Hot Bodies

Beehive bodies. What did you think I was talking about?

It's that time of year when a young man's fancy turns to molten wax and gum rosin.

Mark has been building beehive components in the basement for the past month or so. It's noisy business and now our cellar is a fun maze of hive bodies and honey supers. With a nice fresh lumber scent.This year, instead of painting the woodenware, Mark is uber psyched about this wax dipping process which is supposed to be far superior in water and rot protection as well as less mess, less labor, more appeal for the bees :)

So! What this entails is bringing like a hundred plus pounds of wax, paraffin in this case, mixed with gum rosin to a simmer in your homemade propane fired dipping setup. (Rooster is optional.) Maintaining a temperature high enough to get the job done but below the flash point of both the ingredients, you submerge a box and let it cook for 12 minutes. And viola!

Ya, they look pretty much exactly the same afterward, but the water, it beads off like magic! And such a fresh piney turpentiney scent while they cook. A two-headed Babymomster. It even warmed up enough for the bees to come out for a cleansing flight. Bee poop everywhere!The new uncapping machine. We'll get to see it in action sometime in July, I reckon. I took a photo because it will never look this shiny again.Some wax blocks after coming out of the (also new, but no longer shiny) wax melting/cleaning tank.

It went through multiple "washings" which filled the cellar with a lovely warm honey toasty waxy scent.
Airplane ride!
And a visit to Lily's 3rd grade Valentine's Day party. Daddy didn't make it back from work in time to babysit so Leo came along and played Cupid.
And Lily won 1st place for best Valentine box. (I got 1st place for only one hot glue gun blister from its construction. But then I had to relinquish my title since I cussed when it happened.)Finally, no photo, but imagine a beautiful vase of roses from Mark delivered to me this morning for Valentine's Day. Even though I almost didn't answer the door for the flower guy.
Didn't he know I was doing the old Race For A Shower While The Baby's Sleeping thing?

Happy Valentine's Day to all and to all a good night.

Is That Normal?

This poor neglected blog :( (My poor neglected pre-baby clothes...and hobbies, and brain, and etc etc etc)

But! There's a baby to show for it and he's cute. So. There it is.

Four months later and still settling in, I think we're getting our confidence back that we actually know how to care for an infant. 'Cause, you know, we've done this a couple 3 times before, you'd think it would be a piece of cake, or cheese, or whatever.

But we're a little goofy when it comes to our kids, maybe, and Mark was forever asking:

"Is that normal?"

And in my crazy, crazy, sleep-deprived, isolated, hormone-fluxed state, he'd get me wondering, too: Is that normal?

And of course it all is. With the baby, I mean. The crying, the sleeping, the pooping, the sneezing. It's all good.

Mama on the other hand? The crying, the sleeping, the pooping, the sneezing. Well, that's another zubject :)

So this is a baby step back to the blog and the like. I even uploaded photos! Ta-da!

I think we all know how this turned out:He cried the entire first half at the Super Bowl party. We went home to watch the Steelers finish losing.

Lil' Ayyyngel, on the beloved bee quilt:

Thanks, Patti!

Daddy couldn't wait to try this:

I think The Boy likes it!

Hopefully more soon, but I have a 3rd grade Valentine's Day party to go shower for! xoxo

Leopold Mark

What's onomatopoeia for a balloon inflating? How about Phhhhhh....
Phhhhhh......Phhhhhhhhhhhhhh......Aannnd Pop!
Baby straight jacket.
Mother Hen.Baby spa day.I miss you all out there in blogland. :)

Gone Fishin', Fishin's Gone.

I would have so fewer pie portraits without digital photography.....

Apple Blackberry. Good stuff.

So Lily got it in her head that she wanted to go fishing. It was a long haul to and through the holiday weekend, but Mark agreed to take her down to the pond after he grabbed a quick nap.

To help her pass the time while she was waiting I sent her on a worm digging mission. It's been pretty dry and she'd come back to me time after time empty-handed and with a little bead of sweat on her brow. Sad. So she and daddy had to make a worm run up to the gas station. Does your gas station carry worms?

A benefit of fishing at home is no special attire is required. You can wear your napping clothes.

She caught a baby bass. (All the fish are kind of babies still.) She said she wanted to eat him (because it is her mission in life to just say things to see what we'll say in return) but we told her it still has lots of growing to do and he was returned to the pond.And she caught a pretty little yellow perch which I didn't get a photo of because Mark was too traumatized by the hook being irretrievable and I was all flustered. The perch was sent back to the pond but its final fate is unknown.

No doubt Mark has had the uncooperative hook scenario more times than I can count. He's been fishing and hunting and trapping since he was a boy. But this time was different. We know these fish. And he was upset that the perch was injured, so he called 'No more fishing in the pond.'

No more fishing in the pond that was engineered and cultivated specifically for fishing. That was stocked with hundreds of dollars in fish, outfitted with a more-than-hundreds of dollars worth of fountain for aeration, that receives bimonthly servings of some mystery powders that help digest excess plant matter & provide minerals to the fish...Eh, whatever. I pretty much think of the fish as pets now, too. They come when you feed them, for pete's sake.

But that didn't eliminate Lily's urgent need to go fishing. She was just getting warmed up. So Mark took her to a local sportsman's (sportsmen's?) club he belongs to where they could fish for fish strangers.

Plus, this club is hillbilly enough that you can still wear your napping clothes and everyone is either 1. wearing the same outfit or 2. too drunk to notice.

We don't get out there enough, I tell ya...

On the way to the club:
See the mother deer and her 2 fawns?

Here is the Loch Ness Beaver:

I think the photo is just bad enough to give that Loch Ness monster vibe. There were actually 2 young beavers swimming and slapping their tails in the water in front of us. Pretty cute.

We left in a rush and only had 1 hook and bobber but Mark knew to scout around for cast off fishing gear in the pavilions and fire pits. He scored one more hook and bobber.

He set Lily up and coached her from a picnic bench. She caught a wee little blue gill. She fidgeted and chattered and missed lots of bites because she was staring off into space.

She wanted to try casting by herself and Mark let her try. She managed to wrap the line around the pavilion poles and the hook and its worm flew off into no man's land. Thank goodness for that found hook or fishing would've been over.

The sun was setting and the bats were flying. Mark said he was going to cast her line out into King Catfish Country.

And she got a bite.

From King Catfish:
Though I like to say it could be a Queen Catfish. It spit out the hook right at the shore and Mark had to catch it with his bare hands. Excitement!And Lily said she wanted to eat it (of course, because she must say it) but Mark had other plans.

We had no bucket of water to transport it in, but Mark said you can practically leave a catfish lay in the yard half a day and it will swim right away once you put it in the water. Not that you would want to...

But it turns out he was right. We live a mile or two away and after its car ride, King (or Queen) Catfish swam off with much vim and vigor as soon as it touched the water of our pond.

Welcome home, Catfish.

A Bee-utiful Thing

How much do I love this lady? Even though she's been teasing me for a while with little bee and honey themed tidbits on her blog lately.
Tidbits like this:
Looks like a bee has been dancing all about here:

Ha! There she is! Isn't she cute?This is so cool:And this is a work of art: (YoYo the cat approves.)

A genuine Osage Bluff Quilter quilt! For Baby "B" Bedillion. It is magnificent and I have to resist carrying it around everywhere with me to show it off to everyone. My photos don't do it any justice and there are so many cool things on it.

Patti, you are a SWEETHEART!!!!!!! (You too, Blacksmith ! :) ) We thank you thank you thank you! It is a treasure!

Big Smooch & Big Hug,

The Bee-dillions

Baby Got Björk

Poop Patch!

I picked Sam & Lil up from swimming at Mom's the other day and of course Sam immediately picked up on whatever music I'm playing ad nauseum in the car, because that's how I do. That day I happened to be rocking out to Björk's Greatest Hits and I insisted to Sam that the baby likes it. That's why I have to turn it up real loud so the baby can rock out too.

It also led to a discussion of Iceland and Björk's appeal and Greenland and its barrenness and just some general good-hearted disagreeing and making fun of mom. Good times.

Things I've said lately:

To these cats this morning when I caught them smooching and hugging. "You kids are crazy." Not "cats" or "kitties" but "kids" as in "people."
To Gentelman Jim, our resident yard bird Rooster, when I saw a third chicken in his harem (a boy chicken, too!): "Who's that chicken?" Not "what" but "who" as in "person."

To Mark while I sat and chatted with him at the market while a customer stood nearby unbeknownst to me: "My butthole still hurts." Don't get excited. I was generalizing the area of discomfort for comic effect. My, shall we say, saddle-area, has been having some major ligament pain combined with various baby-kicking of my innards in that general region, and I was over-sharing as I am wont to do, that's all.

Let's just be glad I clammed up and didn't try to clarify all that to the customer. It could only go downhill from "My butthole still hurts."

And these are only the things I've said out loud lately. Goodness knows what I'm saying inside this fun house of a brain.

Probably "Baby Got Björk" to the tune of this:

And now you are, too!!! :)

In No Particular Order

A pig with no ears.
The Belly.
Bubbles saying hello.
The Cooker.

Chicken halves. All sold.
Since blogger and I go 'round and 'round over photo posting, feel free to peruse the rest over yonder. It also explains the ear-less pig.

It was nice to have the camera out again. Hecks, nice to be outside for non-softball related activities.

I took a 2 hour walk in the woods yesterday, the first time in a very long time, and nearly cried because I'd missed it so much. (Insert Mark rolling his eyes here. ) :)

I didn't even mind the bugs, sweat, scratches, poison ivy and getting lost/stuck for half an hour. I must be part Mowgli or Tarzan or something. All the trails are grown over and I was having to try to navigate deer paths. I was still glad to be there. Glad to take a cool shower when I got home, too.

Mark sold chicken halves on Saturday. His special sauce is the trick. I was lucky to get one for myself before they sold out.

I put Aggie on the bus (ah, motor coach, thankyouverymuch.) to camp Sunday. A lovely drive in Shadyside on a Sunday morning. The camp posts photos online everyday but I didn't see her in any yet. She got to go with her BFF and we watched them through the bus windows chomping at the bit to be on their way. Kinda doubt she'll be homesick at all this week.

Lily couldn't get herself to her grandparents' fast enough after Aggie left either. Said she wasn't sleeping in her bedroom alone. She took one outfit and her giant dry erase board. Just the necessities.

So Sam is our only child (well, plus Pellet, of course) this week, it seems. Last night we watched a movie, Defiance, which we all enjoyed. If you can take the violence of a war movie it was a good story. A true story! Then after the movie, I balanced the remote control on my belly and we watched the baby kick it around. Cute/gross!

I could share more pregnancy gross with you but I'll just save it. Only 'bout 17 weeks to go! Seven Teen Weeks To Go.... The countdown 'til I might get my brain back!