Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Should Be Cleaning Up Breakfast Crumbs Lest the Ants Kill Me

Wow. Okay. So you know how it is when someone says "Guess what I'm holding in my hand!" or something and you guess, like, a diamond but when they hold out their hand it is really just a sticky jelly bean? Or when someone says "You'll never believe this!" and then they tell you some lame story about how they just tripped on the sidewalk?

That is kind of what happened with yesterday's photo. Everyone figured that because I was asking, that it was something bigger/newer/more exciting/more unbelievable than it really was. Of course, all you regular readers knew exactly what Becca/Aurora was doing. She was pretending to be Sleeping Beauty on the side of a hiking trail (in the bushes and sticks!) in Texas. I had been holding on to that photo trying to think of something clever to do with it. Something about a hobo sleeping under a hat and a side-by-side comparison. But, people. Have you ever googled "sleeping hobo?" Because I hadn't. And now I wish I hadn't.

(Though I liked Susan's answer the best!)

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Here are a few things that are going on around here.


1. Ants. Oh my LORD the ants are about to DO ME THE HELL IN. I am on a one-woman battle quest to kill all those little black creepy crawly a-holes who are trying to move in and drive us out. I don't want to call an exterminator because a) I am too cheap to pay for it; and b) I don't want the chemicals all over a house that has a crawling baby. But, BUT! I have sunk to spraying Raid wherever they come in the house (after spending you-don't-want-to-know how much time following ant trails around), so I'm pretty sure that is likely worse than just sucking it up and paying someone. I tried sprinkling cinnamon. What a JOKE. They just went around it. When it comes to household pests, I don't believe in natural remedies. At least not cinammon. So, we have ant bait and Raid and some kind of granules that I sprinkled around the entire perimeter of my house. I feel like some crazy person who is obsessed with one thing and one thing only--ANTS!

2. Becca is in an interesting period I like to call "Becca Becca Quite Contrary." She does not want to do ANYTHING I suggest and/or ask her to do. Let's go to the pool! NO I WANT TO STAY HOME! Please put on your shoes. I DON'T WANT TO PUT THEM ON! It is time to go home now. I DON'T WANT TO GO HOME! It is time for gymnastics. I DON'T WANT TO GO TO GYMNASTICS! It is time to go to our friends' house. I DON'T WANT TO GO! And so on. This is what causes the all-too-common debilitating condition called Mother is Emotionally Exhausted and Needs More Wine and Chocolate.

She is also in major Mama Mode. Poor John. Whenever he is alone with her he says all she says is "Where is Mama? Where is Mama? MAMAMAMAMAMA MAMA!" The other day she said to me, "Mama, where were you when Daddy told me to quit asking where you were?"
She does say some funny stuff. The other day I was taking her to Blockbuster. But, she calls it Blackbuster. Then she said, "Why do they call it BLACKbuster? I think it should be called PINKbuster because that is my favorite color!"


3. Andrew is all over the house. His favorite things are chewing on electrical cords, trying to put his hands wherever I recently sprayed Raid, the bathtub, and playing with the dishwasher. He has SIX teeth, which is more than Becca had when she was one. He is pretty happy-go-lucky.

4. Family Day at the National Guard. Somehow between me getting the kids dressed and packing up all the gear that two hours out of the house entails (still not sure why that amount of shit is necessary, but it is) and both of us loading various children in the car, it escaped our notice that Becca was wearing these Snow White dress-up shoes. She couldn't walk in them. We had to put her in the stroller and carry Andrew in the hot hot sun (and of course, despite packing up my entire house, I forgot the sunscreen). Then, Becca saw a child with his face painted and FREAKED THE ROYAL EFF OUT. Her fear of clowns and masks has blossomed into an oh-so-handy fear of cheery chubby children's cheeks (alliteration!) painted with happy rainbows and flowers. She will have NONE of that and will instead cry and cover her eyes for hours straight. Then, they ran out of free hamburgers after we'd been walking and walking to get to the free hamburgers whilst Becca cried. Good times, Family Day.

5. I hurt my elbow lifting wine and beer out of the trunk. It hurts now to squeeze out the sponge, squeeze the shampoo bottle, and lift said beer bottle to my lips. True story. I guess I should stop cleaning, stop bathing and get a straw for my beer. Maybe a nice pink bendy straw.

5 comments:

Kayris said...

I use cinnamon and it worked great. But here's something else to try. The last time I found ants in my kitchen, I opened a tiny bottle of tea tree oil and....that's it. I just opened it and left it with the lid off inside the cabinet the ants always go to. And no ants. Not one. The smell takes some getting used to, but it's not unpleasant, just strong.

Grammy Bonnie said...

Non-first children are by nature easy going. They have to deal with their freaked out older sibs!!

Right David and Susan????

Meg said...

Ha Ha!!! You ALWAYS need pink bendy straws. Less movement for the elbow. This might sound strange, but my grandmother couldn't be around any chemicals and I remember her leaving out small pieces of grapefruit peel overnight and the next morning we would have to sweep piles of dead ant bodies. She told me they were attracted to the sweetness but their bodies couldn't digest the acid in the peels or something. Worth a try maybe. At least they're not fire ants...resistant to pretty much all chemicals I think...and straight from the bowels of hell.

Swistle said...

I had heard ants didn't like peppermint, so I bought a peppermint plant for the kitchen. Now I have:

1) ants
2) climbing on a peppermint plant

Jen said...

I love number 5.

And bugs suck. They are way too hard to get rid of, even with chemicals. Good luck.