The Buzz of Small Town Life

WASP does not stand for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

Well, I've completed my yearly summer tradition of being stung by a wasp today. While being a good hausfrau and cleaning up the yard, I found our old Slip & Slide. Seeing how ruined it was due to our tender and loving care of leaving it on the old swingset in a heap, I decided to bring it out to the trash and yet, clear our home sweet home from the one more plastic monster. Of course, I didn't see the wasp's nest built into our Slip and Slide.

Instead, like an innocent environmentalist trying to clean up the plastic from the world, happy and unaware of the chaos I was creating in their waspy home, I dragged said Slip & Slide through the yard until I felt a terrible pain in my wrist, then again and again. Welcome summer! I thought as I threw down the Slip & Slide and shook my wrist until my flowered handpainted bracelet my friend brought me home from Mexico went flying into the feverfew. It was then that I looked down and realized there wasn't just one wasp, but many all in a daze on the cement. For a moment, I thought, "I shall step on you all," but I was wearing Crocs and like the strong Capricorn I am (Kelli is Irish Gaelic for "warrior woman"), I went running into the house and didn't look back.

So, I type this with a baking soda paste on the back of my wrist thinking that we have lived in this house for ten years and I am the only one who has managed to be stung by wasps and in fact, make it an annual tradition.

On a positive to the Apoidea superfamily, I saved a Mason bee on my finger from our pool. Some days the ones with stingers love you, other days they try to take you down.