Saturday 19 July 2008

White Anglo Saxon Protestants, swarming

mainly sunny, warm, temps 28

Lovely day, but started off a little foggy and threatening. This wouldn't normally be an issue except Gary and his son Evan were meeting Tony and me at our sutton office to help move furniture. We're givien, as I mentioned, Evan a double bed for his new Montreal apartment...that bed is in our home. But we needed to move the bed in our office (yes - we had a bed in our office - my idea, go figure) back home. So Gary and Evan and Tony came to the office at 9am to lug the queen bed out of there, strap it to Tony's cart behind his pick-up and bring it home.

From there the guys toted it up the outside stairs.

and then disaster struck (go figure). Gary and Tony, and the dogs, disturbed a wasps nest hidden in the wooden floor. Someone must have stepped on it.

Well, they came shooting out and swarmed everyone, except Evan, who was inside, and me (also inside) and Michael, downstairs. The puppies yipped and ran down the stairs, as did Tony. Gary backed up and called to Evan to shut the screen door. Which was quite heroic since it trapped him on the balcony with angry wasps between himself and the door and/or the stairs. No escape.

We all shouted advice - all contradictory. Come inside. run down the stairs. Stay where you are until they settle down. Gary was too busy batting the wasps away to pay any attention. probably a good thing. After a minute or so Gary decided staying on the balcony was probably not the best idea. So he ran for it, taking a cloud of wasps with him down the stairs. But they disappated quite quickly.

That left us with a problem. How to get the bed upstairs? It wouldn't fit up the inside stairs. And they also had to get Evan's double bed out.

After some discussion, and more ignoring of my advice (try to take it inside) they decided to try to sneak past the wasps. So they tip toed - not an easy thing when carrying a Queen bed - over floorboards they knew contained a wasps nest. I called to Michael for our fly swatters in case we needed to bat them away from the guys, but Michael ignored me.

Seems everything was fine even without my sage advice. oddly, when I offered a capuccino, they heard. And agreed to that. Perhaps they're more away than I of my level of competence.

So the Queen got in and the Double got out and Evan and Gary headed off to Montreal.

Later Guy and Nicole showed up with their two grandchildren, Rachel and Sarah, for a swim. We served pink lemonade and watermellon.

Worked for a few hours on the book. Feels good. Had a great capuccino and biscotti. Yum. Took a couple of swims, and now need to run off to Sutton to a meeting.

Quiet day tomorrow...I think.

2 comments:

Lesa said...

Oh, but Louise! It will make a great scene in some book for comic relief after a great deal of tension.

What a day you had!

Louise Penny Author said...

Hi Lesa,

Good point - though not sure Gary would agree that the episode was comic relief, but I enjoyed it.

Do you get wasps in Phoenix?