Got a Bee in my Bonnet
07/10/17 08:13
Well. So that was that. The Airbnb is now history. Or, should I stay, our time at the Airbnb is history. It was a pretty good experience for the most part. We got acquainted with a section of Hampton that were it not for our experience with this renovation of ours we might never have discovered. The house itself was a delight and the hosts, Clair and Dave, couldn't have been more delightful. They were always two doors down and in a house that was visible if you stepped into the back room and looked across the back yards. While some might have considered that to be intrusive in and of itself we soon got over ourselves and went about our business as it were. I will admit that I didn't wash my car in the driveway, not even once, when the thought didn't occur to me that they might be watching me out their windows or from behind a curtain or two on the first floor of their two story home.
We always kept the blinds drawn on the east side of the Airbnb where the adjoining house was within spitting distance and whose blinds were also drawn 24 hours a day. Maybe it was my paranoia but the vehicles at that home rarely if ever moved one day to the next and I found myself wondering if anyone even lived there. Were it not for the fact that Nancy said that she had a conversation with the person staying there I might have considered dialing 911 to drop by for a wellness check. There was ample foot traffic in front of the house by people walking their dogs, having a walk down to the beach, or just stretching their legs in the nice weather. There were days during the month we were there when we used the air conditioning in the home unsparingly and we may have turned the heat on once when temperatures dipped into the fifties.
We went through the house with a fine toothed comb in our last 24 hours in the Airbnb. We asked Clair and Dave if we might stay until three that afternoon when check out time was otherwise posted as 10am knowing as we did that there were no other tenants scheduled to come that day. It helped in a funny sort of way that Evan had driven to Massachusetts the prior day and wasn't expected back until the day we were planning to move out. Moving the time to three in the afternoon gave him a chance to come back to the Airbnb and get some rest if for no other reason that to recalibrate his sleep clock. He had done a magnificent job cleaning his room before leaving on his trip and we told him as much. We've long given up trying to reinforce that type of behavior using compliments and bribes but thought it appropriate to give him a shout out for a job well done. Our job as parents is just never done. His job in resisting everything parental is also never done and, as such, I'm not sure that our compliment didn't fall on deaf ears. He may have even scoffed at us ever so slightly as is his practice every so often.
I certainly stayed on track with my bike rides and blog updates while at the Airbnb so that was good. I think I discovered that I can do the blogging thing pretty much anytime I set my mind to it. That scrunchy little window of time in the early morning that I coveted almost religiously for my writing has expanded to anywhere, any time, and any place. I think that's a good thing. It has me thinking overtime on topics to cover, anecdotes to share, personages to ply, and generally speaking, things to talk about.
Not to get off subject or anything but I came over here to the house the other day and no sooner was I through the door when a bee attacked me. I'm not usually irritated, annoyed, or even bothered by bees as such despite the fact that I had an allergic reaction to bee stings once upon a time. This little fella found his way down the back of my shirt in the time it took me to take three steps into the back room and I saw him coming and took certain precautions to head off the attack. In other words, I was flailing around like Donald Trump when he was mocking a disabled New York Times reporter during the 2016 presidential election timeframe. It would have been comical if I hadn't been ever so slightly hysterical but I wasn't about to let that little bastard have his way. I could tell by the way he attacked me that he was just a mean mother of a bee and he was going to get his pound of flesh come hell or high water.
By the time I flushed him out of my shirt I could feel the starting of a sting where at first blush it felt like he nicked me but nothing more. I almost thought I felt his stinger protruding from my skin as I reached behind my head to the spot where he stung me. Seeing me still standing, he was heading for the nearest door that was still ajar after my entrance. I tried to isolate him with a plastic cup once he hit the screen door but caught him instead between the lip of the cup and the screen. Not wanting to take any chances of getting bitten again, I pressed hard against the screen door with the lip of the cup and dispatched the little guy until he fell to the ground where against my better judgement I put the full weight of my body against him until I heard a muffled crunch.
The fact that I'm even writing about this tells you something about the residual guilt I'm feeling about ending his life. Part of me says that it was self defense and the other part says that I had the power of life and death over one of god's creatures and I acted with malice and forethought. The "forethought" piece suggests a certain premeditation and that would not be correct. It's like that instance when a homeowner is confronted by a burglar inside his home and has but a split second to decided whether he blows his head off with the shotgun he's holding or he lets him get the upper hand and jeopardizes the lives of everyone in the home. In other words, it was an easy decision. The baby Jesus may judge me differently but I'll take my chances when the time comes.
We always kept the blinds drawn on the east side of the Airbnb where the adjoining house was within spitting distance and whose blinds were also drawn 24 hours a day. Maybe it was my paranoia but the vehicles at that home rarely if ever moved one day to the next and I found myself wondering if anyone even lived there. Were it not for the fact that Nancy said that she had a conversation with the person staying there I might have considered dialing 911 to drop by for a wellness check. There was ample foot traffic in front of the house by people walking their dogs, having a walk down to the beach, or just stretching their legs in the nice weather. There were days during the month we were there when we used the air conditioning in the home unsparingly and we may have turned the heat on once when temperatures dipped into the fifties.
We went through the house with a fine toothed comb in our last 24 hours in the Airbnb. We asked Clair and Dave if we might stay until three that afternoon when check out time was otherwise posted as 10am knowing as we did that there were no other tenants scheduled to come that day. It helped in a funny sort of way that Evan had driven to Massachusetts the prior day and wasn't expected back until the day we were planning to move out. Moving the time to three in the afternoon gave him a chance to come back to the Airbnb and get some rest if for no other reason that to recalibrate his sleep clock. He had done a magnificent job cleaning his room before leaving on his trip and we told him as much. We've long given up trying to reinforce that type of behavior using compliments and bribes but thought it appropriate to give him a shout out for a job well done. Our job as parents is just never done. His job in resisting everything parental is also never done and, as such, I'm not sure that our compliment didn't fall on deaf ears. He may have even scoffed at us ever so slightly as is his practice every so often.
I certainly stayed on track with my bike rides and blog updates while at the Airbnb so that was good. I think I discovered that I can do the blogging thing pretty much anytime I set my mind to it. That scrunchy little window of time in the early morning that I coveted almost religiously for my writing has expanded to anywhere, any time, and any place. I think that's a good thing. It has me thinking overtime on topics to cover, anecdotes to share, personages to ply, and generally speaking, things to talk about.
Not to get off subject or anything but I came over here to the house the other day and no sooner was I through the door when a bee attacked me. I'm not usually irritated, annoyed, or even bothered by bees as such despite the fact that I had an allergic reaction to bee stings once upon a time. This little fella found his way down the back of my shirt in the time it took me to take three steps into the back room and I saw him coming and took certain precautions to head off the attack. In other words, I was flailing around like Donald Trump when he was mocking a disabled New York Times reporter during the 2016 presidential election timeframe. It would have been comical if I hadn't been ever so slightly hysterical but I wasn't about to let that little bastard have his way. I could tell by the way he attacked me that he was just a mean mother of a bee and he was going to get his pound of flesh come hell or high water.
By the time I flushed him out of my shirt I could feel the starting of a sting where at first blush it felt like he nicked me but nothing more. I almost thought I felt his stinger protruding from my skin as I reached behind my head to the spot where he stung me. Seeing me still standing, he was heading for the nearest door that was still ajar after my entrance. I tried to isolate him with a plastic cup once he hit the screen door but caught him instead between the lip of the cup and the screen. Not wanting to take any chances of getting bitten again, I pressed hard against the screen door with the lip of the cup and dispatched the little guy until he fell to the ground where against my better judgement I put the full weight of my body against him until I heard a muffled crunch.
The fact that I'm even writing about this tells you something about the residual guilt I'm feeling about ending his life. Part of me says that it was self defense and the other part says that I had the power of life and death over one of god's creatures and I acted with malice and forethought. The "forethought" piece suggests a certain premeditation and that would not be correct. It's like that instance when a homeowner is confronted by a burglar inside his home and has but a split second to decided whether he blows his head off with the shotgun he's holding or he lets him get the upper hand and jeopardizes the lives of everyone in the home. In other words, it was an easy decision. The baby Jesus may judge me differently but I'll take my chances when the time comes.