Things Go Moo In The Night…

(Since I don’t have permission to use names, I’m being vauge on purpose.)

The press is coming!!

Which is actually a good thing because once we discovered that our bees were not wasps, but in fact honey bees, neither myself nor Erlend wanted to exterminate the critters. But they have to go. What to do?!

Killing them woudl be such a shame because of all of the colony collapse disorder and honey bees disapearing in droves all over the world! Personally I think killing them all off would be quite irresponsible too, in light of the dearth of honey bees. Hence our desire to have the bees removed rather then exterminated.

So we’re kinda on a “Save The Bees” kick and it seems that the local press is very interested in helping these honey critters to live and be relocated.

We have the local radio station + one of the local papers coming here to the hoose.

But in an interesting development, we also have two beekeepers coming as well! The local paper called (sorry, no names!) and told me of a lady that can help, gave me her name and number, and wished us good luck. Well, said lady actually called me! We chatted about the situation and then it turns out WE KNOW EACH OTHER hahahaha! Too funny!

Having two beekeepers coming is a good thing too because now the press won’t have to be worried about “What are we going to do to save the bees?” and can report on a hopeful outcome while also broadcasting the story and possibly enlisting the invaluable help/knowledge of more bee people.

(Also, the beekeepers can do most of the talking and that’ll get me off of the hook hehehehe)

I’ve been informed that removing this colony from our lum is “going to be hell” so any help will be deeply appreciated ~ especially by the bees!!

I’m actually not all that nervous about the press arriving because they’re not coming here for me hahaha! So I can relax. They’re coming for the beezees.

We’ll have the radio station, the local paper, and two beekeepers aboot ~ all while, get this: a man from the department of agriculture is here inspecting Erlend’s silage pits.

And here I thought that our 3rd anniversary was going to be a dull, non event!

Yeah right. On a farm????

Flying Cat, that clever feline indeed, was spot on: I said to Erlend last night, “Well… I did want to try my hand at keeping bees. But not inside of the hoose!!”

So, anyhoo, it seems that K~~~ and H~~~ up the road not only rescue me when my tarts blow up in the oven but they also specialize in rescuing panicking pregnant ladies from an infestation of bees. While K~~~ called around to try and find a bee getter-outter, H~~~ hustled down to the farm (in an antique car no less!) and closed himself in the bee-ridden livingroom armed with a can of wasp spray. I heard a lot of moving aboot, shots of spray, silence, more moving aboot… and H~~~ soon emerged with the bottom of a pasta sauce jar full of wriggling bees. They looked like honey bees to me. I don’t think that our lum dwellers are wasps.

H~~~ then whipped out a folding ruler and proceeded to engineer a Fireplace Blocking Device created out of cardboard and duct tape. With this in place we soon had peace and quiet in the livingroom.

Until this evening, at exactly the same time as yesterday evening! All of a sudden… the livingroom began to fill up with baffled bees!! Only they were anything but agressive and always stuck to the window in a desparate bid to escape. So Erlend got rid of the bees and then we perched in the livingroom and watched the cardboarded fireplace like a pair of hawks. A bee appeared, then two more… but we had no idea how they got out! An hour or so later we saw two bees wriggle their way out of a weensy crack in the mantelplace!!!!!!

I give these bees much credit for creativity… “C’mon, mates! Just follow the light!!”

Erlend set upon this (and every other crack he could find) with paper towels and stuffed everything good. Then we sat there and listened as a massive swarm of honey bees built up behind the cardboard. TALK ABOUT CREEPY!! I was just in there working on my book (by now the wean had been bathed and put to bed) and all I could hear was bee upon bee buzzing away just behind the cardboard, looking for a way to escape…

I fled. It’s all just a bit too Alfred Hitchcock for me!!!

With that said… are there any beekeepers aboot that might be able to help us remove the bees from the lum without having to kill them? Because their days are numbered otherwise…

(Seriously, I could write my own “Katie Morag” version of life on Orkney!!)

If we didn’t have a baby in the house I wouldn’t be so desparate but this isn’t funny any more.

Our house is being overrun with bees due to a hive being made in our lum! Even stuffing the fireplace isn’t working ~ they scriggle around it and they are flooding our house!

Erlend tried to find some kind of pest control company in the phone book but failed. Does anyone know of any pest control company on the Orkney Mainland that can help us with our bee infestation? I went outside to have a look and they came after me ~ these things aren’t joking around! I’m worried about Elspeth!!!!

Thank you!

Mummy can’t open certain windows in the house because then we are invaded by bees (of all things!) and endless numbers of enormous blue bottle flies. So we can only have a few windows open and that means it’s still hot and sticky in the hoose! I kept fussing about this but mummy thought I was asking for a sook. No, I don’t want a sook! I want to get out of this hot yucky stickyness! Ohhhhh I can’t wait for it to cool down ~ it’s not like farmers go to the beach on nice days. No, they WORK.

Mummy finally caught on to why I was so crabby and she put me in my little baby bath. I had so much fun splashing and playing with my rattle! Now I’m cooled down and I can try and have my nap. Mummy has angled the big window shade so that it directs the cool breeze right into my Playpen Of Delights.

Mummy’s note: Elspethy is learning how to say “mama” only she says “nah-nah” instead. For several days she’s been saying it randomly. “NahNahNahNahNah…” but today when I went out of sight I heard her little baby voice call out, “Nah Nah?!”

That so totally melted my heart!!!!!

(She’s 8 months old now.)

Erlend: “I’m awa for silage at _____. What’ll thoo have for dinner?”

Me, instantly turning green. “Uhhh…”

“There’s leftover pasta with mince.”

I turn even more green. “Uhhmm…”

“You could have some of the mince-and-tatties fae yesterday.”

At this point I begin to salivate for all of the wrong reasons. “Oh gahd…”

“Do you want some o’ this porridge right noo? I made it with bananas for Elspeth. She loves bananas! I mashed them up…”

Me, swallowing hard… stomach churning. “Oh lordy…”

“Weel, whatever thoo want for dinner, you have that pasta and mince and the mince-and-tatties…”

I whirl around and run for the door, hand over mouth. “Erlend, please… just… DONT TALK ABOUT FOOD!!”

Baffled husband watches me go. “Oh. Sorry.”

Obviously I don’t need to buy it now but my pelvis is back to hurting like crazy so soon I won’t be able to sit down and surf the internet much.

I’m trying to find a twin pram-and-pushchair combo. There are lots of twin push chairs but a newborn baby can’t sit up! So I have to find one that also has a pram option…

Hmmmmmm.

(As I type, Elspeth is sitting in her bumbo seat and grabbing at everything in sight hahahaha! She’s SO CUTE! Babies are such a hoot.)

It’s 10pm and I just finished roasting a duck for Sunday dinner. The house is wrecked. It’s always wrecked. I clean it and it ends up wrecked again by the end of the day. I (almost but not quite) give up!

Elspeth is still asleep ~ will she remain thus or wake up looking for a sook? I’m going to bed either way! I never mind getting up and giving her a sook ~ as long as that happens before midnight hehehe! But really, once I peel myself out of bed and sit with her in my arms I don’t mind being woken up to give her a sook.

So, Little Miss CHEEKS is going to have a sibling!! Er… yeah. That happened quick! After 15 years of no cavities, I got 5 cavities with the last pregnancy and was supposed to get them filled at the end of this month. Now I’ll have to wait! (Is there any way to slow cavities down??) I wonder how many cavities I’ll get with this pregnancy??

My heart is giving me a very hard time. It’s gotten much worse in the past year. I’ll have to talk that over with the midwife!!! Now when I go to bed, if I lie on my side my heart hammers so hard and I get such awful chest pain. Which is so odd because why would my heart go 1,000 miles an hour when I’m lying down?? I’m not exactly exerting myself! I have to lie on my back in order to calm it down some. I wore a holter monitor for 48 hours and of course my heart barely misbehaved. That’s because it comes-and-goes on a whim. And there’s only like one holter monitor for the Highlands and Islands so it’s not as if I can call up the hospital and say, “QUICK! Fit me up to that thing again! My heart is really spazzing out this week!”

I’m about to go to bed. Will my heart let me sleep? I sure hope that my heart isn’t made worse as the pregnancy progresses… I’d like to live to see my kids grow up!

I’m so happy we can add a Fat Little Cheeks #2 to the mix!! Another Little Mini-Feets. Another Cute Little Bum, Fat Little Puggie, Little Bambino, Little “Cutsie Wootsie”… and the list goes on and on and on…

So, I bought this grey wool “Jane Eyre” style hat for ordinary everyday use. I figured that way I can save my colorful floral hats for kirk. On non-windy Sundays!

I put the hat on, pinned it into place and, smiling with delight, turned to my very honest husband. “What do you think?”

The look on his face was one of Oh. My. God. He stared. My smile faded. He gulped and then, “It, uh, makes you look old.”

…………………….

…………………………….

……looking old really isn’t an insult to me ~ I have nothing but great respect for age. Not only that but at 33 I’m more grey haired then brown. I’ll be solid grey by the time I’m 40. It’s genetic. But let’s face it: I’ve not the wisdom to qualify for the respect that is reserved for our elders! And if “It makes you look old” was the best he could come up with…. I must look awful.

But I’m wearing this bloomin’ hat anyway!!!

I almost lost my escape from the farm ~ husband is crafty. But I put my foot down and demanded my 5 days saying, “You would have been completely GONE if we’d been sooth ~ so there’s no reason you can’t stay away from the farm during the day time while we’re right here!” I pointed out that he’ll have mornings and evenings/nights to be a work-o-holic so he’d better give me the afternoons for our shrinking vacation. (Farmers.)

We once had a sofa. It’s now disapeared under a pile of baby laundry, blankets, a sling, packages of baby wipes, and a purple bonnet. I tried to get the house spic-n-span before vacation started but that’s hard to do when you’re also here, all day, using the same space that you’re trying to keep clean!

Elspeth has spent the past two days being in one of those horrible perpetually-fussy moods and so vacation (i.e. driving around Orkney in the afternoons) is going to be a very welcome relief. Usually by 7:30pm she’s in bed sleeping and I get a chance to relax ~ not just my body but also my brain! You can never really relax with a child afoot.

But lately she’s been waking up about 9pm and again at 11pm demanding sooks and so my evenings are totally shot and full of screaming baby. After an entire day of screaming baby one can forgive me for looking a bit haggard. I’ve noticed a very startling increase in grey hair over the past seven months!!

Being a housewife is grand but I can totally see why some women put their screeching weans in daycare ~ it’s either that, or their sanity. If anyone ever wonders what I’m on about, I’ll gladly send you a tape containing 16+ hours of fussing, crying, screaming baby. You’ll understand in about 10 minutes haha!

Now she won’t eat. It’s 7:40pm and she’s crying and howling but won’t eat. Which means if I put her to bed she’ll be up in an hour screaming for milk.

I can’t wait to lose myself in an exhausted, burned out, blood-shot eyed stupor as we toole around Orkney in the car with the wean babbling (not fussing!) in her car seat. One more day of this and I’d be drooling as much as the baby… **Twitch Twitch**

P.S. SHE HAD A GOOD SOOK! Oh… I hope this means she’ll sleep all night and let me fold some laundry. And then collapse into bed. I’d like to be rested for vacation but I’m not going to hold my breath hehehe

The wean is just not doing well with going hither and yon. She’s entered a stage where she wants to have her sooks here, and she wants to lay down to play there and when it comes bedtime she wants to be upstairs. None of this strange places all day stuff, thank you kindly! And our trip sooth will be nothing but strange places. Elspeth is also not happy if daddy is missing from her mornings and nights ~ and while at Pluscarden, I sleep in one guesthouse and husband sleeps in another so daddy would be missing every morning and every night for nearly a week. This did not bode well.

So we’ve decided to make our vacation right here in Orkney (with Erlend banned from doing any serious work) so that after hauling the wean around all day she can still come home at night. And she’ll still have her morning routine. (She’s actually ok with being oot-and-aboot all day if she has her morning and night routines here at home sweet home.)

Our little sniffle-head has been fighting a cold that I caught last week. We’ve had some very long, long nights full of crying, 10pm feeds, 11pm warm baths + a feed and 2am feeds. For some reason this cold has made Elspeth sleepless and hyperactive and kinda hungry at night! But we think she’s getting better…. at the moment she’s napping and not waking up after ten minutes.

Hopefully she won’t get into a routine of waking up for 2am feeds… **Groan**

Here’s to vacation ~ right here at home!