Bee Happy?

[lydamorehouse]

Image: Another upside down bee, this time one that isn't a bumblebee!

Weird thing I am noticing. Bumblees give no craps if a phone camera is hovering over them. They're also slow moving, generally? I even had one curious bumblebee just latch on to my finger and inspect the camera for itself. Honey and other bees? Camera shy! It's much harder to get a picture of them!! So, here is, shockingly, a bee that is not a bumblebee.

Let's see, what's new with me?

Jas and Mason are continuing their whirlwind exploration of the Twin Cities. Yesterday was the "must see" of Minnehaha Falls, with the requiste lunch at Sea Salt. Mason apparently tried fried oysters for the first time, thanks to Jas. The two of them also did the whole walk all the way to the Mississippi River, since I mean, you're nearly there, so why not? Over dinner at Bole (an Ethiopian place here in St. Paul), Jas said that they had never actually seen sandstone in the wild before, as it were, and found it deeply fascinating. This is the sort of thing that I love hearing about because, having grown up surrounded by sandstone bluffs, I forget how uncommon sandstone might be to someone from another biome.

We took Jas to Bole because, while they have heard of Ethiopia restaurants, they have not been because berbere spices are a migraine trigger fro their mother. So, we were able to provide a guilt-free experience, which I think they quite enjoyed. We ended up sitting outside in the patio, despite the mugginess and threat of rain. It's always so much fun to show off the cool stuff in the city, you know? Our food (and our immigrants, damn it!) is always some of the very best parts of it all.

Since I believe I reported about this earlier, I thought I'd also give an update on Rhubarb's inappropriate urination issues? If you don't want to read about cat pee problems (and who would blame you!?), I will put it under the cut.

On camera, with the box back upstairs and the light on (to keep the camera working, more on that in a second), Rhubarb did all of her business very APPROPRIATELY. She seems to be drinking a lot more water, so there may, in fact, be a correlation!

However.

Rhubarb peed on the floor, of course, just before Jas showed up, having performed like a champ for WEEKS. Shawn and I speculated, since this happened overnight, that maybe she gets scared to go too far into the bathroom when she's uncertain if Willow is hiding in the shadows (which, to be fair to Rhubarb, Willow absolutely does. Black cats know they're black!) So, we actually bought a rechargeable battery-operated, motion sensitive night light for the downstairs bathroom. Hopefully, this will help? Oh, and the reason that we have to have a battery-operated one is that the brother-in-law, Keven. Long ago, we let him wire a plug into the closet (we have a stereo in that dining room closet and used to actually use it to play music all the time,) but he wired it to only work when the light is on. This managed to fuck up the entire curcuit, so we can't just plug in a nightlight and expect it to work unless the bathroom light is already on... which of course then makes the whole night light plan kinda moot. :-)

But, as for Rhubarb, I am hesitant to go back to the vet and get prozac when it is clear that she CAN go appropriately. I think we just need to strategize about places she feels safe peeing.

We think this all stems from Rhubarb's first unsupervised explore of the house when we discovered her, in the litter box room, hiding behind some window frames fully cornered by Willow, growling, who would NOT let her leave that room. So, I mean, her psychological issues actually have a cause we can point to and, potentially, a solution--i.e., making sure she can't get cornered where she wants to pee!

tl:dr we're still working on it? I have faith we'll get her fixed without having to restort to drugs.

That's all the news that's fit to print, plus some that had to appear under the cut.

Comments

[minnehaha]

Terry Garey is the first person I knew who petted bumblebees.

K.

[lydamorehouse]

Oh! I should print some of these out to send to her! Maybe I could make one or two of them into a homemade card.

I've been trying to write every so often, but it's hard--for obvious reasons.

[pameladean]

Yes, I've always seen bumblebees as very self-possessed and focussed, and nobody is going to hurry them, don't even try. Whereas honeybees are frantic and paranoid and jumpy. The smaller bees just seem to think everything is out to eat them, which may on their scale be true.

How great that you were able to give Jas a guilt-free Ethiopian food experience!

P.

[elainegrey]

We have ground nesting bees that come out May-ish. They are zooming around at ground level, no more than six inches above the ground, and i can walk through them with flip flops. Absolutely no interest in worrying about me. But definitely in a frenzy to eat, mate, and reproduce.

I think part of the cat urination issues we had in the year or so before the boyos died had at least Marlowe's ambushing of Edward to blame. We have a box in a cabinet with a motion sensitive light inside, but that still meant Marlowe could lurk around the corner.

[carbonel]

I love fried oysters! I had them for dinner at Sea Salt after a bike ride there with Lydy -- very much a splurge for me (with regard to diet, not money) but very tasty.