Beach House in the Burbs

Honey bees have been living in the wall of our garage for several years now. They go dormant or hibernate or something in the winter, but spring has sprung in Georgia and they are back. One day--after the yellow-pollen haze is gone and I can safely leave the house--I'll take a picture of them to post. They mostly live inside the wall, but they also come out and huddle close together looking like a big, black blob on the side of the garage. So, they've been there several years. Chris has looked for a way to get rid of them without killing them--he's a nice guy, rescued a neighbor's dog that had fallen in another neighbor's pond at 1:30 yesterday morning and couldn't get out. But he's having a hard time finding one, that doesn't cost an arm and a bee wing! He's also cheap, so when the humanitarian side and the cheap side conflict, he just does nothing. And the bees haven't really been a problem. It's kind of cool to see them hanging out on the ...

When we bought our house, which looked nothing like a beach house 13 years ago, we decided that the woman who sold it to us had a strong streak of vanity in her. The house was full of mirrors. Full-length mirrors hung on backs of all the closet doors, every one in the whole house. Another full-length, double-wide mirror hung on the master bedroom wall, despite the one on the master closet door. And in the room above the detached garage, an 8-foot square mirror stretched from floor to ceiling and covered the space between two windows on one wall. She obviously didn't want to have to go more than 10 steps anywhere in the house without being able to see her reflection. We got rid of most of the other mirrors as we painted or moved closet doors. But we left the huge one. The tenants we had up there when we first moved into the house didn't seem to mind it. One was so stoned all the time he probably didn't notice it. After he left, we used the room for storage, then as a chicken...