BTW I had a very short but intense dream last night (or early this morning rather) that I still remember well, which is pretty unusual for me, so I'm inclined to wonder whether there isn't something about it I should be heeding. let me describe it briefly, but it's really pretty nasty...

I'm doing...something to what looks like a stretch of hardwood flooring. I don't remember what the "something" is, but I remember the reaction, and remember thinking that I should have expected the reaction: ants start welling suddenly out of a small hole in the floorboards that I don't remember seeing before.

our household had a big problem in summer with ants, specifically the little "moisture ants" that like to form big galleries underground and infest walls damaged by moisture. that must have been what inspired the imagery. anyway...

I flail for a few seconds as the ants issue forth, and I grab for something, anything, to spray on them, hoping that if I get enough of them at a go, it'll stop the flood. for some reason all I can find is a can of spray-on shellac, and I douse the hole. The sticky stuff traps and kills most of the ants. But immediately, more ants start issuing out of a fresh hole. and then another hole...

I remember the holes opened up in a weirdly regular grid pattern...not hexagonal, but more like a distorted rectangular grid. I'm going nuts with the spray-shellac, dousing all these ants. Ants are among the very few insects I will kill on site but even then it makes me feel a bit sick inside, and so in this dream I was feeling pretty bad about what I was doing even though I was still compelled to do it.

Finally I spray a last hole but the insects coming out, though slowed by their lacquer bath, somehow don't stop, and suddenly I see (a la dream logic) that they're not ants but bees or wasps.