One of my cats has been locked in a box for almost six days now. No food, no water, no potty, no space to move.

And by locked I mean there is an opened box in the middle of their room and she does not dare leave it for fear of the other cat jumping in it.

Correction, the delivery service told me that no, my 200 gram 20 bucks worth shipment is indeed not 32 euro, but 86 euro plus tax. 

I think my blood just boiled. 

Fickidy feck, they started closing mailing routes to ... well, most places. You can't ship parcels anymore, not the regular way. You can still do it using a courier service like FedEx or DHL, which, unlike 8 bucks I usually pay for shipping, charge something like 32 bucks. For 120 gram shipments. I may as well close my shop right now. Most my orders are around 35 bucks, no shipping allowed for US, as Etsy gifts 35 bucks orders to clients for free on your behalf. 

I'll wait a few days to see if anything changes. The order to Greece from a month ago got stuck in the distribution centre even though I mailed it two days before closing borders. The General is seeing into retrieving it, and getting the fuckos to at least pay my shipping back. Then I'll try to mail it via a courier. Dumb fucking fucks. Luckily, the customer hasn't complained yet.

Not scarab at all

The General: "Shit collector caterpillar."
              Me: "Are you ... trying to say ... dung beetle?"
The General: "Yes."

Nothing is worse to the General than thinking he may be breaking or he has broken a rule. When he realised too late that his driver's licence has expired, it rendered him completely miserable and restless. We are talking - he realized on Sunday eve and because you have to make an appointment at the municipality office and he couldn't get them to answer the phone in this town, he asked to go to his home town. Meaning I had driven him there - it's two towns removed,  about ten miles - but because that is not allowed these days without good reason (he assumed this was not a good enough reason), he was even more miserable. All of this was a single morning's happenstance. We got up at five-thirty to be at the general store at six, where I had to wait in the car, because only one shopper is allowed at a time, and then we went home, where I went back to sleep. At eight he woke me, we drove to his town, where he got the temporary licence and later, at around noon, he got the proper one. So, technically, not half a day went by during which was semi breaking/bending the rules/guidelines. And it bent him completely irate. 

He later tried to pet call me a scarab, but didn't know the word for a dung beetle, he just knew how to describe it. It sounds really cute in our language, wherein it makes more sense :D

Queen bee

Fingers crossed, the new queen bee will be welcomed successfully :D That was such a surreal event. We triple-checked that indeed the A hive is queen-less, although there were queen cells present, they were all destroyed and no new brood for a week now. Plenty of drones, prancing around like Louis XIV, all posh and buff. Such hunks. Alas, we needed to purchase a new one, as none of the homestead hives have them yet, and this old little man at the edge of town sells them - we drove (can't cross city limits anyway), got this tiny box sealed with sugary wax, marked queen inside with four or five of her court, and I talked to her all the way back, like I'm retarded or ... just being me :D Eventually g just put it in his pocket and set to work: he removed a panel to make room and then laid the box on the busy panel.

Holy ...

The bees covered it immediately. It was freaky. We stared closely at their attitude, in case they decided to reject her out of hand, trying to kill through the little vent bars. Then we placed the box deeper in, between honey-packed plates, and watched. Again, the queen was completely covered, the box invisible under the accumulation. The box is only partially opened, so that they have to gnaw through the sugar seal, taking a few days to familiarise themselves with the new lady. With a little luck, this will be a smooth transition and already in no time (she is already fertilised) signs of egg-laying will prove she's settled in and the hive is safe. It's a huge, massively powerful and productive hive. Hard to tell if it will remain as such with this new queen, it's good to know where your queens come from, but then again you never really can for sure. Same as we have no idea what suddenly happened with the old one.

Masks :D

My MIL is a killa' ! A killa' ! Look what she made us. Those people really are problem-solvers in the greatest sense of the word. And never in a thousand years they would think like is supposed to be simple and anyone is supposed to be giving them hand-outs. We're talking a lady who chops wood by the 3ft log length in an ol' valley behind our city on a little farm where my in-laws live and she and her friends who have been seamstresses before, back in the day, went on-line and got instructions from the University Central Clinic (our primary hospital) and did not rest until they made us super pro level masks! :D With filters inside and everything. Now, the trickiest bit is making one for me, who have a head the size of a peanut, and G, who has a head the size of an oak barrel and then a lot of beard on it. There are thick napkins I can fold and staple together into a beat of a beak warmer - effective, but very small. He can't wear those. But these .. And they are so cute!!!!

Probably shouldn't read Batman

Reading Batman (mostly Black Label stuff) probably isn't the best idea during a crisis. That is some royally fucked up shit right there. 

My brother always said comics aren't for kids. Too right he was. 

Okay, so I may be having a little bit of a panic attack. Or not really a panic attack but a grief/horror attack. Regarding all that's been happening. An empathy attack times ten. All those poor people left to die in their own feces in nursing homes in Spain, when the staff just abandoned them. How they must have suffered, begging for help, weeping and praying, for water, for anyone to help them reach the phone one meter away on their nightstands, so they could call their children. Just read a local article about the old people crying, scared, when staff in protective suits come to get them in the middle of the night: Where are you taking me? Does this mean I am going to die?

It probably does, mister. 

I shouldn't be watching the news, but G is not here to stop me. He would get angry with me if he knew. So I'm alone here, it's past midnight, crying and walking around the empty house. I may be freaking out a little.