That time of year again

I like to sit outside on my deck on my swing and since I have been home and recovering, it's nice to get outside in the fresh air. However, it's that time of year again where the pesky fall bees are aggressively trying to collect as much yummies as they can before they need to hibernate for winter.

I watered my plants and parked myself on my wooden swing, and it wasn't five seconds before a couple of these little buggers were swarming at my head. I swatted them away, but they came back a bit perturbed. They probably liked my soap or body lotion, and I must try to remember not to use that until bedtime if I want to have any kind of outdoor activity this time of year.

I remember the days when our kids were in marching band and during fall parades we parents who were chaperones and marched along with them on the sidelines had to carry sticks of benadryl to rub on any bee stings that occurred, and there was always at least one person who got stung.

When I see the bees each autumn, it always brings to mind a funny incident that happened with some good friends of ours back in our young and crazy days when Jon and I were first married. Joe and Terri lived with us for about three months while he was in Chicago doing training with his company. We didn't have kids at the time, and were practically kids ourselves and had quite a lot of fun back in those days, and did some really crazy things sometimes. Well, we decided to go hiking and on a picnic at Starved Rock one weekend and along the way we picked up a bucket of KFC and took a bunch of other food. When we got to Starved Rock, we found a nice picnic table under some trees in an open area where a cool breeze blew. No bees were to be seen until we set all the food out on the table and sat down to eat. Then there were a couple of bees, and a couple more. They were crawling into our pop cans, and into the food that we tried to keep covered. We were swatting and batting at them, trying to make them go away. Finally Joe, who was the craziest of all of us, began attacking and killing the bees with his chicken legs. It was funny at the time. I guess you had to be there.