Ran with the devil, Walked with angels: The Bee Wars

11/6/06 Monday
Right now I am in the room that will be our office listening to thousands of bees under the floor below me. I had put on layers of clothes and put a T shirt around my neck to shield me from bites. Using another thin T shirt as a veil I went out to pry the board covering the access to this crawl space. Despite my beating and prying I wasn’t attacked by a swarm of bees.

This tells me that these are regular honey bees, which makes me sad. I hate to destroy something good but we don’t have the money to pay a bee keeper to crawl under here and move the hive. That plus the fact this hive is in a vital spot intersecting the house doors, garage, and path to the back yard leaves me little choice.

Digging a foot deep around the access point I was finally able to pull it back enough to throw a fogger in. I had Cherie take a picture of me through the window and tossed in the fogger. That’s when the bees started coming out. Of course I was indoors by then so watched them from the office window. It must have been a huge hive from the number of bees that made a steady stream out for quite a while.

The sound of the bees has died out now. I feel a sorrow knowing how valuable these creatures are in the ecosystem. At some point in the future we may have bee hives to fertilized the planned fruit trees and crops. A little honey will be nice too.

Today I will go to the VA hospital in Big Spring to let them know I’m here. Then they can get my medical records transferred in addition to my medication. We are going to call AT&T this morning to see if they can offer phone service. It seems that the local phone company, WesTec, has some kind of legal lock on this county. It’s something some politician put in the law books way back when to give a few small pockets a monopoly on phone service. We have heard that in order to get cell phones here you must have an address out of this area. Our Verizon phones work here so we’ll keep them however we would like to go online so will have to do something. WesTec’s rates are way high but that’s what happens without competition.

This is just a small amount of the sand that was in the pipes. We already took out a skoop shovel full.

There has been so much going on it will be hard to catch up. I know now that the only way I will be able to keep this journal that serves as my memory up is to work on it in the mornings before I get going. Once I am moving that’s it. Everything else takes a back seat and whatever is before me I do.

Every faucet in the house leaks because of the build up from the hard water. They will all be replaced eventually.

That’s how it’s been for both of us. We’ll be working on one thing and in the process see something else that needs to be done so go to that. I have lots of starts with only a few finishes but that is still good.
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11/7/06 Tuesday

Well the bee wars continue. There are still a crowd of bees going in and out of the crawl space though not nearly as many as before. I was out at sunrise to block the entrance as best as I could and there was almost no bee activity then. That’s because it was still cool out, about 45 degrees. Once it warmed up the bees began to make themselves known. I used my shovel to remove as much of the hive as I could. It’s a shame the honey is poisoned from the foggers. Would have been nice to eat.

Yesterday was tough on Cherie and wasn’t real easy on me either. We went to Big Spring so I could get registered at the VA hospital. That ended up being a four hour ordeal. In order to refill my prescriptions I was required to see a doctor. Because I was new and didn’t have a doctor assigned they sent me to the emergency room. There we sat for two hours waiting, along with eight or nine others, to be seen. Finally my name was called. The doctor, who barely spoke English, looked at my pill bottles for thirty seconds and said he would enter it on the computer and I could then get my refills.

We didn’t get out of there until 4:00 or so and headed straight to Midland, which is a half hour or so away, to see our lawyer Patrick. When we were almost there he called to say he had a 4:30 appointment so wouldn’t be there. We rescheduled for eleven today and will leave in about ten minutes to go there.

We went to Home Depot while we were in Midland. There we picked out some more tile for the office area but they were out of what we wanted. Of course we picked out what was on sale and cheapest. We can always improve things later. It’s important to get the house livable and functional right now. We also found a roll of carpet that had been purchased and not picked up so we got a nice discount on it. We now have what we need to fix the floors in three rooms.

Here's the top of a four foot high fence that will be removed when I can dig it out.

The valve on this propane tank needs to be replaced. I'd replace it myself but am unsure of regulations and would need to empty it. Will wait till we've used most of the gas.