Blake Lively, person who was on “Gossip Girl” and recently made a “creepy” lifestyle blog, was attacked by a swarm of bees on her birthday. She recounted her experience with this different sort of “bee day” (pun intended, by her) over at Preserve:

I felt an electric shock of energy– was it excitement that I was about to turn another year older? Was it nerves? Why did it feel like agony? I like getting older … I think.

But this felt terrible. Does your butt quite suddenly (and painfully) deflate when you turn 27? Because mine hurt like hell …then my neck, back, legs and forehead. And oh my hands! They were shriveling. It felt like I was being shot by dozens of tiny invisible darts. I felt like the Wicked Witch, melting, melting, burning, melting.

As common as violent physical reactions to aging a year in your mid- to late-20s might seem, Lively’s visceral experience was actually many bees using their butts to sting her.

After escaping the swarm, she decorated a vanilla cake. It was while baking she realized that the bees had used their venom to combat the fear brought on by the ephemerality of the human condition. Of course!

“It took a swarm of bees to remind me that a b-day is nothing but a number. Each day I choose my age,” she wrote, presumably squinting at the screen with puffy eyes, doing her best to type with swollen hands. “Today it’s 27, going on 2.”

Thanks for teaching Blake Lively that lesson, bees. We leave you with this: