S.O.Bees! The Welcome Committee From Hell

This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I’m a terrible wimp.  Snakes don’t scare me, mice and rats don’t bother me in the least, and even spiders aren’t a cause for undue alarm but when it comes to flying insects, especially anything that stings, I am the biggest wimp ever.  Over the years, this has been a source of chagrin for me, and a source of amusement for bystanders as I let out a whoop, bend at the waist and go running like some crazed duck doing a demented Three Stooges impression.  “Woo, woo, woo, woo, woooooo!  Nyyaaaaarrrr!!!”  There’s no logic to ducking down and running, it’s not as if going lower will somehow magically evade their radar, and the noises, well…those are involuntary.  And often louder than I intend.  That whole involuntary thing again, ya know?     

I was prepared for Palmetto bugs when we moved to South Carolina, having encountered them from my time spent in New Orleans.  Giant roaches, that’s all they are.  And while they freak me out due to just how inordinately creepy they are, I know they can’t actually hurt me.  Give me nightmares, yes, but hurt me, no.  I knew we’d have stinging insects here, already met a fire ant and learned just why they’re called that as we were house hunting (give the phrase “feel the burn” a whole new meaning) and figured bugs were bugs where ever you went. 

Clearly, I was delusional.  At no point did it enter my mind to consider the possibility that if the Palmetto bugs get as big as a small pony, that the other insects would as well.  Somehow, that line of thinking escaped me completely until we’d bought our home and I was spending some time painting the bedroom.  It was a mild day; the front door was open and the storm door closed.  As I’m painting, there’s a tapping, as if someone gently rapping, rapping on my closed storm door.  “Just a moment” I call, then….nothing more.  Again as I paint the wall, wondering who it was that called, I hear the tapping, tapping of someone at my closed storm door.  “One minute” I call, as I cease to paint the wall and greet the visitor who is still tapping, still insistently rapping, rapping at my closed screen door…Getting to the door I cry, as a hideous site meets my eye, tis a hornet, and nothing mo-HOLY CRAP!!! 

This should never knock on anyone's front door.  Ever. 

 

Never had I seen a hornet that was two inches in size, let alone one that could KNOCK on my front door like the welcome committee from hell come to call.  “Oh hey, (tap, tap, tap) heard you were new to the neighborhood, (tap, tap, tap) thought I’d drop in…”  The accompanying shriek would have done any scream queen proud as the front door was slammed shut and the locks engaged.  Hey, if it could knock on the door, I wasn’t taking any chances.  That evening I set out for our local hardware store, still in my paint splattered clothes and possibly still a little wild eyed from that days encounter.  No doubt, I must’ve looked a sight. 

The thing about Southerners is that (generally speaking) they are so unfailingly polite that the clerk at the store’s only reaction to my story of the hornet from hell (related in a very animated way) and asking if they had anything in the store to annihilate Satan’s minions, like say, a flame thrower, was to get me their best hornet spray and offer to swing by after his shift and help me.  Bless his heart.  That offer of help really galvanized me into putting on my big girl panties and doing battle with the nasty SOBees myself.  Or maybe the paint fumes had finally gotten to me.  Whichever the case, I wasn’t prepared for how aggressive they were, or for how they’d repeatedly attack the car trying to sting it as you pull into the driveway, but many cans of hornet spray later, they’ve decided to take up residence elsewhere and terrorize someone else. 

Since then, I’ve learned that many bugs are bigger in the South, locals will always have a bit of helpful advice on how best to get rid of them, and I can get away from a wasp or hornet without running in a crouch doing my best Moe, Larry and Curly impression…well, most days.  

Well, I'd better be buzzing off!  Till next time, y’all!

That's A Wrap: At Home Spa Day of Doom

Pinterest has been both a blessing and a curse to my life.  It’s given me wonderful recipes, tips and tricks, DIY projects and my favorite – at home beauty tips.   The idea of an at home spa day is wonderfully appealing to me since it costs far less, and some poor stranger isn’t subjected to seeing me in nothing but a pair of panties if it’s a body wrap or scrub I want.  Inevitably, these spa days wait until Sunday, when Bear is at work and the house is empty, save for myself and the cats.  Usually, that’s a good thing since I don’t think a husband needs to see every single little step of their wife’s upkeep and grooming.  (IE: bleaching my eyebrows so they’ll match my hair – no one needs to see me walking around the house looking like an Oompa Loompa gone wrong with thick white paste on my brows)

And so it began…my friend Kim had pinned an at home body wrap which I promptly repined to one of my boards.  When she posts beauty stuff, I pay attention because she's easily one of the most beautiful women I know, and she's really smart about all things beauty.  Since I’d been fighting a cold all week it seemed only appropriate that part of Sunday was dedicated to a little pampering.  I may not feel physically better but if I look better, that’s something, right? 

I began gathering the ingredients together, and in my usual pinch of this, dash of that fashion, modified them slightly to accommodate what we had in the house.  Epsom salt is in the house, but where in the house is a mystery.  Amazingly there was a jar of Bentonite clay in my “beauty box” that I forgot was there.  Huh.  Rarely do clay facial masks not get used up around here, so this is a really lucky find! 

Beware the secrets of the Aztec!

I put 2 green tea bags into the water to boil, measured out the rest of the ingredients, and then poured the boiling green tea into the clay & added the olive oil and some Geranium essential oil which is supposed to be good for toning the skin.  So far, so good.  It looked a bit too thick to work with….I’d read where adding some apple cider vinegar to the clay really helped pull out the impurities, so in it went.  Suddenly, I’m greeted with a bubbling, frothing, hissing mass of angry clay that now smells like very tart geraniums.  Undaunted, the mixing of this concoction continues.  Off we go to the bathroom, with the clay mixture and a roll of plastic wrap in hand.  The slathering part went fairly well, and I was feeling pretty good about myself as none of the clay mixture got on anything but me.  (a minor miracle)  After rinsing my hands, it was time to wrap my newly slathered self in the plastic wrap.  The midriff section was deceptively easy.  It lulled me into a false sense of confidence.   That confidence didn’t falter as I wrapped my hips, it didn’t so much as waiver as I wrapped around my derrière…it wasn’t until I was attempting to wrap plastic wrap around my thighs that the thought occurred to me, “Houston, we have a problem”.  My first thought was to just wrap around both legs together but the thought of hobbling around the house like the little mermaid didn’t sound appealing so I started wrapping down one leg, contorting myself to ensure every square slathered inch was sufficiently wrapped.  Then came the second leg and that’s when I discovered that I couldn’t contort myself nearly so easily as the first leg and hip were very tightly wrapped, as was my midriff, and movement was impeded, to say the least.  Somehow I managed to wrap the second leg and again was reminded of the wisdom of doing these sorts of things home alone, as a certain Bear would have been laughing too hard to be of any assistance to me. 

The instructions said to soak tights and a tight top in hot water to put on over that, but I skipped that step because I didn’t want to be a soggy mess.  Next was to put on my heaviest pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, to keep the body heat trapped in.  The sweatshirt went on easily.  The pants required more effort than you’d think – my legs and hips were fairly immobilized by plastic wrap, which made the whole experience rather akin to dressing a Barbie doll whose legs don’t bend.  Pants on, I was free to go about the house albeit in a sort of penguin waddle kind of way.  The instructions said to relax for 45-60 minutes.  Lowering myself onto the couch with a mug of green tea in hand, I felt this…oozing feeling upon sitting.  The feeling of trying to sit, slathered in goo, bound in plastic is…there’s nothing to compare it to, really.  HGTV makes for a nice distraction, but about 20 minutes in, I start to notice this…feeling.  It’s like my skin is starting to come to life – in fact, it’s starting to feel like it’s pulsating.  My midriff, back, thighs, hips, yes, even my bottom are pulsating.  What fresh hell is this?  It’s not a pleasant feeling and there’s this niggling thought at the back of my brain to check the jar of clay, the clay that somehow managed to remain virtually untouched for two years in my beauty box.  Looking at the jar, I see this:

What marketing genius decided THAT was a good catch phrase?

“FEEL YOUR FACE PULSATE!”

I’m not sure how I managed to forget that this stuff isn’t your normal, run of the mill fairly mild facial clay - it actually does exactly what it says on the jar and makes your skin pulsate and throb like it’s trying to come OFF your body.  Well, mine couldn’t since it’s encased in plastic but I’m pretty certain if it wasn’t contained it would.  At least the mystery of why it sat in my box o’ beauty unused for so long was solved.  Since the clay was doing what it was supposed to, I determined to let it do its thing for the full length of time recommended.  HGTV does not distract nearly enough in times like this, and what’s worse, after another 15 minutes my green tea is gone.  Tea goes right through me, in fact, it’s amazing I didn’t need to tinkle prior to this but now I’ve really gotta go.  Like, now.  Except I’m still wrapped in plastic and I’m fairly certain that my self imposed mummification has made it impossible to use the rest room and in all my wisdom I decided to do this at home with no one to help cut me out of my plastic wrap in a hot hurry.  Houdini himself would have been proud of the speed with which I escaped my plastic shackles. 

I wish I could say that this is a rare sort of occurrence in my life, but the fact is, I often find myself wondering how it is that I manage to get myself into such “I Love Lucy” esque situations.  Sadly, this won’t be the last time I do this – after finally unwrapping and cleaning off the clay goop, the results were noticeable enough that we will once again find me covered in clay, wrapped in plastic, and doing the penguin waddle.  Hey, no one ever said looking good was easy! 

Till next time, y’all! 

Be Gentle, This Is My First Time

I've been saying for a while now that I ought to start a blog on my experiences as a Yankee (worse yet, a "Damn Yankee") who didn't just move to the Deep South, but began a whole new way of life in the process.  I'm a native New Yorker, my family came from Brooklyn and settled in Long Island, and spent my childhood just a 30 minute train ride from NYC.  Moving to a small, sleepy Southern town was not on my list of things to do, yet here we are. 

Bear, my husband, has often joked that my culture shock was doled out to me in doses.  From New York to a small farm in New Jersey, from there to various parts of Virginia, and finally home to South Carolina.  It's been an adventure, some of it wonderful, some of it...well, not so much. 

For starters, there was the language barrier.  Specifically, my rapid fire, heavily accented NY (think "My Cousin Vinnie) manner of speech which left more than a few store clerks furrowing their brows and simply saying, "Ma'am?" to my inquiries. Ah, fuggedaboutit.

Driving was a wake up call.  Apparently, my frequent hand gestures and horn blowing (or, overuse of the "yankee button" as Bear calls it) was not the norm further south.  

Food came next...all the specific brands I knew and grew up with were...gone.  My first Thanksgiving in Virginia we went to 3 different grocery stores with me having a mini meltdown in the frozen food section, "Oh Gawd!  How am I supposed to make Me-maw's squash souffle if there's no caaawfee rich?  Where did we moooove tooooooo????"  

It wasn't all bad - in fact, it was wonderful for me.  (Possibly not so much for the store clerks who couldn't understand my weird accent or the people on the other end of my car horn)  It helped me learn to slow down, try something different, quietly mutter under my breath when the car in front of me comes to a full stop before making a right turn.  In fact, it's opened me up to such a completely different lifestyle that I felt the need to share it all (warts and all) with you!  

So join me on my journey as I share my forays into prepping, canning, shooting, and my life in general.  I won't claim to be an expert on anything - I'll share the tips & tricks I learn along the way, the good, bad and the truly ugly, and hope you'll either find them helpful or humorous. 

Grab yourself a Co'Cola and set a while.  I'm just getting started.