July 21, 2008

• Featured Grownups: Adversity

  Featured Grownups Topic: Overcoming Adversity
  Adversity is a part of life – we all face it and we’ve all overcome it at one time or another. What adversity have you overcome?  Tell us your inspirational/motivational story!

  

  I could write a dozen books about the adversity I’ve faced during my life. I could create a bullet list which would contain dozens of points. Even though I always want to show the most positive attitude about all things, I always seem to be socked with one adversity after another. A dislodged eardrum when in 2nd grade which kept me out of school for a whole semester. Breaking my jaw at 14 in a car wreck. Losing my parents in my early 20s. Losing a few good friends, most recently this last week, when Joel died of cancer. When I think one adverse condition has been overcome, another comes knocking, or buzzing, as in this case, on the doorstep.

  The latest adversaries are the bees. We’ve had a history of fighting, killing, living with, and eventually tolerating many forms of insects in 15 years at this place, but the mystery of the bees is still being played out as I type. Every year, at different times, the insects attack. I could probably create a calendar around them. Ants are a yearlong problem, and seem to appear at the beginning of all the natural “seasons”, and I’m always on the attack against them, but they keep coming back, no matter how many ant traps I keep putting around the perimeter of the house. In the spring some weird mosquito like bug that’s essentially harmless but really scary comes looking for any light which happens to be turned on during the night. Daddy longleg spiders seem to like the fall, and they prefer surprising me in the shower of all places. After fifteen years, the bug “seasons” are acknowledged and suffered, but sometimes, like with these bees, the face of adversity begins to wear a really sarcastic grin. I’m not an insect conspiracy buff, but ever since I saw The Hellstrom Chronicle back in 1971 as a teen, I’ve had a stinking suspicion that the bugs will take over the world. They’ve been tolerating us for years, but we can’t get rid of them, and if they wanted to, they could probably get rid of us.

  Especially those with stingers.

  Like bees.

  I began writing this entry while holed up in the media room on Saturday night, awaiting a call from the owner’s handyman or an exterminator. I had just called the owner. Strange conversation. “Hi, this is Mike Nyiri at xxxxxx in Lomita. I have some bad news. I called for two reasons. First, to let you know that my roommate passed away last week, but also I have a more pressing problem….” I’d been going into the kitchen all day, where the bees seem to be coming in, and spraying and cleaning up their little carcasses, but I couldn’t get rid of them. I’ve battled worse adversaries. But none could hurt me like the bees can. I walk around the house in stocking feet. Even dead bees lying on the carpet can sting.

  The bees aren’t angry, as they should be when they’re in the house. And bees are usually social creatures. But I’ve been seeing only one or two come in and fly around before I sneak up on them and “clean” them away with the a shot of 409 and a paper towel. Where are my adversaries holed up, I wondered?

  I began to see fleeting glances of the bees a few weeks ago. One evening when Joel was in the hospital, I went out into the living room to turn off the light in the evening and saw Spike the cat enthralled with one that was flying around the lightbulb. I easily crushed the poor creature after first taking some photos of Spike in her mesmerized state. (Clicking on the photos in this entry will bring the full size image up in another window) A few more bees were found on the floor in the kitchen as I went in at various times to feed the cats or when I was doing the massive cleaning of the house after Joel died. Just one or two bees at first.

  I took this past week off, and on Friday helped Joel’s brother Dale and his wife clean out Joel’s bedroom. I have dozens of bags of clothing and boxes of books readied for the Salvation Army to pick up on Monday. I’m starting to clean Joel’s room, and on Saturday morning I began cleaning the window ledges. Some of these hadn’t  been cleaned for ages, including the one in the kitchen.

  Last week, when cleaning the kitchen counters, I cleaned up about a dozen bee corpses. I didn’t think too much about this, because the counter was in “Joel Territory” and was pretty frightfully cluttered and unclean for a long while (since the last time I took pains to clean it, of course.) For all I know, the bees had been flying in through the torn screens which Joel cut for the cats to get in and out. There is one in the kitchen and one in the dining room. Since we rent the house, we never installed cat doors, and Joel just cut the screens. Assorted insects, mainly flies, use this entry from time to time, but it has never been a problem.

  As soon as I completely cleaned the counters, I noticed more and more bees show up, buzzing around, and making a nuisance.

  I went outside and looked around for the “hive” or “nest” and soon got a pretty big shock, as I saw dozens of bees congregating around a hole in the side of the wall by the back door. The hole was part of where Frank, the owner’s handyman, had run water pipes back when we had the break in the water main a couple of years ago. He never plugged the holes, and the bees had made their nest inside the kitchen wall.  At around 6pm Saturday night, I shuddered as I snapped a couple of pictures of the bees making themselves at home in the wall of my home.

  Where were they coming in the house? I didn’t find this out until Sunday morning. All weekend I have been at war with the bees. The phone call to Anwer, the owner of the duplex in which I live, ended with him promising to get this latest little adversity fixed. He would call Frank, the handyman (who should have plugged the holes in the first place) and he would come over Sunday morning.

  He didn’t get here until about 1pm. He was armed with a can of Raid. Heck , I could have sprayed the suckers. I let the owner know that a hive was in the wall, and this means the Queen was probably in there. If the Queen wasn’t killed, she would keep manufacturing bees with which to bother me.

  As soon as Frank sprayed the hive, all heck broke loose. The bees hadn’t been mad at all until that moment. They chased him away, and he came to the front door and told me he’d be back “in a couple of hours”. He used a complete can of Raid Wasp and Hornet spray inside the hole in the wall, and this didn’t do anything except make the bee colony quite irate.

  I’d closed the windows on the back side of the house, and I dutifully duct taped the door to the water heater, which is inside our kitchen, so that no bees could sneak through the inside hole in the wall and start getting inside the house again. All day long, I was on the attack, and the bees kept sneaking through places where the tape wasn’t sticking. Frank came back as promised, and he sprayed some kind of bee killing foam into the hole. This morning, the hole outside the house was plugged with foam. There is still duct tape around the water heater door. I didn’t see any “new bees” this morning when I left for work.

  Adversity comes and goes, and sometimes seems like it stays around more often than we would like. But common sense, a good head on our shoulders, and the tenacity to correct the problem should always we be with us as we combat our adversaries and our adversity.

  Bee-lieve me. 

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  • 9:12 am
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