Bee a day?

Once upon a time, it was somewhere around 1985 I think, I became interested in the idea of having a beehive, as Husband #1 and I had just purchased 5 acres of land and were building a house on it. Turned out, to our surprise, you could buy live bees from the Sears catalog, of all places. Husband said he'd get me 6,000 bees for my birthday, but of course he didn't. (Instead he dug a large pond and stocked it with catfish). This was before Colony Collapse Disorder became news.
Still, I have always been rather fond of bees. Their stings don't bother me much and I like to see them buzzing around flowers in the summer. 
We used to buy honey from a local man who had an honor system table in front of his house, liking the idea of eating honey from our own neighborhood.

Husband #2 brewed beer and once made Mead from honey which we bought from an apiary in the hill country, on our way home from a trip up to Abilene. You can see more about it on my old blog, here, and also the Beekeeper's Lament, here.

Day 1 of quitting smoking started off well but Co worker went out and sneaked a cigarette, bummed from somebody, quite early in the day, and then she bought a pack and offered me one, and, well, I accepted it. I did not buy a pack though, and so that was my first saved $5.

This is what I bought.

It is a brooch for my car.

I'm what "they call" a Car Artist, or Cartist, which actually only means that I decorate or embellish my car with "art".
Back when I first got interested in ArtCars, it was a fringe thing but now, almost 30 years on, it's pretty mainstream and you can find zillions of photos online of ArtCars, from ordinary, driven daily kinds of cars to incredible, mutant things made for parades or for Burning Man and so on. But me, I'm doing mine for pleasure, and the bee jewels are for decorating inside my car.

Monday was Day 2 of quitting and I failed completely, I bought a pack of the kind which are said to be only tobacco without all the additives which seems like a good idea only they cost a lot more than the ordinary poisonous ones I've been smoking, so that totally defeats the money saving aspect. Still, I did get through an 8 hour workday on a single cigarette which is progress, if not success. 

Tuesday was Day 3 and I blew it. Today is Wednesday. Now I'm torn between the idea of buying a reward for refraining from purchasing, not to mention consuming, any tobacco,or saving the money in the bank.

I need some sort of Structure. The aforementioned Other Blog was 366 Fans, in which I tried to make a Fan A Day, as outlined by Noah Scalin, of Skull A Day fame, and also of course, Make Something Every Day, the 365 project. So now I'm thinking perhaps a Bee A Day is a good idea. I missed the excitement of doing something every single day and had made an effort to do something on the theme of Luck each day, using his book 

as if it were a textbook. This didn't last for very long and all the entries were deleted when I got discouraged, but I imagine all of the photos are still somewhere in the old computer and it might be a good idea to put them back up again anyway.

The idea linking all this rambling together is that I had begun painting my car again and that bees are going to be a theme on it. Combining three of my interests, illuminated manuscript art, bees and art cars.

For an overview of the ArtCar which Husband #2 and I did, see here. I thought there was a picture somewhere of the one before that (this one being basically a copy of it) but I can't find it now. Anyway now that August is over and the weather is starting to turn cooler, I'm ready to get back to work. Here is the car when I got it, plain and white.

I don't live at this trailer any more, and neither does Husband. I had to go by there recently, trying to chase down some misdirected mail and, oh my, the whole park has become neglected and grotty. Our landlady was elderly and frail, she had been selling off the trailers. I know the man next door to us had bought several of them, don't know about the rest and it looked as though only one of the neighbors I was friendly with is still there. 

More pictures of car in next entry, as this one has become awfully long.