You know, some things just bite you in the ass. Really. It’s happened to me more than once in my lifetime. I’m guessing in yours too. You try to do something good, and you get a swift reminder that no good deed goes unpunished.

Yesterday when I got up, I slipped on a long pink t-shirt type dress. I wear this dress around the house only, it’s very comfy. I didn’t put any underclothes on under it, because I was planning to shower shortly, and I wasn’t leaving home. I proceeded to get into one of those cleaning jags, where one thing leads to another, and in a couple of hours my living room and bedroom were totally straightened up, absolutely no junk laying around. I took everything off every surface and dusted and washed them. I found places for all the errant stuff that I needed to keep but which does not belong on the coffee table. I laid out in some organized fashion my many wire-wrapped pendants on my dresser (I make jewelry so have a lot of them.) But I think you get the idea.

I was ready for my shower.

But then I remembered that as he was leaving that morning, Dan remarked that my hibiscus had a few yellow leaves (as well as some remarkably HUGE orange blossoms) and that maybe it needed watering. I told him I’d do it, because he needed to get where he was going. So,instead of going in the shower, I decided I’d go water the plants first, because it’s hot here, and I figured I’d be pretty sweaty by the time I was done.  I put on some shoes, flip flops. Because that’s basically all I have for shoes. I went out by the hose and began to unwind it from the box which has the reel in it. I was looking for ants, those damn fire ants, because once before I was unwinding the hose and got about 6 ant bites on my foot. Luckily no ants this time. But I kept looking, and kept thinking, “you need to get some easy-to-put-on outdoor shoes that are not flip-flops.” But I seemed to be safe, there were no anthills or ants near the hose box. And I was still dressed in the long pink t-shirt dress over my birthday suit.

I dragged the hose out to the front of the house, and began to soak down the roots of the hibiscus tree, as well as some others plants growing in that bed. There are two hornets nests on one end of the bed, small nests and not very aggressive hornets. We keep saying we need to remember to spray them in the evening, and then we forget. I was, however, aware of them and not about to anger them by spraying the hose on them.

This is where karma bit me. Apparently, I pissed off one or two of the hornets anyway. Maybe they were attracted to my beautiful pink dress. I don’t know. They are dead now. But didn’t die until they flew up my dress and stung me in the butt 3 or 4 times.

Ok, not really my butt. At the base of my spine, just where the butt begins.

I immediately shut off the hose nozzle and pulled the hose around to the side of the house and ran in the house, pulled off my dress, and dug through the freezer for an ice pack, which I promptly slapped on my rear end. An aside here, last time I got stung by a bee was about 15 years ago, in the foot, and my foot and whole ankle swelled up, in excruciating throbbing pain, and was black and blue.

I sat on the couch, with the ice-pack on my butt, and waited for the excruciating pain to start. I called Dan, just to be talking to someone in case I had a really bad allergic response. Based on my experience 15 years ago, I was afraid I’d developed an allergy to insect stings.

The good news is that the ice pack helped a lot, but the excruciating pain never came. This type of sting felt like pin pricks, not that throbbing ache that the yellow jacket sting gave me all those years ago. I sat with the fanny pack for about a half hour, then went about my day with some slight discomfort, but no terrible pain.

All things considered, it could have been much worse. I mean, imagine!!! Much worse.

This morning the stings itch. I hope I’m not walking around scratching my ass all day.

Love and light everyone.