Gender change, please!

Sometimes I don't like being a girl. It's so annoying to be too weak to be able to get a 13kg bottle of gas for beadmaking out of the boot of a car that is ridiculously deep. Fortunately, DH was working at home today (in fact it's his car, I don't have one) so I got him to get it out. "I can connect it up ... let me do that ..." I whine, not wanting to look like a completely useless female. But, no - he does that bit as well despite my protestations. I tell him thanks with a peck on the cheek and send him off back into the house - him to the study to do his work, leaving me to make some beads - I ran out of gas last Thursday, I had to go to the dentist this morning and so I was keen to get started.

Then I try to turn the gas regulator on. Someone has tightened it up so hard I can't get it undone (sigh). I don't want to go ask DH to come help again so I nearly give myself a hernia trying to get it turned but it won't budge so in the end I have to go get the man again. He was very good and resisted the urge to smirk about how much I need him around. I wouldn't be without him but I would like to be a little more independent.

On the plus side, I did think I had got the girly shrieking every time a wasp gets into the studio under control. This time last year when wasps were in "nuisance" mode, I was running out, abandoning bead after bead every time one appeared. However, last week, I came to realise that most of the time they just bimble around the windows and they ignore me til I can shoo them out. Wasps started coming into the studio more and more last week and when I notice one, I calmly let them get on with their angry buzzing at the glass whilst I finish my bead and then - after my work is safely garaged in the kiln - I deal with removing the wasp by ushering it out of the door or the open window using a magazine. Today I was using a print out of an Ann Ricketts tutorial on tribal beads which I haven't yet got round to trying.

However, one of the wasps today decided to buzz about my head which isn't on at all and I got straight back into shriek mode immediately. I dropped my bead, waved around the back of my head and managed to knock it onto the back of my neck and then I felt it going down the back of my t-shirt .......... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!!!!!!!

Straight away, I jumped up and took off my t-shirt, goodness knows how I didn't get stung but why all this drama? I got stung by a wasp on the finger a couple of years ago and it didn't hurt that much! I say again, sometimes I really don't like being a girl. Men don't shriek about wasps ... or do they?! Anyway, there I am, shaking my inside-out t-shirt and gingerly peeking up the sleeve to locate this blessed creature that has given me such a scare. I must have looked (and sounded) like a demented Scottish country dancer. And then I hear a voice "I'll just leave your tea on the side for you, love"....

The strange thing is DH didn't even turn a hair at the fact that his wife was hopping about in the studio, shrieking, half naked and shaking her t-shirt about. I find it a bit odd that he seems to view this as normal Sue-behaviour ... I have no idea what he thinks I was doing - he hasn't mentioned it when I came back into the house. Perhaps he thinks I had a sudden whim to be a morris dancer!

Anyway, I did managed to get quite a lot of beads made this afternoon, just as well as we had lovely weather on Saturday, my customers were out in force buying lots of things, including a bracelet, earrings and a necklace in the red mist jewellery to a total of £96 - which means another £48.50 donation to the Orangutan Foundation which I'm particularly happy with. I have lots of stock to replace this week so I'm going to be busy-busy. I took some time today to make some subtle colour variations on the hagstone bead. I'm still using grey as a background but I've marbelled it through with some different colours - I'm impatient to see how what they turn out like when the kiln has cooled down.