In Threes

They say bad things come in threes. That’s what they say, but I don’t really believe that piece of folk wisdom really covers the way life throws things at us, sometimes in barrages that leave us staggering.

It’s been a rough week. That doesn’t really cover it, either. It started on Sept. 11. Not on that day of modern infamy—no blog post I could write could ever cover that day—but just on that date in this September, a normal Tuesday. That was the day my oldest daughter started complaining that her ear hurt. We looked at it, gave her ear drops, and waited. Surely it would get better…or worse…or something. But it didn’t. It just hurt, not enough to keep her up at night, but enough to make her uncomfortable and distracted during the day. It went away. Then it came back.

(I think that was also the week an automatic payment from a creditor was mistakenly ten times the correct amount, and left us with a negative bank balance and an unhappy bank until we got it sorted out. That was also the week another creditor tried to charge a late fee for a supposedly unpaid balance--in May--and we had to dig up the cancelled check to prove them wrong. See where I'm going with this?)

That weekend, she came down with the sniffles. Then my youngest daughter came down with the sniffles. (My son was fine. I think he eats enough germs that he’s developed an immunity.) Finally, on Sept. 20, I took my eldest to the doctor, who confirmed an ear infection and started her on antibiotics.

The following Monday, I came down with the cold. (My son was still fine.) It wasn’t bad. I dropped some of my normal routine, got lots of rest, and started feeling better quickly. By Wednesday, I figured I was out of the woods. At least, that’s what I thought.

Wednesday morning, my husband called in sick. Not a cold, oh no. His was a stomach virus that left him curled in the fetal position in bed—when he wasn’t curled around the toilet in agony. I started doing double, triple duty, Mommy and Daddy and nursemaid in one, and felt my own health decline again under the strain. My son started complaining of tummy troubles, and I spent nights stretched out next to his restless sleep. One day stretched into two. The presumably 24-hour bug turned out to be a 48-hour bug, and then morphed into a 72-hour bug.

Friday, I left my two sick guys home together and worked the last day of the year at the local farmer’s market. The girls seemed fine. By the end of the day, my throat was sore and my cold was back in full swing.

Saturday morning, my husband finally crawled out of bed and took up position in a living room chair Also Saturday morning, my son and youngest daughter started vomiting. My husband held heads and wiped faces, while I…cleaned. That’s right, I frantically scrubbed floors and countertops and sprayed disinfectant in an attempt to stem the viral tide. Meanwhile, there was another chore on my mind.

The thing about livestock, or any animal in general, is that they don’t stop needing care just because you’re sick or busy or tired. They need what they need, when they need it. And I knew that I had two beehives that weren’t strong enough to make it through winter without intervention. They needed to be combined if they had a hope of making it to spring alive. I had already, because of business and sickness, put it off too long. So, about four o’clock yesterday afternoon, I went about the messy business of combining those hives.

To make it through winter, this frame should be covered with bees. They won't generate enough body heat if I don't combine them with another, stronger hive.

 It was so much worse than I thought. The hive in the worst shape, the first of my hives to lose a queen to an August swarm, was all but dead. The queen was there, but she had failed her colony. Eggs and larvae were sparse, population was low, and the hive was open to attack. Wasps and other bees were robbing honey with abandon, and even earwigs had infiltrated in numbers and were taking what they wanted. I could have cried.

Regardless, I completed the task. I squashed that royal figurehead without mercy and used the honey, brood and bees to supplement the other, more healthy hive. Dusk was falling as I went to put away my gear, and I missed the little hitchhiker on the sleeve of my bee jacket.

She didn’t miss me. In fact, for maximum torture, she couldn’t have picked a much better target. My wedding ring was already tight enough that I had difficulty removing it. Now my ring finger looks like a sausage bound with gold, and my lovely ring is digging into my skin. I feel like Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when he turned into a dragon and had that darn bracelet digging into his foreleg—there’s not a hope of getting it off, but I can’t help trying. 

The bee sting right next to my wedding band made it a little painful to type this post.

 And I have to tell you, it really hurts to type.

As I sit here typing—painfully—I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. My husband hasn't even tried to eat solid foods since Friday. My youngest vomited an hour ago. My son seems fine. I don’t know if my oldest daughter and I will be the ones writhing in pain and losing our lunch tomorrow, or if we will somehow manage to dodge this malady. I’ve cancelled my plans for the next few days, just in case.

There’s no point to this post, really. I know things could be so, so much worse, so I’m not complaining. Okay, maybe a little, but not that much. I guess I just wanted to get it out there. What. A. Week. What a month.

What a year.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And, you know, I was looking for a really special way to end this post, an inspirational way to tie it all together and give it meaning, and my computer randomly restarted and cost me a couple of paragraphs. So, this is me, signing off. I wish you a blessed, illness-free week.