Quite an Interesting Day

Here's a picture of yours truly and my wife Marge. Yesterday we celebrated or 54th wedding anniversary. Not record, but in this day and age, that's a lot longer than most. I'm sure that many men occasionally have trouble remembering their anniversary date, but after that horrific day seven years ago, September 11th is hard to forget. Fifty four years ago we started our marriage with a memory.....woke up to hurricane Edna. Five hundred guests trying to make their way to New Britain, Connecticut. What a way to start, but start we did, and here we are after 54 years. Yesterday's anniversary started out fine. Weather was great, flowers were purchased , dinner reservations made and plans finalized to attend an exhibit at New Britain's fine Art Museum.

Marge and I sat down in the kitchen to a nice quiet lunch. As we ate our sandwiches, we were joined by a bee flying around our heads. Marge always keeps a swatter handy, so that bee was history pretty quick. No sooner was he dispatched when another took is place, then another. Our kitchen has an adjoining enclosed porch so we assumed they had gotten in on the porch. Checking the porch we located a few more, but careful aim with the swatter sent them the way of the others. Now we could go back to our lunch, but not before Marge left the kitchen on some mission I no longer recall. That's when she let out a startled little yell. When she passed by the front hall, the bee mystery was solved. The entire hallway was filled with bees. Front windows completely covered with bees and masses of them in the corner of the ceiling. Didn't take long to figure it out now. We have been plagued by bee invasions of the house many other times. They seem to like our house for some reason and get into the attic and build their nest. Access to our house is easy for them and we have to be on watch for them every summer and exterminate. before they go to work on the nest. If we miss the invasion they continue to expand their nest using the ceiling dry wall for nest materials. When the ceiling finally gets real thin a small hole will develop and out they come when attracted by the lights in the house. This has happened four times and I've become an expert at patching ceilings ( an entire closet ceiling was replaced after the "Bee Man" took out a nest holding nearly 10,000 bees.

Well, there went the anniversary celebration. A call to the exterminator's office proved a disappointment when we found out he was away for the weekend and would not be back until Monday. Well, we finally got ahold of his helper and together he and I found a way to gather the bees ( vacuumed them ), plug the hole and spray the nest. Mission accomplished, and another memorable 9/11 established.

P.S. No museum trip, but we did manage to enjoy a very nice dinner which included enough wine to sooth the savage beast (me).