I took off Monday and Tuesday of this week to take advantage of a long weekend.

This was a mistake. I should have waited for a cooler month – like December.

I painted two sides of the chicken shed and finished painting the trim. I built shelves for the new shed, which Erica painted, and now my tools are in there arranged in some kind of order (I wonder how long that will last).

I power washed the front of the house where the paint was peeling off. I will repaint this when the temperature drops below 90°. I am very sore in my legs and back from climbing the ladder and holding the power washer for long periods of time. The heat was awful. I kept feeling dizzy which is not a good thing 25 feet above the ground.

I received a call from someone who wanted bees removed from their garage. I accepted, but this goes into the category of things I won’t do again on a hot day. A bee suit is not something you want to wear on 95° heat. I nearly fainted and did a half-ass job. I did get a box full of nice bees and I saw the queen. I left lots of bees behind and quite a mess. I was stung a dozen times through the gloves and I tore a hole in one of the bee gloves. I am gaining immunity to bee stings, though and they did not bother me.

I was called by work because one of my systems mysteriously stopped working. I went in Tuesday afternoon and fixed it. I am not sure what is going on. It appears to be working, but I don’t know what could have changed. Systems do not heal.

I worked more on power washing the house Wednesday, the 4th of July, and then put on my bee suit to work the bees. I put honey supers on two hives and put a second hive box on top of the hive rescued from the garage. At around 7PM I robbed one of my hives and got about 40 pounds of honey. This is not the job for a very hot July day. The bee suit was stifling and I felt like I was going to faint at one point. I was not stung, which is a change. The bees seemed very calm and did not care that I was taking their honey. Spinning the honey and then filtering it is sticky work on a good day, but the oppressive heat and humidity did not help at all.

My mother is up with my brother for her birthday, so I had to feed her cats. I forgot about it so I ran over to the house around 10pm and fed them.

I forgot to lock up the chickens, but remembered at 3 o’clock in the morning and ran out and locked them in. It was too dark to count them. I was not feeling well (exhaustion and a hot bedroom did not help) and worried about if all the chickens were alive, so I did not sleep.

I got up early this morning and counted the chickens, they were all right. I was all off schedule, so I did not take my pills this morning and I feel like crap. I left my wallet home so I have borrowed the money for the bus back. I don’t have any money so I did not get any lunch. I can’t stop at the grocery store to buy food on the way home so it is pot luck for dinner tonight.

I need a stiff drink and a good night’s sleep.