Just a quick catch-up post to say that I’m preoccupied with “real life” stuff right now, so both photography and blogging have been on hold the past few days. Between taking care of work responsibilities, dealing with the bee situation, taking time to visit with family around town, and binge-watching my way through The Sopranos (I’m up to Season 5 out of 6 now) I’ve had little time left for much else – well, if I’m also going to relax and enjoy some down time the last few weeks of summer. It’s OK, as photography-wise things are starting to feel a little stale, so a break will do me good. I have some ideas for a composite shot or two I’d like to pull off, but I need to do some reading and learning so I can avoid the usual pitfalls I encounter when attempting them so I don’t have those frustrations moving forward. Primarily, I need to find a way to ensure my lighting and color will match better from shot to shot so when I layer them all over each other it’s not so noticeable. More internet research and YouTube tutorials are definitely in my future.

But the bees are finally gone – until we got a contractor out here to completely remove and scrape clean the area that housed the hive, though, they were still flying around in the house and making me crazy. I actually spent several nights at a friends’ house because I could not handle getting buzzed at and dive-bombed every time I walked into our master bathroom, which was where the main entry point into the house was located (we had one entrance covered, but unfortunately did not find the other one until the day the guy came to remove the hive). They didn’t just contain themselves to that bathroom, though, and on occasion they’d be buzzing around elsewhere in the house too, and because I am so afraid of  flying, buzzing insects I convinced myself I could hear buzzing bugs nearby even when there weren’t any around – I was even hearing the buzz of bees in my sleep. It was incredibly nerve-wracking.

Anyway, they’re gone now – it only took 4 hours to do the work, and cost us $900, which is a ton less than we expected. We thought we’d be looking at removing an entire side of the house, but it turned out the bees had only built a hive in one section of our subfloor, and hadn’t made it into the brick or anything. So, without further ado, here it is (or was):

My husband thought it looked “cool,” and one of my friends said it was “pretty,” but I am in agreement with my friend Candace, who took one look at this photo and just texted back, “UGH.” I start itching just looking at it. But anyway, it was all cleaned up and re-sealed, and there’s been nary a buzz in our house since, a month after the whole ordeal started. Quite honestly, my husband and I are so sick of home repairs at this point that we may wait until next summer to do the interior painting, but we’ll see.