every week, but i don't think it works that way. ...and i can't help thinking i have THAT much negative energy?--so much that it would only last 2 days?

part of it is so so bad because you are completely alone in your insomniac world. you can say i'm SO tired, but yeah yeah--- everyone's tired. you don't GET insomniac tired unless you're an insomniac too. then at night there's no help for it, nothing can really put you to sleep i believe, except yourself, naturally. There are distractions but they're pretty shitty when your mind just can't focus on ANYthing. TV is about it--ug.

it has occurred to me too that it's probably like riding a bike, you can't think about it too much. and i know i am. here i am, when i'm really tired and should be in bed. but i dread it, what might happen once i'm there. i have tried so much, and it makes me angry and it sucks, but i think i have to resort to good old fashioned western medicine, and just go on something.

ok, so sesame street live was...... hm. a necessary evil? i am torn over it, since the initial wonder, fascination, and joy made it worth it, but the overstimulation and exhaustion that soon followed made it questionable. how many songs in how many styles can you possibly fit into an hour and a half? how many colors? how many dancing characters, how many musical instruments, how much lights, sound, action? uhhhhhhhh. why an intermission (to sell $10 elmo balloons, that's why)? why a second half that draaaaaaaaagged, during which every parent COULD NOT wait for the finale, and i think more than a few of the kids too. mine was pretty "eh!" with it by then. i'm glad we went, but i know now i will not take him to every event of this type. he has way more fun with a cardboard box at this juncture.

the jist of the show was "everything makes music." also sub "anyone." i DO not agree...... lots of things make sounds, but not music (according to the show, a doorbell or a telephone "make music"). and while anyone might reasonably be able to smack a cowbell with a stick, it's not necessarily going to be musical, it might be something that it's like, SHUT UP, PLEASE. it raises a lot of questions in my mind, why is there so much propaganda to get kids into music? i think they are naturally drawn to it, it doesn't have to be shoved down their throats. and as far as the YOU can make music, that's fine and everything, but it's part of that insidious self-esteem campaign that i'm always so wary of. i realize plenty of kids grow up in households where they are ignored or put down, and that self worth is essential to learning. but ALWAYS telling kids how great they are, and they can do anything if they just try and practice and you can do it and all that, hmmmm. big time paranoia on my part, but sometimes i think it's all some scheme to market a next-gen pill, to make them feel this great feeling about themselves that they've been led to believe they're always supposed to feel.
it also has me thinking "what exactly qualifies as music?" kind of thoughts, but that's a whole nother can of worms......

i randomly came across this from looking around on the irs's website. i'm not exactly sure how the things below count as charitable contributions. seems like it ought to be deducted as part of work related expenses or the like. maybe the captains are killing the whales charitably. for the eskimos, i mean, not for the whales.

but, as always, i'm sure our fine gov't knows exactly what it's doing.

it's odd, i don't think of whaling as something that goes on anymore. i mean, are there a lot of existing eskimos, who need a lot of dead whale?





Expenses of Whaling Captains

You may be able to deduct as a charitable contribution the reasonable and necessary whaling expenses paid during the year in carrying out sanctioned whaling activities. The deduction is limited to $10,000 a year. To claim the deduction, you must be recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission as a whaling captain charged with the responsibility of maintaining and carrying out sanctioned whaling activities.

Sanctioned whaling activities are subsistence bowhead whale hunting activities conducted under the management plan of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.

Whaling expenses include expenses for:

*

Acquiring and maintaining whaling boats, weapons, and gear used in sanctioned whaling activities,
*

Supplying food for the crew and other provisions for carrying out these activities, and
*

Storing and distributing the catch from these activities.

http://estrip.org/elmwood/users/trisha/images/0108/th_10013030103.jpg

so i go upstairs to free my son, who isn't napping despite the fact that i KNOW he's beat, and i think, 'hm, it kinda smells like baby powder.' one second later i know just what happened, and sure enough, he's standing at his gate, COVERED from hair to feet in it, standing in a big white pile of it, smiling like a cherub (of course). what can i do but laugh? so then he laughs, and i TRY to do the right thing and tell him that's naughty, but he's laughing and i'm laughing and there's powder all over the goddamn floor. sigh......

if everyone just MADE each other a nice gift for christmas, and left it at that. yeah, there'd still be a lot of purchases going on, you'd need materials, but each thing would be so much more from the heart, rather than an obligatory object. plus it might encourage people to expand their skills and talents. you'd have to be a real cold hearted grinch to just half-ass something, or to talk trash about someone's less-than-perfect creation.

eh. what do i know. christ was born, the son of god, here you go, here's an ipod.

and that said, i write with the full knowledge that my list, while long, doesn't have a single homemade thing on it.... i definitely don't know a cobbler. and i'm not making anything for the kids, though i plan to for the adults.

in any case, it's still my very favorite holiday, despite rampant spending and bad behavior. like a simpleton, i am so easily distracted by all the shininess and sparklies, the cinnamon scents and mountains of cookies, the fact that a tree is dragged indoors and totally fucked with. i love it, every last bit.