I went to Osoyoos last week for a visit with mom and Gerry.  I told mom I was getting a bee hive, and said I’d been advised to get a bee suit.  Mom sighed, and said, “You’ll probably get to be really odd like those other beekeepers.  You know… beekeepers…they’re all really odd.” Then she listed a couple of them, including a former neighbour named Johnny Rist.

I agreed, and said so what?  I said someday all of the land bordering mine will have been turned into a version of suburbia.  I already have one neighbour with a whole hill of pink rocks right beside my indigenous shrubs.  Someday all of the land surrounding me will be filled with houses and concrete, but there will be this one little old farming woman with her damned bees.

Mom reminded me of the danger of swarms.  She said Johnny Rist’s bees would swarm every once in a while and he’d have to come over and coax them back into their hives.  I just don’t know how I’m going to explain that to the pink rock-owning neighbours.

“Umm, excuse me, but that swarm of bees in your driveway appears to be mine.”  Lorraine, the beekeeper from the gym, said it’s “absolutely beautiful” when they swarm, but I’m feeling kind of nervous about that part of it.  However, one must remember that anything worthwhile often requires overcoming challenges.

Such was the case on Friday when a nice Shaw Cable man came. I’d been visited by a travelling salesman who convinced me to switch from Telus to Shaw for my phone services.  Of course, they have to come and do some wiring at your house, so we set a date and time.

When the cable installer arrived, he hopped out of his van and immediately walked to my basement kitchen window, and said, “What’s this cable?  That wouldn’t have been installed by us because we never put it outside like that.”  I replied that I had no idea.  He asked how long I’ve lived here and I said, “Twenty years.”

I then thought back to the many cabling jobs over the years.  There was the cable installation to several upstairs areas, all done by Denis’ friend, Shane, an electrician.  Another time, I recalled Shane doing something with the Shaw cable lines at their source.

Then I recalled admonishments over the years from Luke, such as “We can never call Shaw Cable to our house.”  These images and thoughts all came to me in the moment I was standing on the driveway, looking at the most recently pirated line.  I knew it was the cable for my basement kitchen TV.

Somehow, however, the Gods of Forgiveness seemed to be with me.  The kind cable installer went about doing the phone switchover, and he and I never mentioned any of the other unusual lines again.  You see how a good attitude can trump a bad situation.