I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of clever, fast-paced plots with snappy dialogue. If a book has those, I’ll read almost any genre.
But, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve begun to think my taste has become maybe a little too discriminating?
Part of this — okay, let’s call it what it is — pickiness is because for about ten years, I too wrote books. Apparently, they weren’t very good books because I was never successful in getting one published, but the process made me more aware of when, and sometimes how, a book succeeds.
Unfortunately, it also made me equally (woefully) aware when a book doesn’t quite succeed, or worse, when it doesn’t succeed at all.
These days, I pick up and put down more books than I finish.
I’m getting old, and life is just too short, okay?
And before you think I’m being too harsh, let me just say, the fact that I put down a book by a favorite author, or even a new (to me) one, doesn’t mean I put it down forever. I’m quite aware sometimes it’s just my mood, and I’m equally aware how hard it is to even complete a book, let alone multiple ones that are published! Because I’m not a total jerk, sometimes, I go back and try again. I’m prepared to cut authors a little slack.
After all, no one can please anyone else all of the time.
Still, imagine my delight when I discovered Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer have published, not one, not two, but three new books in a series, and they are all as good as I remember their writing to be!
Plus they’re set in Ohio, the state that I love (if you take away its current political leaders).
The titles are Lavender’s Blue, Rest in Pink, and One in Vermillion, published by Cool Gus, Mayer’s publishing company.
Now, you may say, “But, Kym, I don’t do romance or rom-coms or whatever you want to call them.”
To that, all I can do is shrug and feel bad for your loss because you’re missing out.
Seriously, if you’re up for a bit of fun, you should go buy these books. Or ask your library to do so.
Once again I have left you all hanging, and for that I must again apologize.
Thankfully, Mom’s spell in the hospital was just a week, and she’s back at her nursing home. This is always a relief, although every return means her readjusting to the reality of no longer living independently.
Earlier this week, she said to me, “Kym, I think I’d like to go home.” When I asked where that might be, she answered with the name of the town where she was living before the nursing home.
Then she added, “But I’m not sure which apartment so someone will have to help me with that.”
This meant we once more had to have the conversation about why she lives where she does — that she is physically unable to move or live independently.
Thankfully, Mom is a realist, capable of accepting the necessity of her current home.
I am so grateful for this because there are others where she lives who have completely different attitudes, and their misery — which in some cases appears partly self-induced — has a spillover effect on the other residents, including my mom.
Anyway, she’s safe, and my brother and I each visit several times a week, which Mom seems to enjoy. We’re all just trying our hardest to make the best of a difficult situation.
In other news, we finally got all the hives winterized, after first treating them with vaporized oxalic acid to knock down the mite load before the cold weather. In fact, we ended up treating one of the colonies twice because the drop of mites was frankly quite scary (at least to me).
Other than one morning when we had a couple of inches of snow, and a few nights and mornings in the upper thirties, it’s been quite warm.
The girls are still bringing in some pollen. Heaven only knows where they’re finding it because even the asters have gone. They’re definitely foraging though because on the sunnier days, we’ve been seeing them all over — zooming into the garage, exploring the deck, and flying around the mostly dead garden.
I think most of the hives seemed light in the honey department, but I think that every fall, so maybe I’m just paranoid. We froze some of the extra deep frames of honey during the summer, and when I looked, I only saw about five. So we were trying to dole them out to the lightest hive.
Fortunately, The Engineer had another look, and there were about nine more frames! We had fun sharing that wealth!
At one point, I said, “You know, this is beginning to feel like a job. I think next year we should cut back by a few hives.”
The Engineer immedialy agreed, and we decided we would go down to four, plus LoLa. Since we’re in the process of switching to eight frame hives, we hope to accomplish this by selling complete hives next spring. Of course, that’s going on the assumption we have hives make it through the winter, which is never a certainty!
I love beekeeping. It’s always a thrill to see the bees flying in the spring (if they’re flying in the spring), and to start another season. But it’s also always a relief to have the break that winter provides. Still, seven hives is too many for the type of hobby beekeeping we like, at least the way we do it.
On another, unrelated topic, we helped Darling Daughter move a few weeks ago. She and the Partner have parted ways, mostly amicably, and she’s living on her own in half a house not too far from her previous address.
This has also resulted in us seeing a bit more of her, which makes me happy, of course (not that I would have wished a break-up on anyone, especially my own child).
In the last week, I’ve also been able to knock off some of the items on my “to-do” list. I finally made creamed honey, rendered wax, and put some items on eBay.
Even more strangely, I had the urge to clean. Believe me when I say this type of yearning is not one I often experience! But now, surveying our cleaner-than-usual living quarters, I wonder why not.
I think it’s because we’ve always got so much else going on — cleaning just tends to fall to the bottom of the list.
Who knows? Maybe this is the beginning of an attitude shift. I did find myself wondering why I have so much stuff! It’s always been our plan to sell our too-big house and downsize. Perhaps I’m finally getting into the right mindset to make it easier.
On the other hand, I did just buy two pizzelle makers.
Honestly, I can explain! A good friend is having a birthday next week, and we’ve been trying to share experiences instead of giving gifts or going out for a drink and dinner. So, I suggested we get together and cook something — pierogis, maybe, or some kind of fancy cookie.
The third member of our trio volunteered that she had gotten a pizzelle maker.
Well, I have never made pizzelles and was quite taken with the idea, as was the birthday woman. But one iron wouldn’t be much good for three people, so I decided to also get one. And then I saw the one that made mini pizzelles.
Now I’ll have to make a lot of pizzelles to make the investment worth it, but they seem just the type of cooking/baking I like — fairly simple but with a nice presentation.
Fingers crossed our pizzelle palooza turns out to be all we hope for! 🙂
Also, after rendering our wax, it became clear that making candles is probably not in the cards for us. Here’s why.
To get pretty was like this …
… you have to filter out a ton of this.
It’s called slum gum, and it’s all the waste left in the bottom of the cells, along with the propolis and pollen that gets mixed in when you remove the wax.
When I finished the job, we had enough wax for rewaxing any frames that need it, along with enough for another project, which I’ve decided will be lotion bars.
I found a recipe on the Carolina Honeybees website, and will be making them sometime after Thanksgiving to give as little gifts.
And now to explain the title of this post — The Engineer and I went flying last weekend over a local metropark lake, which the park system has temporarily drained so they can dredge part of it and rebuild the dam.
I walk there pretty regularly and have been keeping tabs on the progress, along with what seems like half the county. People (including The Engineer and I) will pull up, get out of their cars, get as close as they can to what used to be the lake, and just stare for a few minutes. Then, they get back in their cars to drive away.
It’s kind of funny, this odd need to look at the empty lake. I’m sure flying over the site is probably the aerial equivalent.
It was neat to be able to clearly see where the river is running through the dry(ish) lake bed, so I took pictures to share with friends.
Then, I thought others in our community might appreciate the sight, like maybe the readers of our local online newspaper.
To my gratification, when I emailed the editor, he agreed, and they were published with a small blurb about how and why I took them.
And that, dear readers, is how I came to be briefly, almost famous in a small town!
The Byrd and the Bees 