trampled oct 3rd 2017

pictures will be added later.

so will my story of asking ford to stop working 15 hours a day.

what a mess. we kept hoping things would get better, and things have just continually gotten worse. the clouds of dust have been persistent for the entire summer. we've had so little rain. the neighbors have actually complained about the dust on their cars and homes each day. i've watched families flee from the park when huge dust clouds suddenly overtake the area.

of course - i emailed ford and they said they would use more water and more street sweepers. there are still huge clouds of dust.

there is billowing smoke from welding on any given floor - 5 floors of parking deck are in front of the house now. it's huge and ugly. the mechanical building at the end of the block has been sided - it is huge and light grey - and ugly. every new building is so naked and exposed and ugly. such a shame.

the geese fly over and have no where to stop - there used to be so many of them. but the wetlands are gone and the forest is gone and they honk but don't stay.


we've had rumbling for months. we've had house trembling for months. we have damage for sure. and then, about ten days ago, we were woken up to an incredible roller coaster of shocks through the house. bang! a big digger would smash into the ground on the other side of the ring road and then our house would shake. over and over. it was nauseating. then we started hearing new noises in our basement that we had not heard before. loud knocking - as if someone was outside our basement walls, knocking on them with something dense enough to send sound through cinder blocks.

for the first time ever, carl emailed fordland. he used all caps. he wanted to know what the hell was going on. that was monday, sept 25th. on the morning of tuesday, sept 26th, i received a phone call from a fordland dcampus representative. the poor thing - i felt bad that they made her call me. she said first that she wanted to thank me for emailing about the tree issue (will explain later) and secondly that my email about the new basement noises needed a response. she said it seemed the crew had found an old school foundation in the area they were digging for the new sewer line (8 foot in diameter cement sewer pipes being put in the ground all along the path of the yet to be expanded ring road) and that the old foundation would be removed in the near future so the project of sewer line could be finished.

i broke down in tears. i started telling her about how scary it was to live here through all of this house shaking, about how terrifying it is to be in the house when it happens, about how many months of noise and dirt and lost sleep we have already had and how our walls are cracked and that my family really could not take anymore of this. she apolagised repeatedly, and said hopefully the current disruption would be done in a few days.

found an old school foundation - duh. for bought the land edison school was on in the 80s, and ford knocked the school down, pewabic tile and all, and hauled it all away. much to the dismay of many residents who had gone to school there. of course ford knew it was on their land - they bought the damn thing and ruined it themselves. now they were trying to act all surprised that once upon a time some building had been there. so many lies.

i sat down and emailed fordland, and dcampus, and joe vicari, and the mayor, and james murray (who is in charge of parks, but i was thinking of him and his brother barry as the same person) and i wrote about how months of our lives have been ruined and our house has been damaged and it's been awful to live through this. i mentioned how ford kept saying they would not help with damages and yet our house clearly was suffering, and that i wanted to know what were they going to do to keep my family safe?


the house kept shaking. through last friday - the house kept shaking.


i had a city function on thursday night - part of a series to focus on dearborn as a whole and the people in it who have started their own businesses. i was part of a panel discussion on why i chose dearborn, what it's like to run a biz, and what sorts of things would make our city better to do biz in. before the panel discussion started, barry murray came up to me to ask how i was doing, and to inquire about the construction. he said he had seen my latest email and wanted more information.

WHAT? no one from the city had been willing to discuss this with me before now. shocked, i proceeded to tell him who i was dealing with and how for 9 months i had been told by the dcampus email answering service that no damages would be covered by ford for this project. barry told me one of the guys i had been emailing had actually retired from the project. he asked me if i had been in touch with a certain person (and of course i do not remember the name, nor did i write it down - foolish of me), to which i replied no i did know who that was. he then asked me if ford had brought over monitors to place in my home to monitor any cracks or vibrations, and i said no. i explained to him that tall eric, who had just come from ann arbor at the beginning of the process, had told me that program was available in the very beginning, but that everyone else i spoke with after told me it was not available and i could not have monitors in my house. barry said that was not right. and i agreed.


i was in awe that anyone wanted to talk to me from the city. it was truly shocking. of course, i sent barry a very nice email on friday morning, asking him to please put me in touch with the proper people at ford to discuss all these issues, to share with me the email and name of the man he mentioned on thursday night. i am still waiting to hear back from barry. i wonder if i will.



saturday night, at 745pm, while working in the yard, leslie herrick stopped by. she is running for city council and she lives a block over in the ford historic homes, which are not being affected at all by any of this construction. she stopped to talk to me about the issues i have been posting online - on social media and facebook over the last 9 months. she had a lot of questions. i had a lot of answers. she talked to me for 45 minutes. she had nothing new to add, no answers or solutions, but she still stopped by to ask how we were doing and again - i was surprised. after months of no one giving us the time of day - i had 2 diff city people talk to me in a 3 day time span. fascinating.



in between these 2 discussions, our neighbor who lives 2 doors down and works at ford, saw carl on friday evening walking the dogs. he stopped carl to say that the campus overhaul was going on hiatus. that the man who was in charge had been fired, and someone new had been brought in and the new guy hated it all - hated the plans, the layout, and esp said it was all too expensive. that the parking deck right across from us was being stopped where it was and finished as is - not expanded to the 1,000 feet it was originally going to be, and that the whole project was going on hiatus while plans were being redesigned.

for real? i still have no proof this is the new direction, but no new pieces have been added to the deck since last week. and on saturday they only worked until noon instead of 4 or 6 pm. and the digging on the foundation has stopped. so what is going on? agian - we have to wait and see.


in the meantime, i am hoping to have fordland people come survey the house and tell us what they can do to fix the issues they have caused. one of our neighbors is involved in the project, the construction end of it, and he sent me a long email about how none of the work being done is supposed to be affecting our home, and i told him i appreciated the info but i have been watching with my own eyes what has happened to our house and while general construction rules may work for other places - my home was not some other place. and that my before and after pictures were very different things. he replied that the money to fix our issues would be a drop in the bucket compared to the total budget and that ford should have no problem fixing things. now if only he was right....



in recent months, as the parking deck work has moved form it's beginnings near nowlin street toward our home, there have been a number of water main breaks on elmdale. i think, in fact, doug said there had been 5 at his house, and phil has had 2 or 3. elmdale is an old street. the sewer under it is old. home owners down about 6 blocks the other way from us talked about sewer breaks that caused sink holes in their yards, and only a few years back there was a sink hole at the sewer drain at elmdale and edison, and then a large deep depression formed in the berm along the ford fence line. there is a lot of empty space under the road. you can hear it when cars drive by - hear the weird reverberations down into the cavern under the street. of course that will affect our home in a diff way than other homes. something about the strata of the earth here, and the emptiness under the street, has caused our home to react in a different manner than other homes would. but a big corporation is not interested in these things - except they should be as the street is mere feet from all of the new design work and planned building, and if old sewer lines and water mains cause sinkholes, and the area has already proven that - wouldn't ford be interested in maintaining the soil and strength of the ground where they are building? and therefor wouldn't they have done surveys and realized the houses along the street were not going to hold up as well as ford wanted them to? or did i cause such a commotion in the beginning that ford and the city figured they would simply let our home go to pieces because i was a fly in the ointment? because i had been vocal enough to say this plan was bad for our neighborhood and that we would suffer so the rest of the city could benefit?


well, knowing there had been sinkholes, and knowing that the first batch of sight line trees had been planted incorrectly last autumn, i emailed the city in late sept to tell them, and fordland, that the trees were having issues. yes - they had lived, which surprised me because they were planted at such a weird time of year and no one ever came to water them or care for them, and most of the spring they truly looked dead, but one of them was for sure sinking into the ground, and next to it was a new large depression in the soil. the city came out to investigate. they said the tree's root ball had shrunk due to dry conditions, and that the sewers were fine. i thanked them for the good news. within a few days, the fairlane greens people who mow the lawn on the other side of the fence (fordland) showed up to put large amounts of dirt in each hole a tree had been planted in. then, they placed a large amount of mulch around each tree, all the way up to the trunk. it looks nice, but will kill the trees. any episode of this old house will teach you that. mulch causes the bark to rot and kills the tree. oh well. right? they are not my trees, i did not pay for them, but it is sad they won't last due to incorrect planting standards.

that is how i feel about this whole project - it will not last due to incorrect planning standards. and besides - ford is so far behind all the other companies doing the electric and autonomous car thing - who knows how long they will even be around. they will become, just like the acres of forest they clear cut, steamrolled, and nonexistent.

trampled july 2017 - no end in sight

when i told a friend recently that the wetlands were drained - he was astounded. same thing with the acres of forest. he asked me if there had been an environmental impact survey. he asked a lot of questions that were all very valid. he used to work for the department of environmental quality and he knows a lot of ins and outs about what is right and wrong.

i had no answers for him. FORD is not going to make that info public.


there was an issue in late june - when at about 11am on a monday morning a HUGE explosion happened across the street. neighbors came running out of their homes to see what had happened. all of our houses shook violently. this explosion affected an area at least 6 blocks wide and half a block deep - and had a number of loud banging aftershocks. i emailed FORD and asked what was happening. they took a whole week to reply - and when they did they said they thought it was a gravel hauler tire blow out........

my friend suggested i watch silkwood.

yeah - we think of moving every day. because, just like every day since january - the noise starts early - rumbling, beeping, lots of trucks and traffic and exhaust and dirt in the air - usually from at least 6am to 6pm. mon-sat. it's been 7 months now. and it's only the beginning.

the footings for the parking deck are just starting. we can see bit of concrete showing up. the noise - the nonstop noise - it's awful. and it is amplified by bouncing off the big building we live across from and then hitting the front of our house. a big echo chamber. you cannot escape it anywhere in the house. and the beeping backing up vehicles - again, the tones pierce our home with needle like precision.


would i get answers if i tried a freedom of information act thing? even if i did get answers - the town would not care. god, oh i mean FORD, came back to save the city and i may be the only athiest.


it has worn us down. a deep darkness is always around, always on our minds and in our lungs. no one wants to talk about it - no one wants to hear that we are a few months into a 10 year debacle with no way to escape unless we walk away. or at least that is what it seems like. just like all the birds and squirrels and foxes and frogs and turtles and fish who were so suddenly and horribly thrown out of their homes - we have been displaced.


yeah - i know - now the emails will come from my friends - "we are worried". well - that's cool. but the only solution they seem to have is go see a doctor and get on drugs. which is not my choice. as neighbors to this project, we all deserve better care than this. if this was the day of henry ford - we'd all be treated better. but it's modern times, and his family only cares about the investors and the bottom line - not the health of the neighborhood. or it's residents.  not human or wildlife.



seems the laws say the wetlands should have not been touched - but hey - this is FORD and the hand of god is allowed to touch what it wants. cult religions seem to brainwash that way.......




this is how close the cranes still are to our front door. literally across a patch of grass.

and here is some of the work that makes up the non-stop noise and dirt all day every day. 

this is literally across the street from our house

all that dirt blows around every day, mixed with cement dust

it has looked like this for months and months

piles of dirt moved one way, then back , then another way, then back - beeping all the while for 12 hours a day

this are used to be acres of forest - now it will be acres of concrete, stacked high with parked cars

this is the deck they started in oct of 2016 - it is immense and in the middle of the project - but still pretty darn close to a whole neighborhood of houses

and this is our backyard - every day, any time of day - we get to look at this glorious monstrosity of work going on. a huge mess. for 7 months now. and it's only the beginning. 

trampled june 14th, 2017

i have not posted in weeks. it get tiresome to see hear smell and taste this damn construction every day, and so sometimes i have to take breaks. PLUS - who cares that i am complaining? just me,a nd sometimes i do not have the stomach to think about it anymore than i already do.


so the cranes have now all been parked out front of our house, just to the left. a whole battalion of them. and the space they were working in - digging huge holes, moving around large bunches of wires and rebar encased in cement - is now full of smaller work vehicles - diggers, dump trucks, cement trucks. they are ending their days earlier than before. they all seem rather clueless about their goal, or if they even have one now.

most days - the clouds of dirt and cement dust from these vehicles fills our whole area. i can look to the left and see dust, i can look to the right and see the whole park, still full of children as it is now summer and they are in need of things to do - full of a haze that looks like los angeles or somewhere that is on fire. the dirt cloud comes in our windows, and our neighbors windows too, and leaves a grimy gritty covering on everything. if i had the time to put in the effort - i could dust every day. there is that much crud coming in. it covers the house, and the plants in the yard. i can never tell how it is that all those ford workers walk through those clouds willingly each day on their lunch break. they must have good health insurance.


the news is full, thugoh not so full, of stories about ford these days. about the new ceo and how he is gonna make things better. about how the investors are unhappy. about how telsa and alphabet are a decade advanced on all the new car tech, and that not a single ford line is wired the way all gm vehicles are. the news is sort of full, but also not, of stories about the buyouts, and i found one story that said they would mostly be dearborn workers, but no one else would say that. no one else would say if any of the current projects would be in jeapordy if ford suddenly hemmorages people or money. plans change, things are abandoned. the packard plant once was a thriving industrious place......


i think of all the work and disruption of this project, and i see if empty. times are changing too fast. this work should have been done 10 years ago. now - now ford is chasing it's tail like a dog who is bored or has separation anxiety. spinning it's wheels, and going nowhere.

trampled may 13 2017 - save the mallards

So this week was weird. As i said – last weekend was silent. And so refreshing. But monday morning came and at 530 the noises started and by 7am everything was loud as per usual. Loud in the am, loud after i got home from work. They tend to work till 6pm. Evening was fine – usual piles of dirt and debris and cranes and trucks all over.

Tuesday seemed the same. Long loud day.

Wednesday started very different. Rumbling at 530 like normal, general noise till about 7am, and then there was a noise, like a large machine was breaking up concrete, and it woke us. Awake enough to feel the house roll. The framed art on our bedroom wall rattled. So did the mirror. And then it happened again, and again. Loud banging in the lot, house rolling like an earthquake hit it. This happened, on and off, for over 35 minutes. Some quakes were a minute apart, some were every 3 to 5 minutes. Eveything in the house shook each time the tremors came.

I got out of bed and emailed one of the project supervisors to ask what was going on, because this was not something we had encountered in the last 5 months. He wrote back and said a piece of equipment was adjusted at 730 which may have caused the issue, and i explained in full detail what the previous 5 months were like and what was so diff about wed morning. He said he would look into it.

By wednesday afternoon, a seismagraph had been installed across the street and just to the left of our house. It is in a yellow cooler looking plastic box, and has an antenae that sticks up and a probe that goes down into the earth. Well, i thought, at least they are monitoring what's up.

All the work done on thurs and friday this week was quieter – all the cranes were in quieter gears. There was less noise and less rumbling. It was weird. I do not know if the quiet is simply because they realized they were being too loud for the paramaters they are working in, or if they turned everything down because now they are being recorded. But whatever – it was nice to have al ittle quieter of an experince.

Except that wed morning really threw us both for a loop. It was scary to have the house tremble like that. To have it happen so many times in a 35 or 40 minute time frame. What is that doing to our foundation and our sewer system? Ugh.

And now today is saturday. They started before 7am and just now finished at 6pm. The scene is ugly. So many huge piles of dirt and cement goo and machinery everywhere. It looks like a bomb went off. However – the big red bodied crane that has been parked in front of our living room window since january 2^nd has now been moved. It is elsewhere. It seems weird to look out and see it gone. I'm thankful – and maybe someone finally realized what a burden on the neighborhood that crane was. No matter where you were or who you were you could see it. It was part of why we could not sell our house. Maybe this means we will have better luck in a month or so.....

the crane that has moved - it sat in this spot for 5 months

the last tidbit from this week is that we're seeing and hearing how many animals that previously lived in the acres of clear cut forest, and in the wetlands on FORD property that were drained, now are trying to find homes. So many new birds in our trees, and so many more birds. More raccons and possums. The coyotes went to the henry ford estate and to the area near outer drive and ford road, or greenfield and ann arbor trail. And the rats went toward oakwood and outer d rive – residents are reporting rats the size of cats in their streets. Here – we had a momma mallard and her 15 babies IN OUR YARD looking for a safe place to make their home. Carl managed to keep the dogs away from them, and helped them out of the yard and down the street. But there is no water in our area – they had to go across one or 2 VERY busy streets to get anwhere close to a pond to be safe in. Momma mallard came home to where her instincts said she should be, and her home was gone. I hope she found somewhere safe to be. I hope we all do.  

trampled may 8th, 2017

the most amazing thing happened this past weekend.

NOTHING.

nothing happened.

you see, it rained on thursday and friday. rained all day. and the construction work does not take place in the rain. so on thursday and friday there were no rumbling cranes, no beep beeping vehicles, no cement trucks or clouds of dust. it was fantastic. we were able to sleep, in our bed, in the morning - something we have not been doing soundly for 5 months now.

and then the real miracle came. on saturday the ground was too mushy for any work to be done. so once again, for the third day in a row, we were able to sleep soundly past 7am. we got up, made breakfast, stepped out in the yard to play with the dogs. and it was quiet. totally quiet.

all day saturday, and all day sunday, for the first time in over 5 months, the entire FORD r&d campus was silent. no air conditioning, no furnaces, no belching buildings. no high powered vacuum trucks. no street cleaning, no lawn mowing, no cement trucks. there was not a sound from the entire complex. my husband and i were amazed.

the complete lack of noise, and the quiet atmosphere , reminded us of why we moved here in 2010. of why this had been, up until summer of 2016, such a wonderous place of calm and beauty.

two full days of absolute quiet.


i actually wrote to joe vicari (land management) and dcampus (head of current overhaul project) and thanked them for whatever gift the neighborhood was being given. told them how 2 days of absolute quiet were such a miracle, and suggested that if each weekend could be like this it would make living on the fringe of this project so much easier.


the solitude also reminded us of how happy and calm we are when there is no noise. up to then, all day, everyday, for months - we have been dealing with construction noise during the day and then building noise at night. LOUD building noise. high pitched, low pitched. and there are frequencies happening here, resonant frequencies, called INFRASOUND, that actually negatively impact human health. it is sound that falls below what a human can hear, but our bones and flesh can feel the sound waves. they cause nausea, dizziness, anxiety, depression, headaches and sleeplessness. the sound waves are esp harmful when humans are exposed to them for long periods of time, and can produce PTSD.


so - the low rumblings that have produced 15 new cracks in our walls and ceilings also have the ability to affect our mental and physical health. oh joy.


some neighbors came by sunday evening and commented on how quiet it was. how for the first time in a long time it was finally quiet in their house. they live about a half block up from us. they mentioned the low rumbling that has been ever present in their house for months now, as have neighbors 2 streets down. those neighbors described it as having a semi or mack truck parked next to their home for 8 plus hours a day. that on some days they cannot think or concentrate on their jobs because the noise and rumbling is so bad.


i do not want to celebrate these neighbors joining my ranks - but my goodness is it nice to not feel so alone in my issues.


this past week, around the first or second of the month, i discovered homeowners near us complaining online in a social media forum. there are people who live clear on the other side of the project, complaining about their houses rumbling and shaking 12 hours a day when dump trucks from the FORD project drive by their homes on Pelham street. that is a good half mile from where we are. south west of us. those folks are not dealing with any of the cranes or drilling or cement trucks, but simply hearing that an area somewhat distant from the project was having issues due to the truck routes of the dump trucks hauling away so many mounds of excavated earth from the auger holes was reassuring. sad - i do not want anyone to be suffering. and frustrating - it is a much wider and larger circle of disruption in our area than just here on elmdale.

then a woman chimed in who lives just around the corner from us. along donaldson. she talked about how sad she was that FORD clear cut the forest in front of her house, and how now she heard all the noise and her house shook and it was so ugly and dreadful compared to what she previously looked at. we emailed each other. we compared photos. we talked about how neither of us had been given any of the info we had requested. so across from my house the parking deck is going in. at the right hand end of the deck (if you are looking out my living room window) there will be a maintenance building constructed. that building will be directly across from her house. she wanted answers on what were the outer walls going to look like and what kind and how much shielding (walling, blocking) would be planted, and no one would answer her questions.


why is this happening in the midst of a neighborhood?  why didn't FORD offer to buy the blocks around the site and help us relocate? in her words - "they've taken this beautiful park like setting and ruined it". you know - i can't agree more.



today is may 8th, 2017. the parking deck work resumed at 7am today. the cranes dug deep holes with their augers. the dumptrucks hauled away earth. the cement trucks rumbled and threw cement dust into the sky. the workers are still working, and it 530pm. they are lowering rebar structures down into holes that will soon be filled with cement - the pile legs to set the deck on. from what was dug today - the deck will at least be in front of half of our yard. we'll see how the rest of the week goes. the last plan we were shown had the deck not so far over to our left.....but i hear the plans keep changing.

and while we were all told initially that this was a 5 year plan (it being one half of the ten year complete overhaul of 2 campuses) then why did FORD lease offices at fairlane mall and in taylor at masco for ten years? the employees on the 340 acre campus across from my house have been relocated for the next ten years.



what is next? when will the design center start? it will be directly to the left of our house. and to build it, according to the plans, other buildings have to be demolished. what a debacle. what a lousy place to have ended up on the front lines of. at least now i know - i am not alone in my frustration. having a few neighbors join me has made me feel validated in my struggle. our collective voice may never be enough to get answers or make change - but we can be informed together, and we can help other people in our community understand what is happening.


my final riff here - why won't bill ford ever answer any of the emails i send him? why won't he get involved? he must feel so high and mighty - like  he is the king, and we are his serfdom, his peons in the community. in his dreams he is probably driving those cranes and running each and every one of us over, grinding us down into the ground. and i'm sure he has a huge smile on his face while he's doing it.

trampled april 26th 2017

a while back i stopped posting the word trampled and jsut started using dates an i thik i lost a number of you....


so it is the end of april at 628pm. todays work started around 6am. remember - the original lie was that work would only be from 7 to 330 each dya, and generally not on satudays.

yes - the original lie.

so the noise starts at 530am most days. loud metal noises - like cement being dropped into empty metal truck bins. then by 630 the cranes are running and then every other fucking thing is beeping.....and that, today, is still going on. like most days. they are working till 7 or so....so each day, for more than 12 hours, we hear the construction. we feel the waves of vibration go through the house. they work on saturdays too. usually from 6am to 4pm. and because they cut down the forested areas - we now hear all the loud noises the building air conditioners ect make.

24 hours a day it is loud here now. 12 plus hours of construction noise an vibration, and 12 hours of building noise. why is this happening in the middle of a residential area ??


i took some time off of posting - life matters to deal with. a sick brother in the hospital and many important issues at work. also trying to get yard work done - hoping to spiff things up as best we can so maybe someone will walk by this summer and exclaim, as they usually do, "your house is so lovely - are you ever going to sell it?". at which point we can tell them Yes - we are taking offers.....



read a lot today about how low frequency noise makes people and animals physically ill. INFRASOUND - the vibrations of sound your ears cannot hear but your body can feel.


how to stay positive and upbeat? bought more flowers for the front porch. trying to stay away from home.....all those people who suggested we jsut stay at work longer hours.....the people who do not live right near us......12 fucking hours a day of beep beep and vibrations and heavy trucks. i am trying to envision a place where all will be well again. it's probably in a diff city.

anthology of a friendship

Windy Weber

August 29, 2010 · 

anthology of a friendship - i step on you, you sting me back

it's summer. we work in the garden every sunday in the summer. and in all my free time. i don't do much else. so today, like all sundays, we watered the flowers, deadheaded plants, picked tomatoes, drank beer, and enjoyed the day. we'll be outside by noon and stay out till midnight, bbqing for dinner and getting far too much sun. every sunday i plant a few new flowers, plant a few seeds for flowers, weed the garden, and watch the bees.

oh my friends the bees! the big fluffy ones are my favorites - they buzz so loudly and have those wonderful fat yellow pouches of pollen on their legs. they are responsible for all the beautiful things growing in our yard, and all of our vegetables growing and ripening all over.

i love the bees. i paint pictures of them. i sing to them. i do not swat them and i pull them out of the dog water bowl when they fall in. i think of them as my friends.

as we all know, friendships can fall on hard times.

today, after weeding, watering, watching birds, and getting ready to start the grill, i, the lover of bees, got stung. barefoot in the grass, like every sunday all warm year long, i stepped on a bee.

oh god - it is that immediate whole body instinct that something is extremely wrong. my foot landed on it and it stung me on the bottom of my left foot baby toe, causing my entire foot to clench up and me to scream. really scream - out in the yard. i knew what it was - in a high pitched frightened and injured voice i told carl i had been stung by a bee. he replied that he saw one come up out of the grass as soon as i lifted my foot.

i hobbled to the house - carl was right next to me and opened the door. he said he'd get the tweezers and pull out the stinger for me. i sat down in the bathroom and tried to let him look at my foot, but i felt as if i could not uncurl my toes. the pain was intense. it made the bone in my toe feel like it was on fire. i was instantly sick to my stomach and crying. carl pulled my toes away from my foot, looked all over, and saw no stinger. he got me an ice cube. i cried like a baby. the pain was awful, and i was scared. i have not been stung by a bee since i was 5 years old. my mom and i were in the truck going through the drive through at the bank when it happened - the bee had landed on the seat and i set my leg on it. she, too, had rushed to get me an ice cube for it. i was not allergic at 5 years old, but that was a long time ago.

after i dried my tears and put some hydrocortisone cream on my toe, i went back outside. the whole side of my foot ached - the bone still felt as if it were on fire. it did not swell up, and i'm glad about that. it's been more than 3 hours now, and i can walk, but i am still sick to my stomach. maybe from that adrenaline rush, from that few seconds of intense fear and pain.

i guess i'll have to wear shoes from now on in the yard, although i mostly feel that in a few weeks i will have forgotten and i'll just take my chances again, hoping no more bees sting me in the future. but i also think that is kind of a lesson in life about friends - you can hurt each other on accident, and you can sting back in retalliation - on accident. we're all just trying to live our lives.