Discovery

I arrived home this evening to find a bee hive in my backyard, which was something of a surprise... I'd recently talked of it with the hive's keeper, and was on the fence at the time about whether or not to host a colony this year.  I didn't last year, partly because my hive didn't survive the previous winter, for somewhat mysterious reasons, and partly because I was not inclined to entertain the possibility of another visit to the emergency room, and the epinephrine and prednisone and rather terrible what-not that followed... I have to say, it feels strange to regard the hive with a certain sense of dread, instead of joy, and beyond that I'm just not sure it's sensible for me to risk getting stung again at this point, or possibly ever.  I've come to realize recently, or at least to suspect, that many of my health issues may be related to something called "histamine intolerance", which is a seemingly complex problem having many potential causes and relationships, not least among them being hormonal imbalances (prime candidate.), digestive disorders of various sorts (check.), allergies (apparently.) to certain foods and almost all noxious things, auto-immune complications (possibly.) and general stress (obviously.).  I rather feel at this point that it's almost without question that if I were to be stung, I would most certainly react quite badly--perhaps in a life-threatening way--and in spite of my preference to maintain gung-ho attitude about experience in general and particularly with regard to "Nature", I cannot say that I wish to know first-hand how it feels to stab myself in the leg with an epi-pen.

Hmmm.

I'd be happy to have the bees grace my garden, but--

Hmmmmmm.

I don't know.  Maybe it would be good to get stung again, and learn what might happen.  Assuming that what happens isn't sudden death, I might be okay with that.

Hmm...