Honey, Please!

Early this morning, 7:00 a.m. to be exact, the beekeepers rolled up and began the laborious process of settting up the bee vacuum and cutting into the fascia to get to the bee colony in the eaves of our casa. Before too long they were suited and up the ladder, sucking perturbed bees into the bee box. Better them than me! I do love bees, but I am slightly terrified of them. I did venture out with my long lens to snap a few pictures. The rest were taken from the safety of my house.

Things that Suck

This week has just plain sucked, and I'm going to take a moment to tell you all about it. No more Debbie Downer posts for a while after this.

You ready? Here we go!

The Official "Things that Suck" List

#1

Ordering your books from the TCU Barnes & Noble Bookstore, tracking them on UPS, and coming home to find that they are not delivered to the "FRONT DOOR," as stated on the tracking system. They are not on your neighbors' front door either.

That box contained three books for the "Islam & Politics in the Middle East" class I am taking. The other two books were for a "Survival Literature" class. I am sure the person who accidentally-on-purpose opened it has already contacted Homeland Security. Agents are going to rappel through my windows and bust in my door any minute. As far as getting the books, I am being bounced back and forth between UPS and the bookstore. To top it all off, the professor sent an email this week urging everyone to buy the books early as they always sell out. Great. Given my fragile state this week, I burst into tears when the bookstore chick got an attitude with me. She said she'd put the order aside for me. Yes, that's great, but do you plan to be a pal and pay for them too? My blood pressure is rising as I type. Moving on...

#2

Force feeding your anorexic dog. Carrying the puppies sapped just about all of Phoebe's reserves and left her looking like a bag of bones. She is such a picky eater that she's always been on the lean side, but now she has to eat enough calories to get some meat back on her bones. She won't do that on her own, so that means I have to pry her little mouth open and squirt in the prescription food about 6-8 times a day. She hates me for it and I want to cry from frustration. Joe did this Tuesday and Wednesday and I got the Thursday and Friday shift. We take her back to the vet on Tuesday to get her c-section stitches out, so we are looking for a weight gain. Fingers crossed.

#3

Tornadoes...for obvious reasons.

A little before 2:00 pm, I made a run to the Mansfield Petsmart to grab a variety of dog foods to tempt Phoebe, and I figured I'd stop at the Starbucks at the 67 & 287 intersection. Apparently, as I was sipping away on my iced double shot, there was a tornado forming right over me. I had no idea until Joe called me while I was at Petsmart giving me to dubious order to go home, there was a tornado headed for Midlothian. I paid and drove home, all the while scanning the horizon for this supposed tornado. And then I passed by an overturned 18-wheeler right outside of Midlothian...yeah...on the very road I'd traveled down minutes before. Gah! Back at the house, things were as I'd left them. And, of course, Phoebe didn't like any of the six different foods I bought. This dog!

Though I am sure glad I wasn't at school with a couple of thousand terrified teenagers, I do feel a teeny bit guilty for not being there for them in their time of distress. Check out these cool photos my death-defying co-workers took from campus!

Not sure who took this photo, but it was shot at the Midlothian Pkwy and FM 1387 intersection about a half-mile from my casa! Yikes!

Thank you for allowing me to wallow for a bit. I feel better now.

Oh Mylanta!

This is my poor Pheebs on Friday afternoon. She's about to pop.

Saturday around noon.... Phoebe's puppies are here! 3 baby boys. They are tiny and adorable and mew like kittens.

Here's her traumatic birth story.

Phoebe stopped eating and became lethargic Friday evening and the breeder decided to take her to the vet the next morning. The vet decided to do an emergency c-section as the puppies were sapping any energy poor Pheebs had left. Joe and I were getting ready for my cousin's wedding when we got the call, and rushed to be with Phoebe instead. I was a t-total wreck! Thank goodness for Joe. He was a rock.

The c-section went well and Phoebe woke up from the anesthesia fine. Her body temperature dropped due to the anestheisia and we had to work on getting it back up to normal. It was scary. The vet closed at noon. :-/ We took her back to the breeder's house, IV drip and all, to recover and Joe and I sat with her and fed her and talked to her. Her gums were very pale, usually a sign of hypoglycemia, but she wasn't responding to Karo syrup, the usual fix. It is so hard to see your baby so unlike herself. The breeder assured us she'd take good care of her and hurried us out before Pheebs really came to and would want to leave with us and stress out. We left and went to Dallas for a bite to eat and drink. We'd not eaten since breakfast and it was getting close to 5.

Later that night the breeder called us to let us know she was taking Pheebs to the emergency vet. Her gums hadn't returned to their normal color and while she was improving, she just wasn't bouncing back as quickly as she should have been. After her bloodwork came back, the vet discovered that Phoebe was very anemic and advised a blood transfusion to help her out. Always the pessimist, I prepared myself for the worst and didn't sleep a wink.

So after several hundred dollars and nearly a 24 hour stay at the emergency vet, Phoebe is doing much better. Thank goodness the breeder was knowledgable and knew when to act. She is still thin and requires a high calorie prescription food, but we are hoping that she will but her weight back on quickly. When I brought her home this evening, she ran to our bedroom, jumped in bed, and burrowed under the covers and scratched around like crazy. I am so glad that it all turned out for the best. The puppies are with a surrogate mother and will stay there until they are weaned. I have my sweet Pheebs back and I am happy.

Rangers Game

Joe and I went to our first Rangers game of the season and it could not have been a more perfect time. The tickets and parking pass were free, the weather was cool, the seats were awesome, CJ Wilson pitched an entire game, no one successfully started The Wave, and there were fireworks at the end to top it all off.

I LOVE going to games with Joe. He's a great fan. I'm pretty sure he was the reason CJ did so well that night. He had his own personal cheerleader in Joe. (Is it bad that I am secretly happy that Marlon Byrd is with another team so Joe doesn't embarrass me flapping his "wings" when Byrd comes to bat?) Don't tell him I said so

Oh yeah...and how awesome did these fireworks photos turn out?! They were taken with the Samsung camera Joe won in the hula-hooping contest at work. It has a fireworks setting. Pretty cool.

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And the Magic # Is....

Three! From the xray, the vet was able to find three puppies. Right now it looks like Pheebs will be able to deliver naturally granted she does so prior to Monday afternoon. If not, the puppies will get much bigger and she will have to have a c-section.


I think Joe and I want to keep one. A boy. His name might be McGruber. Harry, Phoebe, and McGruber. No? How about Orbi? Phoebe was going to be Orbi if she had been a he. I was coming off a season of LA Ink and just loved Kat's boyfriend, "Orbi." He is Roy Orbison's son.


I was looking back through Phoebe's baby pics and found this one when she was about 14 weeks old. Yes, I squealed when I saw them. OMG...can you imagine 3 of these running around?! I am in trouble. Big trouble.

Mother's Day Weekend

Saturday I dropped off a very rotund Phoebe at the breeder's house where she will whelp and stay until I am finished with school on June 4. I was so sad packing up her bag and driving her to Rockwall. Though, after dropping her off, I felt relieved. I would have worried about her being alone all day at my house this week. The breeder has been raising yorkies for years, so I know that she is in excellent care. Xray results and puppy count should be coming soon. I am now betting there are three puppies. May 18th is the big day. I am hoping that it all goes smoothly and Phoebe is a good mom.

Speaking of good moms... this is how my mom wanted to spend her Mother's Day. Swearing off consumer holidays and mowing her pasture. We brought her some plants and washed her car for her in spite of it. :)

While my mom mowed and my dad and Joe trimmed trees, I wandered around the pasture in my flipflops and bermuda shorts, camera in tow, looking like a tourist and cataloging the flora and fauna of Hart Ranch.

.These are dewberries, and I ate them right off the spiney brambles. Didn't wash 'em or nuthin'.

I also ate wild mulberries from a tree in the back forty. They were deliciously sweet. My dad told me a story of how he used to eat them off of his grandparents' tree when he was a boy growing up in Ovilla. Joe was a weenie and made up a lame-o excuse about potential allergies. But I figured if my dad lived, so would I. I like to live dangerously. What can I say?

Speaking of danger...this guy was hanging out on the grill cover. My mom noticed it when she was putting it back on the grill. She left him alone and let me take pictures with every intention of killing him when I was done. He was gone when she came back for him. It's my zodiac sign. The elusive and mysterious Scorpion. hehe

This was pretty and it really bothers me that I can't think of what it is called. I should have been a botanist.

This is larkspur growing next to a barrel my mom uses to train horses for barrel races. I thought it was a neat contrast.

And now, beautiful and dangerous: bull nettle. While I've never experienced the wrath of this guy, I hear it burns pretty badly.

After a nice weekend in the country such as this one, I am ready to sell everything and buy some acreage "an' live off the fatta the lan'." Me, Joe, Harry and my new herd of yorkies. Sounds good. You can come visit us.

Plan "Bee"

After a year of contacting beekeepers with no luck, we got desperate and called some exterminators to get estimates to kill and remove the bees that are squatting in the attic. As a last ditch effort, I sent one final email in hopes of getting a beekeeper out.

A local Pest Control company sent a couple of guys out one evening to assess the situation and give us an estimate. (One of the guys was a former student of mine. Weird!) Anyways, they quoted me $250 to kill the bees and pull out the honeycomb and spray a chemical to kill any bees that may return. Oh the horror!

A bit later, Joe called to tell me that the beekeeper I'd contacted wanted to come out in the morning to see what he could do and give us an estimate. Hooray!

So Thursday morning, a little before 8:00, a nice man showed up at our house to take a gander at the bee colony in our attic. He just climbed right up in their little nook of the attic and got all up in their bidness. No bee suit or anything. They didn't even seem to notice, from what I was told (I was hiding with my dogs in a bedroom with the door shut). I was delighted at the validation that these were, in fact, docile European honeybees.

All the exterminators assured me that they were most likely Africanized and not desirable to beekeepers. (Even though these bees have never been aggressive when we've mowed, weedeated (or is it weed-ate? lol), and walked right underneath their entry point a gazillion times. And to think they wanted to wipe out these poor, innocent honeybees. I am ashamed I even contacted them. But I was getting desperate. We didn't want to be the people on the evening news with the house overrun with bees. Crisis averted!

The date is set. On May 22nd, our bee savior is coming out early in the morning to vacuum up the bees with a special vacuum that won't harm them, remove their honeycomb, and transport them to his bee haven. Yay! I am going to try to work up the courage to take pictures. hmmm Do you think it would be tacky to ask Mr. Beekeeper to take a couple of pictures of the extraction?

WOW! your MOM's a COW

Remember that and the little hand gestures? No? Guess it's just me.

Two exciting things happened today.

One: I got a new computer at work. It's gansta.

Word.

Two: Tonight is our school district's annual W.O.W. Showcase. No, not World of Warcraft. WOW=Working on the Work. I guess it should technically be called WOTW, but that doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? Anyways, it is like a science fair, but with all subjects and grade levels. My fellow English 2 teammates and I put together a pretty amazing display of our students' work. We rock. The End.

Here's a photo I stole from Heather's Facebook. :)