Friday Five: Stairway To...?

My goodness...it's been so long since I've participated in a Friday Five that I've practically forgotten how. But here goes.

From Friday's RevGalBlogPals "Friday Five":

I am currently reading a book entitled Stairway of Surprise: Six Steps to a Creative Life by Michael Lipson. His premise is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "I shall mount to paradise by the stairway of surprise." Lipson's book is about practicing or developing six inner functions--thinking, doing, feeling, loving, opening, and thanking.


So these categories of attention are a jumping off point for today's Friday Five:

Pick five of the six actions and write about how you are practicing them today or recently. For a bonus, write about the sixth one you originally didn't choose!

What or how are you

1. thinking?

2. doing?

3. feeling?

4. loving?

5. opening?

6. thanking?

Thinking: Right at this moment I am thinking about our new-ish bees (currently dancing in the sunshine -- a rare commodity this week, a state of affairs that makes bees depressed and moody), and how we are going to remove them from the roofs of their respective hives, where they've taken up residence despite our best attempts to install them the right way, and into the lower hive body, which is where they're supposed to be living.

 I got on an online bee forum, and a couple of kindly souls there told me that we will have to cut the bees' natural comb from the roof, and wire it onto empty hive frames. These will go in the bottom box, where we want the bees to live. Then we have to sugar-water spray the frames filled with our beeswax foundation -- if you've ever seen a picture of beekeepers in action, those are the flat things they lift up out of the hives -- and place them around and above the removed comb. Then we have to replace the top board of the hive -- it's a flat board with an oblong hole in the middle that our bees used as an entrance to their attic abode -- and cover the hole with mesh screen so that they can't repeat their shenanigans. Then we replace the roof -- which presumably by this time won't have thousands of angry bees stomping all over it.

This sounds like a lot of engineering, as well as crisis managment, at least for insects. I still can't quite get my head around the honeycomb wiring part of this dilemma, and wish we had a hands-on Bee Whisperer nearby to help us finesse this.

Doing: At the moment I am sitting in the wreckage of our living room with the dogs. Long story short, we've had a busy week with multiple interruptions and, yesterday, a bit of a short-term medical crisis for Fellow Traveler, so we've done no housework in days and days -- and I'm wondering where to even begin; especially since we're leaving for Chicago on Sunday for a consult the next day with an oral surgeon at the VA's shiny new state-of-the-art dental center at the Jesse Brown VAMC. (This saga deserves a blog post all its own, so I'll fill in the blanks later.)  In about 10 minutes I hope to be doing picking up and dusting, at least, in this room.

Feeling: After our very long and trying day yesterday (another story all its own) I have to admit that I don't feel much of anything. I feel a little spatially disoriented; I was driving around Midland today running errands, and despite my having been to these places dozens of times I had to check myself several times to keep from missing turns along the route. My brain just feels tired...like a worn-out rubber band. My eyes are tired. I'm just...tired.

Loving: If you're expecting something profound or romantic, I fear you'll be disappointed. Because at this moment I am loving the thought of the Zingerman's Pimento Cheese I procured on my Midland errand run earlier. And I am loving the sound of our dog Bear -- our legacy from FT's departed aunt -- snoring contentedly on the rug. She is an epic snorer -- something that, sadly, also runs in the human side of this family. And right next to me on the sofa is Chica -- Chica Bonica, Chica Unique-a, sometimes Chica Sneaka or even Chica Freaka -- also chillaxing. We are so pleased that these two little dogs, with such different personalities, have become fast friends. We call Chica the Monkey Dog because she is so active and agile and busy. Bear, by contrast, is a short, stout, no-nonsense old girl. But Chica treats Bear with the affection and deference of a beloved auntie, and every so often Bear dispenses with dignity and initiates rough-and-tumble play with Chica -- this from the obese shi-tzu whose belly literally touched the floor when we brought her home, who did little more than sleep and eat.
Opening: What am I opening? Hmmm. In a short while I'll be opening the Jeep and removing a new barrel charcoal grill we bought last week (of course it was on sale), that the big-box-store people assembled for us. It's supercute; we didn't want some hulking big iron monster taking over our patio, so we got the junior version of a popular model. It has a side and front shelf area, which I like, and it's a little bit larger than the tabletop barrel grill that we've been using for the past couple of years.

Thanking: I'm thanking God that FT is okay after a scary episode of her not being able to breathe. This happens almost every summer; summer colds go around, FT gets one, it turns into bronchitis and that aggravates her asthma. Thank God for Z-Packs and nebulizers too. And for the controlled anger I summoned up yesterday after we were ushered into to an exam room at the Saginaw VA and just left there for over two hours, FT hooked to an oxygen tank and pulse oximeter but not checked on at all -- "Oh, someone will be coming to see you shortly" -- until I got irritated enough to find an  RN and demand some attention for a patient who was having trouble breathing, for God's sake, don't-you-even-read-your-own-triage-protocol-there-on-the-wall.  And thank God for the nice evening-shift ER doctor who was not only helpful and courteous to us, but who kicked some fannies and took names (literally) when he found out how long we'd been left waiting.

Finally, speaking of stairs and creativity: Enjoy this video of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson: