bees in the woodwork
Jun. 15th, 2019 12:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueEither one bee or three identical bees lives in the wooden railing of my balcony. I have identified it as a carpenter bee (big hint was "lives in a wooden railing"). It's quite friendly, maybe the friendliest sort of bee. Carpenter bees look like bumblebees, but blacker and shinier; they have no stingers and are thoroughly curious. We hang out together, me and the bee. It likes to buzz around to see what I'm up to, and it's showed me where its nest is several times to be fair and hospitable. (For whatever reason, I have always been able to tell the difference between aggressive and non-aggressive bee behavior, ever since I was a small child. I don't remember anyone teaching it to me. But when I see explainers in nature documentaries, I think "yes, like that.")
I have a bit of a suspicion that I should kill the bee, because Ciro has a bee phobia, and also because carpenter bees don't exactly eat your house, not enough to be noticeable (they're only alive for a few weeks in late spring, early summer), but they do lay larvae which woodpeckers like to eat, and woodpeckers carve out your house. I know this because I researched it, but also because there are huge woodpecker holes in the balcony railing. This is not the first time the bees have been around.
It seems a bit irresponsible of me to say "aw, that bee's awrite, he's my buddy, let's keep him" but I have done my due diligence by mentioning the situation to my dad, and he's not worried about it. My dad not getting obsessive about some minor house thing is almost unheard of. This is a strong indicator that the house won't fall down.
==
In unrelated news, I saw that ThinkGeek is going out of business (merging into gamestop is more accurate) and I feel grim satisfaction. The few times I ordered something, I was sent the wrong thing and they messed up the return in Terry Gilliam sorts of ways where months later my money got refunded and I never actually got the thing I ordered. I essentially gave them a series of short-term no-interest loans.
At one point several years ago, when I already knew better than to try to order anything myself, some extended family members sent us a thing from ThinkGeek as a "thinking of you" gift (which was sweet of them) and it was not the right sizes, and ThinkGeek reassured us that this time an exchange would work, and made us go through an elaborate process with a thousand steps to it, and then like always messed up and instead refunded the money to the relatives with no explanation. The relatives thought we were angry at them.
That sounds funny because I'm saying it funny, but it was sad and stressful and there were hurt feelings and breakdowns of trust. Five years later, stuff is still not entirely ok in a few of my relationships, tracing directly back to that incident. It would be absurd to say that was entirely the fault of ThinkGeek's returns department, which was only the inciting or destabilizing factor, the butterfly's wing that resurfaced a few people's old traumas. But I also feel comfortable blaming ThinkGeek anyway, because they were awful.
In summary, I can't prove that lovecraftian monsters worked there and reached through phone lines to twist people into murderous paranoia, with an end goal of making a rift into an ancient god's prison. But I also can't explain why ThinkGeek was the way it was if they weren't trying to summon a long-dead evil. Good riddance.
I feel relief that they will no longer exist as an independent, self-managed entity.
I have a bit of a suspicion that I should kill the bee, because Ciro has a bee phobia, and also because carpenter bees don't exactly eat your house, not enough to be noticeable (they're only alive for a few weeks in late spring, early summer), but they do lay larvae which woodpeckers like to eat, and woodpeckers carve out your house. I know this because I researched it, but also because there are huge woodpecker holes in the balcony railing. This is not the first time the bees have been around.
It seems a bit irresponsible of me to say "aw, that bee's awrite, he's my buddy, let's keep him" but I have done my due diligence by mentioning the situation to my dad, and he's not worried about it. My dad not getting obsessive about some minor house thing is almost unheard of. This is a strong indicator that the house won't fall down.
==
In unrelated news, I saw that ThinkGeek is going out of business (merging into gamestop is more accurate) and I feel grim satisfaction. The few times I ordered something, I was sent the wrong thing and they messed up the return in Terry Gilliam sorts of ways where months later my money got refunded and I never actually got the thing I ordered. I essentially gave them a series of short-term no-interest loans.
At one point several years ago, when I already knew better than to try to order anything myself, some extended family members sent us a thing from ThinkGeek as a "thinking of you" gift (which was sweet of them) and it was not the right sizes, and ThinkGeek reassured us that this time an exchange would work, and made us go through an elaborate process with a thousand steps to it, and then like always messed up and instead refunded the money to the relatives with no explanation. The relatives thought we were angry at them.
That sounds funny because I'm saying it funny, but it was sad and stressful and there were hurt feelings and breakdowns of trust. Five years later, stuff is still not entirely ok in a few of my relationships, tracing directly back to that incident. It would be absurd to say that was entirely the fault of ThinkGeek's returns department, which was only the inciting or destabilizing factor, the butterfly's wing that resurfaced a few people's old traumas. But I also feel comfortable blaming ThinkGeek anyway, because they were awful.
In summary, I can't prove that lovecraftian monsters worked there and reached through phone lines to twist people into murderous paranoia, with an end goal of making a rift into an ancient god's prison. But I also can't explain why ThinkGeek was the way it was if they weren't trying to summon a long-dead evil. Good riddance.
I feel relief that they will no longer exist as an independent, self-managed entity.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-15 05:43 am (UTC)I'm so sorry!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-15 11:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-15 08:29 pm (UTC)