wasps « Patti O'Shea's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘wasps’

My Wasp Friends Are Back

Friday, September 25th, 2009

That is wasp–as in the flying insect that stings–not an acronym.

I’ve blogged before about the damn wasps that keep piling grass across the tops of my windows. A little online searching turned up that they’re known as “grass-carrying wasps” and that they’re not that aggressive. Maybe, but they are annoying.

Usually they just show up at the beginning of summer to build their nests. They load the tops of my windows with grass, dead bugs, and wasp larvae and I open the windows, find the crap, and blow it out with either a hair dryer or my dad’s leaf blower. This would go on for a few weeks and then they’d give up. The rest of the summer and fall would be wasp free.

Not this year. This year I’ve been fighting them off all summer. I thought I was finally safe since it’s the end of September and a little late for nest building, but no. Tonight I opened my windows and found another collection of grass and dead bugs. Grrr.

The only guess I have is that we had an unusually cool summer this year and maybe the heat drives them away or kills them or something. I don’t understand it. I also don’t understand why my windows, but I’m tired of it. Searching has turned up no good way to get rid of them, but maybe I might have to devote more time to it. I am seriously tired of clearing out these nests.

Tags: wasps
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Teaser!

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

My super cool teaser for In the Midnight Hour is up on You Tube now! I’m hugely excited about this and I didn’t want to say anything until I had it up on my website and MySpace page, but I just can’t wait. Patience was never my strong suit, but the video did turn out great, if I say so myself. Midnight Hour Teaser.

I took yesterday afternoon and evening off from writing. I feel hugely guilty saying that because I have revisions due on Monday. I did work during my lunch hour at the EDJ and finished everything except the one section that’s going to require a lot of effort and time to take care of. All the more reason to feel guilty, but I was so exhausted that I’d hose it up if I tried to tackle it. Whenever I try to work on anything when I’m tired, I hate everything and I start gutting it. Inevitably, when I’ve had more rest and look at what I’ve done, I have to restore the original version and start over. I figured I’d skip that step this time and just wait until I had some sleep.

So what did I do on my decadent time off? My dad and I cleaned off my chaise lounge and little plastic table and hauled it up onto the deck. I helped my dad hang my wind spinner (it’s only been sitting on my counter since the beginning of May!). Okay, so my idea of helping with the wind spinner was saying, “it looks good there,” but hey, it had to be done! I also watered my plants and did a couple loads of laundry, watched baseball and played Mah Jong.

Yeah, I know. There was some excitement, though. When I came inside for the evening and bent to put my wood in the patio door track, I discovered a wasp! I must have rolled the door right over him and killed it. The wasp being dead is a good thing. The wasp inside my house was not a good thing.

My dad transplanted more tiger lilies from his house to mine. He’s filled the entire back half of the tree ring with them, so I guess I won’t be buying any more flowers next year to fill that space as I’d thought I would.

A ton of work to do today on the book. I plan to finish that and then do one more read-through tomorrow before emailing it to my editor. I think I might have to post the dancing Hobbes gif again when I finish. I’m going to need to happy dance again.

Tags: house, midnight_hour, plants, revisions, video, wasps
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Wasp Wars–Again

Thursday, June 28th, 2007

And so the wasp wars continue.

It’s been really hot here for the last week, so I’ve had my windows closed and the air on. Because my friend, the grass-carrying wasp, has been so insistent on building her nest in one of my eastern windows, I did open it every day just to make sure there wasn’t anything in there. No grass fell from above and I figured she’d finally given up and moved her nest building attempts elsewhere. I had almost sprayed her with wasp poison right before the hot spell hit.

Oh, how foolish I was.

Yesterday, it finally cooled off enough to open the windows again and still no grass fell from above. Yea! So I’m working with the windows open in the house, enjoying the heck out of it and all is well.

I decided to go to bed early last night, and as I’m shutting the windows for the night, I glance down as I’m turning the crank on her window, and much to my surprise, I found grass jammed in around the lower hinge. Not just grass, but some big, dead bug. (It’s for the wasp larvae to feed on. I looked up grass-carrying wasps on the internet.)

Like the big, bad wolf, I tried huffing and puffing to blow out the wasp nest, but that didn’t work. My dad didn’t leave the leaf blower at my house, so that left one option–my hair dryer!

That almost didn’t work. My 1600 watt ion dryer blew out some of it, but the bulk of it stayed locked in place. I started sweeping the dryer, trying different angles. Finally, after a lot of jiggling, I finally cleared out the nest. Whew!

From now on, I’m going to have to check the tops of the windows and the bottoms. Sigh. I’d never heard of grass-carrying wasps before I moved in my house last year and now I’m routinely fighting them off.

BTW, the plan to go to bed early netted me a grand total of maybe 6 hours of sleep. I’m still tired.

Tags: adventures, wasps
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Of Writing and Revisions

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

It’s going to be a pedal to the metal weekend for me with revisions. I’ve been making the smaller changes, but the bigger ones–the ones that require thought–those I’ve been saving for when I’m more rested and can think more clearly.

Revisions are driving home for me how much I need a coffee table. I’m working on the couch with my laptop and I have papers to either side of me and I have to keep getting up to look at the piles I have on my table or to look up a synonym. I keep thinking, wow, if I had a coffee table, I could lay everything in front of me and I wouldn’t have to keep jumping up and down or worry about my papers falling on the floor.

One of the things I started doing on the last two books was print out a calendar and write down which chapters happen on which day. I’ve discovered I really like this because then I don’t need to worry about keeping the timeline straight or rereading to find out how many days have passed. I just consult my handy dandy calendar and the info is all there.

In the Midnight Hour was the first book I did this on and it’s because the book starts on the spring equinox and the full moon plays a huge role so I needed to make sure my timing matched perfectly. I liked this method so well, I did it again for In Twilight’s Shadow, my 2008 book.

Another new idea I picked up–and I wish I’d heard about it sooner–is a name chart. It’s to help you make sure all your characters don’t have names starting with the letter J or whatever. It’s just a one sheet thing with all the letters of the alphabet listed, and when you mention a new name, you write it down. I think this will work really well for the magical creatures I use in my books as well as the names of the people in the book.

In other news, my friend, the grass-carrying wasp, has tried to build a nest in the same window every single day. I keep opening it up wide when I get home and the wind has blown her nest away, but she doesn’t give up.

And two flowers in my porch planters are dead. The plant assassin strikes again.

Tags: plants, revisions, wasps, writing
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Argh!

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

My parents’ plane was due in yesterday at 2:30–exactly the time I get off work at the EDJ. Since I work close to the airport, I knew I’d have to hang around until they landed, got off the plane, and retrieved their luggage. I was really hoping they’d get in early so I wouldn’t have to waste valuable revision time.

It started off so promising. Their plane pulled away from the gate 7 minutes early and they were scheduled to arrive in Minneapolis 15 minutes early. Yea! That meant I’d only spin my wheels for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Only the next time I checked to see how their flight was doing, I saw they were delayed. For 50 minutes. Argh!!!

Yes, I ended up sitting at work until nearly 4pm–there was no point in fighting traffic back and forth. The airport was crowded and some woman in a Jaguar blocked me in and then stands in the road behind her car (and in front of mine) talking with her passenger. How rude! By the time I got out of there, dropped my parents off and got home, it was after 5:30.

I open up my windows. It’s been really hot here the last week and I’ve been running the air conditioning a lot. Besides, what’s there to worry about? I haven’t seen any wasps hanging around for a while. As I’m 0pening the fourth window, grass falls. Yes, the grass carrying wasp had built a nest. Argh!!!

This necessitated an SOS to my dad, and while I was waiting for him, I started getting some review copies ready to be mailed. How long can it take to address a few envelopes, write a short letter and seal them? Apparently, longer than I realized.

Anyway, the books are ready to be mailed, the wasp nest is gone, and I think I finally have the prologue finished. Yes, my friend found a ton wrong with it and it took me all the writing time I had today to fix it. Thank God my parents aren’t planning any more trips for a while.

And there you have it, my frustrating ARGH! day.

Tags: adventures, airplanes, wasps
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