Of Bees and Bee Gees

My husband worked on Sunday and got no sleep and then was on daddy daycare duty all day Monday. She let him nap in the morning (she went down for a nap, the dog woke her up by shaking his collar, my husband threatened to have the dog fixed (again) and removed his collar and then he got her back to sleep) – he slept in what he described as a nest on the floor next to her crib while she slept. From his description, he’s not really sure how long she slept, but she stayed relatively quiet and happy for close to two hours till he woke up to her kicking her feet against the slats of the crib. But two hours was it – then they were going for the day! He did pretty admirably well – he took her out to the museum, went to the grocery store for dinner and even had her fed and bathed with dinner underway by the time I got home.

But then he was DONE! Two hours of sleep hit him like a ton of bricks post dinner. We were sitting on the couch when he said – I’m just going to rest my eyes for a couple of minutes – and was OUT! Under some circumstances, this works out OK for me – it means I get control of the remote! But there was nothing on anyway and I was sort of tired, so I decided to take a page from his book of the morning and lay with her on the floor of her room (I was pretty sure I’d stay awake, so we were both on the floor). We played for an hour or so and then I thought it was a good time for an early attempt at bedtime. She disagreed, but I finally got her to sleep and decided to read my book in the dining room for a little bit with some tea (my husband was still sprawled asleep in the family room).

I was sitting for a little while when I heard a buzzing noise. I looked up to see a HUGE bee flying by the light. Now I admit that bees scare me a little (esp anywhere near my baby!) and this one looked big enough to fight back, so I thought it might really take two of us to take care of this one. So I called out to my husband that I needed his help. He actually woke up admirably fast though his eyes showed he wasn’t really QUITE awake yet. I pointed out the bee and told him I needed his assistance (all the while I was wondering, where on earth did this thing come from? No windows were opened and I hadn’t opened the door since I’d come home.). He looked at it perched on the edge of a frame and pointed out that the frame might die in the process too. I noted that the painting had actually been expensive to frame – but I also wanted that bee GONE! He moved over and swatted it – and then jumped back (he later even laughed about his run from the bee – but who can blame him? The thing was the size of a small plane and he’d probably just pissed it off!). Amazingly, he got it in one fell swoop (my hero!) and we disposed of it and cleaned up the remains (did you know that bees release a pheromone when they are killed or when the sting you that other bees can sense and will be attracted to?), again noting how big the darn thing was.

A few minutes later he called me over to the computer to show me pictures of bees to ask which I thought it looked like.

Did it look like this?







or this?






This made me a little nervous – was there a type of bee I should be worried about? Until I saw his third picture, did it look like this?!


Oh my God, I killed Andy Gibb. (Those are the bee gees in case you were wondering.)




The rest of the night, he’d ask – do you hear that – while pretending to be checking for more bees and then would start singing Staying Alive.

It later occurred to me to ask why he was looking up the pictures of bees in the first place (again worried about some strange strain of them). He said – oh, it was so I could make that joke.

Ugh.