No sting, no gratitude

Last night was what my girlfriends and I call a "tiramisu night".

Once I brought this fabulous tiramisu from Piedigrotta Bakery in Baltimore.  Really fabulous. I'm drooling on my keyboard as I type. It's worth a trip into Litte Italy, Baltimore.

http://www.piedigrottabakery.com/subpages/history.html - the great story of the invention of my favorite dessert.

And more photos- great food shots. Oh, I so miss great food here in the land of steak on the hoof.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=pu.184318618300410&type=1



Well, back to my story- where's the sting? Why the gratitude?

 Tiramisu is a wonderful dessert made with lady finger cookies dipped in espresso with delcious real cream fluff and my girlfriends and I loved it and scraped the dish clean ..... and about half of us didn't sleep that night!  So... if you can't sleep, it's a "tiramisu night".

So last  night, without the benefit of a lovely dish of tiramisu, I just couldn't sleep.  I did all the chamomile tea,  the natural sleeping pill, the boring book in bed stuff.  About 3am I must have dozed off and almost immediately, felt a bug crawling on me. Yuck- get off!  And I swatted AT a yellow jacket.  Did not kill said yellow jacket that was down the front of my sleep wear.

 And it stung me.

Yellow jacket stings are painful.  They nested near a water spigot in Virginia and several of the family got nasty stings from those angry little buggers.  But never was I so lightly dressed and this particular stinging creep chose an especially tender spot on the female's torso.

 Hard to pack ice on your tender sisters but I did.  Finally after ice, drugs, baking soda poultices and a fair amount of moaning and swearing, I did get some sleep for a couple of hours.   The pain was really unbelievable -  it radiated up to my jawline and down my arm to my elbow. Crazy way to spend the early morning hours.

My angry bed companion

He died.

  I found another bed to sleep in after the attack. An unprovoked attack, I may add. I found my nemesis dead this morning but I was still a bit nervous.


Well, of course,  I lived and tonight as I carefully checked my bedding, I got to thinking. This is a "newsworthy" event in my life only because I am so rarely stung in my bed.

All over the world tonight, women will go to bed, put their children io sleep- maybe in a bed if fortunate, posssibly in a corner of a room  and will be stung by worse insects than a angry wasp.  Malaria is carried by annoying mosquitoes and millions die from it each year.  Tsetse flies carry sleeping sickness. Dwellings have scorpions,  tarantulas and snakes.

I had ice and painkillers and antihistamines. I attended to my wound in the light of electric lamps and looked up my options on a laptop computer.

I hopped up and down in real pain but I wasn't in mud or on dust or concrete. My feet were clean from a shower I took for granted. I drank water from my faucet that was refreshing, not deadly.

I even had another bedroom to move to and it had a bed with clean sheets and towels for my ice pack. The ice pack I keep in my freezer with my extra food.


You don't think in terms of gratitude when a yellow jacket stings your breast in the middle of the night. You think, "I'm going to die, I'm going to kill something, I need pain killers!"  But in the light of day, even with the lingering pain and discomfort, there is plenty of room for gratitude.

I don't know why I should be so fortunate to live with such an abundance of riches. I don't deserve to live better than 95% of the population on the planet.  I confess a tiny obsession with Pintrest and love to look at ways to make my little world even more beautiful and comfortable but at the end of the day, I have more than I need for life and happiness.

And I am grateful. Not just for the abundance but for the reminder, even a painful reminder, of the ease and comfort of my life.  Even with wasps, I have little to fear tonight when I lay my head down once again.  I am grateful.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep, For You alone, O LORD, make me to dwell in safety Psalm 4:8

And I have a dead bug. Justice.

Wandering back into the blog....with polo

Wow- the summer got away from me. It was lovely- several trips, several visits, several projects and now it's almost September. I'll ease gently back into blogging  with a completely fluffy piece. Why not- summer, even in the incomparable Black Hills makes my brain mushy.  So here's my mush....


Polo- the sport of kings, the king of sports.  The British and Virginian "royalty" play the classy, evolved form of a sport that  basically is whacking a baseball around with over sized croquet mallets while cantering up and down a soccer field.

 I'm sure some intrepid explorer came back to England and said, "I say, old chaps, I saw the most intriguing thing. Savages on horseback whacking a dead goat with sticks.  We could use our croquet mallets and show them how it's done by civilized men."

 Or something like that.  If you're really interested, http://www.sportpolo.com/history/default.htm

These are serious "polo players".

Some fun polo quotes...

"Polo is arguably the oldest recorded team sport in known history, with the first matches being played in Persia over 2500 years ago. ..These matches could resemble a battle with up to 100 men to a side". (See above photo)

"In England, the first polo match was organized by Captain Edward "Chicken" Hartopp, of the British Cavalry 10th Hussars, on Hounslow Heath in 1869". ( See- Brits  bringing it down a notch, again...)

(American) "James Gordon Bennett is credited with importing polo from England in 1876. The game was a confusing affair that had eight or more players per side and matches lasting the afternoon". (Trust the Americans to make chaos....)

"The feeling of many of its players is epitomized by a famous verse inscribed on a stone tablet next to a polo ground in Gilgit, Pakistan: "Let others play at other things. The king of games is still the game of kings."  (Well, la te da... so much for us commoners)



 AND...."Where will polo ponies come from?  Gone are many of the American horse-breeding ranches and gone are many of the cowboys of the old West. "     sigh....yes, the barren West. 


Or is it ?? Could polo still be alive in the West? 

Why yes- in Hill City, South Dakota! And the sign that caught my eye as I retuned home from church. 

This is what you can do with a telephoto lens... not a iPhone.
Thank you- http://hillcityprevailernews.blogspot.com/

This is big news around here...."All the news, as it happens... " Well, maybe not quite as it happens, this is from last year's game.

http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/polo-gets-western-in-hill-city/article_a5c514ec-d130-11e0-8e8a-001cc4c03286.html


2112's game may be in next week's paper. Hey, what's the rush? It's a polo match in Hill City, SD.

Complete with tailgate parties..... on REAL pickup truck tailgates.


And yes, most of these are working or retired horsemen AND horsewomen.
  Think "the owners of the ranches,
not the working hands".

It is still a recreation activity with expensive equipment.
Hmm.... perhaps western royalty! 

The man in red is crossing the course during the action.....
very carefully-
 not to avoid the horse action but to avoid spilling his champagne. 

Imagine the summer vacationers in the surrounding vacation cabins.
"I'm not kidding! They played polo in our front yard!"

Hill City's Rushmore Polo and Social Club
5-3 over
Black Hills Polo Club

Bragging rights and a trophy that stays at a local restaurant no matter who wins!
It's a friendly once-a-year party.

Quotes from the day- or overhead by yours truly-


Announcer-  "Have you guys been drinking? No one is listening to me!"  ( I will say the second half was a little slower after the intermission with flowing champagne and a silly hat contest)

Girl on sidelines- "My grandfather started it all after he came home from the Army. He learned to play polo there." Turns out it's not teenage bragging- "Representing Rapid City will be veteran rancher Kurt Ketelsen from north of Ellsworth (whose father and grandfather played polo with the Fort Meade cavalry in the ’30s)" http://hillcityprevailernews.blogspot.com/2012/08/polo-match-saturday.html

Girl's mother- "I'll tell you- don't ever make the mistake of using one of those little polo saddles to go chase down cattle.  I couldn't walk the next day" (And this was from a  woman who looked very comfortable spending a day in a western saddle!)

Announcer- "Thanks for coming folks. See you next year!" 

And the bike riders cruise by on the Mickelson Trail,
unaware they are missing
 the West's version of the "King of Sports"!

Once again, greetings from Hill City, South Dakota-

where you never know what culture is going on just around the corner!