In the past when flies have been inside our house, it's usually been fruit flies... because of fruit. A couple of years ago one time we had a serious problem with regular house flies that we couldn't seem to completely get rid of, though, and at that time we had a hell of a time looking for flyswatters and flypaper everywhere. Wax's mom looked for them everywhere too and she couldn't find them either! Diligently trying to swat them and attempting to clean anything they could possibly lay eggs in and making homemade fly traps was the best we could do, and it seemed to take forever to get rid of them.

This time they've only been getting on our nerves for the length of the summer, but... once again we have screens in the windows, but the door to the balcony stands open all summer, and there's an extra opportunity for flies, bees, moths and other winged creatures to buzz in. There's really no way to fix this; putting in a screen door wouldn't work because the cats have to be able to come and go from the balcony. Tristana loves it out there. Maybe we need one of those electric bug zapper lanterns hanging in the hall near the balcony door. Or one in every room, at the current rate. Wax has ordered fly paper online. There's got to be a better kind of fly trap than the ones we made last time, which seemed incredibly, frustratingly slow to work.

I'm so tired of scrubbing fly poop off of my beautiful cabinet doors and shelf edges! And it's so enraging to be sleepily making a morning pot of tea and be confronted with flies on the handle you're reaching for, or perching on the stove hood, or trying to fly up your nose!