I'm back!

Sorry for the long hiatus, but I am back. Much has happened, in vacations and haircuts and hair color changes and general life. (Here's the cut without the color)



But there's something else I want to talk about right now.

WASPS. I HATE WASPS. I have a crippling, paralyzing fear of them and an absolute, utter, festering hatred of them. WHY does the most hideous, despicable and thoroughly evil species in the world have to adore raspberries? My beautiful raspberry bushes in my back yard, which I have nursed from mere twigs to lush abundance, are held hostage by SWARMS of wasps!! It's Grand Freaking Central Station for the whole county's wasp population! They have little wasp jamborees all over the scarlet, jewel-bright clusters. The berries hang there, mocking me, so plump and ripe and sweet, and just handfuls to be plucked off. But I go into a literal cold sweat at the mere thougt of wasps touching me (ugghhh, see, I just got a shiver writing that sentence) so I haven't been able to harvest.

However, I recently had the brilliant notion to harvest in the middle of the night when the wasps are in their nests! Huzzah! On my first attempt, I went out armed with a bowl and a flashlight. Yet before I could pick a single berry, a night-owl wasp came flying out of the leaves and I went screaming into the house. On my second attempt, I chickened out again and had my mom harvest some for me. It was win-win; I got my berries and she got to lord her non-insect-phobic self over me.

And tonight, I just finished my third and most bountiful harvest. It was all going quite well until I ran across a wasp sleeping on a leaf near where I was harvesting. I shrieked, ran to the door, brushed myself off a hundred times in case a sneaky one had landed on me, and let the adrenaline wear off. Then, ladies and gentleman, not only did I go back for the bowl, I PICKED TWO MORE BERRIES!!! Aren't you proud of me? I sure am. I kept my flashlight trained on the sleeping beast while I plucked the last berries, and every instinct told me to run screaming down the street, but I did it! And I have a bowlful of fresh, ripe raspberries to show for it!

Now that might not seem like much to you, or you might think I'm silly and dumb to be so afraid of wasps, but I am. And they patrol my crops. And it sucks. But I persevered and I beat those bastards at their own game! Score one for the good guys.