About a month ago I was pruning a california lilac I now own. It's mad overgrown and halfway to blocking one of my, I think four, driveways. I felt something ow. I kept trimming and felt something else ow. I realized it was a hornet sting but it didn't hurt that badly. Then I got stung again ow. The next day I decided I could probably finish trimming the lilac ow. Another half hour and ow.

The next day we were -

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Okay, let's have a Rich People Diversion.

You know what rules? Toaster ovens. Because you can put bread in them, and put stuff on the bread, and it toasts it all together! This is great for sandwiches. This is great for Cheesy Toast. This is great for pizza - cold pizza in a toaster oven? Almost as good as cold pizza sauteed in olive oil (try it). This is great for many things. But you know what sucks? Toaster ovens. Because they're always cheap, they're always sized to reheat a cheap-ass frozen Totino's Party Pizza, and they take up more than half of your counter.

Let's get rich with it

At some point, some maker of thunderously expensive appliances, I'ma bet Miele, decided that the way forward was to throw a microwave in a convection oven in the wall and call it a "speed oven." So it's kind of a toaster oven? And it's very much a convection oven? And it's very much a microwave? And it's like five thousand dollars. But you know what? it's not on the goddamn counter. But! Since you've never heard of a speed oven, and neither have your friends, you will not be surprised to find out that information on speed ovens is thin on the ground. Look 'em up on Youtube and you will find delightfully relatable segments like "watch us spatchcock a cornish game hen in a merlot reduction in 20 minutes with the Miele Speed Oven." You will find zero answers to the question "can it make cheesy toast" (you will find a handful of people asking if it will work as a toaster oven back to 2010). It'll pop popcorn! It'll cook frozen pizza! Which from what I gather is what most rich people do with their "speed ovens." And if they want to venture further, it'll give you step by step directions to cook anything but cheesy toast.

The way the High End Appliance Gods solve this is by setting up "experience centers." You go to a shady-ass part of town and walk into a too-brightly-lit showroom where a woman in a pencil skirt and heels offers you perrier, or maybe to make you a macchiato out of their seven thousand dollar coffee robot. And they got shit plugged in and if you walk in with a bag of rye bread and some sliced havarti, they will look at you nervously and then try a few different ways to make cheesy toast because no one has ever asked this before, deviant Americans, why can't they just karaoke their way through a lobster thermador like the LCD touchscreen wants them to but you know what? A fuckin' five thousand dollar microwave toaster oven makes some bomb-ass cheesy toast.

but will it make gluten-free cheesy toast

....cuz see, wifey doesn't really give a fuck about clutter. Her parents are level 2 hoarders and she, like you, thinks spending five thousand dollars to reclaim four square feet of countertop is maybe kind of silly. So if she's going to be giving up her toaster oven (which she never heard of before she met you, something something petards something something hoisting) it better make gluten-free cheesy toast which, by the way, no one on the Internet has even thought of asking. And you know what? She don't reheat pizza. 'cuz she don't eat pizza. She don't toast sandwiches, unless it's gluten-free bread. So let's go back to the Experience Center, and annoy the shit out of them by asking if "dialogue ovens" will ever make it stateside (like, Miele has made a synthetic aperture radar microwave, apparently so you can parboil a fish in an ice block) but also by making slice after slice after slice of gluten-free cheesy toast without taking a single bite.

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And we're getting pretty successful with the gluten-free cheesy toast when suddenly your hands go numb. So let's chew some benadryl sleep melts, 'cuz we have 'em handy, because peanut allergies and children, and the flop sweat diminishes, and your hands are feeling a little less tingly, and your wife gets pretty mad at you when you sheepishly admit that you might have been stung by bald-faced hornets five times in the past 48 hours. You might even agree that yes, despite the fact that the Internet thinks you should live and let live because bald-faced hornets are a part of a functioning ecosystem, the fact that they're in the driveway means they're disinvited. And you agree that you'll absolutely get some pest control set up as soon as you've got the crawlspace re-insulated, we're working on it, frickin' HVAC has been dragging ass and your parts that were supposed to be here in early August are shipping October 3rd.

And in the meantime, you let the bald-faced hornets have the lilac.

But you don't let them have the driveway? Because c'mon man I'm like twelve feet from your hive. And it's all fun and games until you're just minding your goddamn business and one of the little fuckers stings you behind the ear and in the ten minutes it takes you to schedule someone to come out and nuke their hive tomorrow your palms get itchy, and you start to feel woozy and you see spots and you rationally decide to drive five miles home and call your wife and tell her to have the benedryl ready and by the time you're doing prophylactic measures like taking your blood pressure and measuring your pulse-ox your face doesn't fit anymore and you have the presence of mind to force your wedding ring off your finger 'cuz it kinda looks like this is going to be a real problem and by the time they actually see you at urgent care you're having a hard time walking but it sure seems like the benedryl is kicking in and they send you home with a five-day supply of prednisone for good measure and not only do you sleep off the next two days but the prednisone lowers your immune system enough to catch something that your last test verifies isn't COVID and so much for that weekend.

So now I'm mos def sensitized to bald-faced hornets, the question is whether to start desinsitization therapy now, or give it a few weeks to see if maybe my mast cell response will chill the fuck out on its own in a little bit because let's be honest, there aren't likely to be many hornets between now and say next March but goddamn it used to be badass to have such a high pain tolerance but the older i get the more it sucks.