Weekend Ramblings and a Birthday Tribute

This afternoon, my husband took Judah with him, and set out to scour the offerings on local dealership lots looking for a new vehicle. On his way home, he dropped by and picked me up the slice of Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake that I missed out on Friday night due to my out-of-the-blue mystery headache.

Thank you, Jeff! Nothin' says "I love you" like a slice of Godiva Chocolate cheesecake, especially when he knew I'd been feeling rather low about our having to take on a car payment right now. I am so blessed to have married such a thoughtful man. (I::heart::you, Jeff!!!)

A year or so ago I read a very scientific article about the healthful benefits of chocolate in the brain chemicals of a woman. I know I'm probably not an ideal case study, and that we don't have all the proper factors taken into consideration like a proper scientific study would, but I do know this:

Before the cheesecake, I was feeling kind of low and out of sorts, with no desire to get the things done around here that I needed to, and just wanting to lollygag about reading a novel, and not infect anyone else with my glumminess.

After the cheesecake (which I might add I was eating while reading a riveting Jane Austen spinoff novel called ,"Just Jane" by Nancy Moser...a well-done fictional story about Jane Austen's own personal life that hints towards who and what in her life led to her many wonderful characterizations in her classic writings...all you Jane Austen fans would appreciate this one!)...I felt revived again...energized again (Hey, that sounds sort of Toby Mac...which I may just go and play after this post so I can dance (like nobody is watching) off a few of those calories.

Anyway, I felt so good, in fact, that I went in and did a couple projects that have been nagging me for weeks...reorganizing my Master Bedroom closet (out with the summer clothes, in with the cool-weather counterparts), and clearing out all of Judah's 18 month clothes to make way for his 24 month stuff. While I was at it, I went ahead and cleaned out his toyboxes (removing toys that are too babyish for him), organized his books, and even organized his bedroom closet. I got two weeks worth of extra projects accomplished in one afternoon...yay!

It's a real load off to have those things done at last.

I know the chocolate wasn't entirely responsible, but it sure helped!

:: ::

With the recent demise of our faithful red Honda, my husband we are embarking on a quest to find a newer used six passenger truck. We've decided to take things slow, as we don't want to rush into anything without really thinking things through and weighing all our options.

But we are wondering if anyone out there has any good tips on car shopping? Things to watch out for? Online websites? Things (and/or Makes and Models of trucks) to steer clear of and why? We'd appreciate any input you (or your husbands) might have!

:: ::

A shout out to my dear friend Chrissy...
Happy Birthday!

I know this birthday also marks a difficult anniversary for you, friend, but I hope this goofy picture might bring some smiles.



I feel so blessed to have a friend of your caliber in my life. Who else would I share all those "Marilyn Meberg" moments in life with? I don't always get the chance to say so in person, but thank you so much for your friendship, the many laughs, all your encouragement, support, cheerleading, assistance in Awana, babysitting of Judah during Awana, parenting example, and for just being an all around wonderful example of a Christ-like, servant-leader and Titus 2 woman in everyday life! You're a little bit friend, a little bit sister, and a whole lot of fun!

Love ya, girlfriend! Hope your day was a blessed one!

I thank my God every time I remember you. ~Philippians 1:3

A Headache Mystery Solved

Last night was date night with my husband. We'd planned a night on the town starting with a nice dinner out (with adult conversation...a huge highlight for this SAHM), a carefree evening spent browsing through the bookstore(without little hands pulling books off the shelves), and dessert at The Cheesecake Factory afterwards.

Partway through our dinner, however, the twinge of a headache I'd noticed earlier grew steadily worse. Initially I was a little concerned because I never get headaches, but then I realized my neck muscles on the right side were pretty knotted up, so I figured it was just tension headache.

However, a little later in the bookstore, my muscles were spazzing, and I was in so much pain and discomfort that we cut things short and headed home.

Yes, it was bad enough that I actually passed up my once-a-month splurge on Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake!

When we walked in the house later, I was wracking my brains to figure out what had caused my misery, and unloaded my purse onto the kitchen counter.

My purse!!

It felt like I'd just set down a watermelon.

On a whim, I went in and weighed it, and was astounded.

8 1/2 pounds!

What would possibly weigh so much? I wondered, and emptied the contents on top of my chest freezer to see.



Here is a rundown on what I'd been lugging around all last month:

1. Purse
2. Wallet
3. Cell Phone
4. My personal calendar, a pile of mail and other important papers stuffed in a side pocket
5. A month's accumulation of receipts (which I was always having to stuff back in because they would burst out every time I unzipped the top)
6. A crushed up baggie of Cracklin' Oat Bran cereal (an attempt to keep Judah quiet in church a month ago)
7. A Minute Maid juice box (yet another emergency ration for Judah)
8. 2 action figures
9. A novelty Gummi Pizza candy
10. 3 root beer hard candies from a restaurant
11. A long-lost binky
12. A hair pick
13. 2 hand lotions (because one just isn't enough apparently)
14. 6 Overnight Feminine Hygiene pads (Why? In case of a natural disaster, and 6 menstruating women happened to be in need?!)
15. 5 lipsticks in nearly identical colors (?!) and a tinted Burt's Bees lip gloss
16. A baggie with 8, dead rechargable batteries (Again, WHY?! How handy!)
17. 3 loose sticks of Wrigley's gum
18. A new, full pack of Eclipse gum I bought a month ago but couldn't find
19. An unopened bottle of baby pain reliever tabs (which had fallen out of the diaper bag but never got put back)
20. Baby nail clippers
21. Sunglasses
22. Keys
23. 1 permanent marker (from a trip to the Post Office nearly 2 weeks ago)
24. 8 pens in varying colors (one in every conceivable pocket, yet still not handy enough to find when I needed them)
25. A highlighter (for all my highlighting emergencies)
26. A twistable red crayon (rescued from Judah's clutches)
27. 2 hair clips
28. Button to an unknown garment
29. 2 rolls of 4 year old film I keep meaning to have developed at Costco
30. 5 matchbox cars (Heavy. Die cast. Metal.)
31. A plastic toy helicopter
32. A lightweight plastic toy fire engine
33. A very heavy change purse which contained:
1 old wheat back penny
1 Canadian penny
2 Chuck E. Cheese tokens
1 heavy 1979 'silver' $1 coin,
1 smaller, more recent Sacajawea $1 coin
30 pennies
14 nickels
14 dimes
and 24 quarters all kept on hand as emergency lunch money for Jericho
34. An asthma inhaler
35. Box of toothpicks from a restaurant
36. Used gum in old wrappers
37. Lint
38. a straw wrapper
39. A bread bag tab (for all my bread-bag twisting emergencies)
40. A box of toothpicks from a restaurant we went to 3 months ago
41. A $5 bill

Is it any wonder my neck was protesting? I could survive on a deserted island for a week out of that thing!

Wait a minute...I had to give up cheesecake because my purse was too heavy?

That's just wrong!

I think perhaps it's time I downsized.

Rust in Peace

It has finally happened. Our little Red Honda, which I've referred to a number of times before in this blog, finally blew a gasket.

Or threw a rod.

Or some such other mechanical mumbo-jumbo that I'm horribly ill-qualified to share, but which is more or less like a fatal heart attack to a car engine.

All I know was that I was supposed to do all my big first-of-the-month errands today, when I ended up with some car problems in the parking lot of the dollar store (my first stop on a long list of to-do's). That was where the car started sputtering like it was going to cut out on me-which is nothing new, mind you--though it hadn't happened in a few months since Jeff fixed the problem before.

Now we'd had a little battery cable trouble recently, which Jeff also fixed. And by fixed, I mean that the problem went away. However, since then, I had taken that car out on a dirt road near our home (commonly known around these parts as a chatterbox road) and had only just this morning noticed that the battery light was randomly coming back on then fading off. Again. Instead of heeding the warning light, I'm thinking that something must have been shaken loose on the dirt road, and wrote it off as no big deal.

So when the the car began acting up this time, something about it reminded me of my church youth leader's infamous rattletrap VW van back in my high school days, and how the idling would get to where you'd need to give it gas at intersections to keep it from cutting out.

So I tried that at the stop light near Olive Garden. Revved it up good. And lo and behold it worked! At least it kept it from cutting out, which enabled me to get through the next major intersection without incident. In fact, it was humming along almost like normal, so I went ahead and drove it along the frontage road, and almost to the freeway overpass near my home with no troubles at all, which was a good three miles or so.

But when I glanced down at the panel, I noticed that a new warning light had come on beside the flickering battery light. This one had a little symbol on it that looks like a baby aspirator with something dripping out the end. Babies...choking. Okay, this was serious.

As I'm turning the corner to get from the frontage road to the overpass, the car started lurching and coughing and wheezing. I kid you not, it was like a cat hacking up a hairball. And it nearly died right there on the overpass.

Frightened, I spurred it on, and it bucked and kicked it's way through the intersection and all the way to the street leading to my home, with Judah and I hanging on for dear life.

We got two blocks up the road leading to our neighborhood when I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw dark gray clouds of smoke billowing out of my exhaust pipe. And then I then heard a full out boiling sound from beneath the hood. Uh, oh.

Amazingly, the check-engine light never once came on. And no smoke was pouring out from under the hood. Aside from that new warning light, the only thing that had changed on the panel was the temperature gauge, which now registered HOT. So I pulled over to let the car cool down for a while, and got out my phone to call for help.

And wouldn't you know...I couldn't reach a single person that was available to help me right then.

So I texted Jeff, "CALL ME! CAR DIED." (Yes, as you may have gathered, our cell-phone situation still isn't remedied. See now the reason that this blog is titled STUCK in Frump? I'm a hopeless procrastinator. And never do I feel it so keenly as at times like this!)

So Judah and I sat there and waited. And waited. And waited.

I was concerned about the engine being so hot, having boiled out all the water and coolant over onto the street, and after a thorough inventory of the inside of the car discovered that the only liquid we had in said car was a bottle of tangerine juice.

Now, before you freak out, I did NOT pour it in the hole where the anti-freeze/coolant stuff goes! Nope, I gave that to Judah to keep him from getting too restless.

After waiting for a good twenty minutes more for someone to call me back, and being I was still several blocks from home, AGAIN with no stroller, I decided to go ahead and try and nurse the car the rest of the way home. The check engine light hadn't come on, after all.

After a few false-starts, the engine finally sparked to life, and I urged onward.

It arrived in our driveway chugging and gasping, gave a big cough and a shudder, and promptly kicked the bucket.

Sadly, I feel very depressed about this.

Not because I was attached to the car or anything, but because now we're going to once again have a car payment!

Well, that and the inconvenience of being down to one vehicle again.

Honda, Free Honda...you served us well.

Rust in Peace.

This and That

Our toddler son Judah has a new favorite book. It's about sharks. He brings this book to me at least ten times a day. Always opened to this page.



He's morbidly fascinated with it.

Sort of like my sister Jami and I when we were little girls, opening one of our Bible Story books to a very evil looking picture of Lucifer, shuddering in fear, then slamming it shut. Only to repeat the process about ten times over the next 10 minutes.

This shark illustration is kind of a gruesome, yet riveting. A shark attacking a surfer. It's got all the action and plotline of a movie preview, really.

The surfer's leg from knee down is in the sharks mouth. The surfer's face is white as a sheet with a look of terror on it, and there is all this action of a lifeguard calling for help, and some of the surfer's buddies standing in the water bodily holding the rest of the shark up out of the water to ensure it doesn't try swimming away with their friend.

He asks me every time he brings to the book to me, "What that, mama?" What's a mom supposed to say, time after time after time?

I'm all, "The man's leg is in the sharks mouth." He studies it for a time, then puts it down and comes back in a few minutes for more. He just can't help himself.

After about the tenth time of his asking, I finally say in a frantic and scared voice, complete with accompanying gestures, "That shark got him, Judah! He grabbed his leg! He was gonna pull him under the water and eat him alive, but his buddies rescued him in the nick of time! He was lucky to get out alive!"

He looks up at me all nonplussed like he knows exactly what I'm saying. And the crazy thing is, I'm pretty sure he does!

All those, "What's that, mama?" questions I answer all day long are really sinking in. He's picking up on everything right now, and inserting it into his vocabulary left and right at the appropriate times. I can't even keep up with writing all his new words on the calendar anymore.

The questions get old, but it is how they learn the names of things.

Like today when I was dressing him, and I said, "Here, let's put your pants on."

"No, mama...thortz." (shorts)

"No, these are pants."

"No. Thortz."

Yep, at two he's already talking back. I'm so in for it.

:: ::

Jericho tried out a new hairstyle this morning. When it was wet, it looked decent enough, so I took him off to school with the old, "Well, if that's the look you're going for..."

When he got in the car after school, we pulled out of the school parking lot, and when I turned to look at him mid-sentence, I burst out laughing. "You look just like Jim Carrey in Dumb & Dumber!"

I know, probably not the kindest words from a moms mouth. But you have to understand my son. He took this as a tremendous compliment, that being one of his favorite movies. He pulled the mirror over to see for himself, and after a huge grin, started in with Jim Carrey-isms. Like this one. Goofball.



He captured it pretty well, don't you think?

:: ::

Oh, and Jeff got "Teacher of the Month" at his school...which puts him in the running for Teacher of the Year! I'm so proud of him. He didn't want me to mention it to anyone, modest man that he is, but I couldn't let that one slip past without bragging on him just a bit. It's only the beginning of his 2nd year at this school, and there are 50+ teachers there!

You da man, Jeff!

A Modest Rant

Okay, it's happened again.

Perhaps it is the demographics in the town where we live, I'm not sure...but whatever it is, it's simply GOT to stop!

There we were sitting in a nice family restaurant on a Friday night, enjoying a pleasant meal. Yes, for once, even Judah was cooperating. About 2/3 of the way through our meal, I glance up and see my husband looking over my shoulder, aghast. He was facing the entrance into the dining area, but suddenly averted his eyes, lowered his head, and whispered furiously across the table at me, "Oh!...you've got to see this...turn around, 9 o'clock." he said, nodding in a series of short little 'hurry up' kinds of nods. His tone was one of complete disgust.

I casually turned around to glance over my shoulder (well, as casually as a person can when turning completely around to stare, LOL), and my eyes widen. I quickly turn back. I, too, am utterly and completely horrified, and want to reach and cover my older sons eyes. Oh, good grief, lady...have you no decency? Thankfully our son was completely oblivious, far enough out of my husband's line of vision that he couldn't see.

A party of four was just being seated nearby the booth where we sat. Two cowboy looking dudes with big belt buckles, minus the hats, and their dates, which happened to be two very big girls that appeared to be sisters. Possibly even twins. The women had attractive faces, and perfectly styled hair done up as they probably had since their heyday...true Eighties Ladies. One of the gals was dressed rather stylishly for a big girl, in expensive designer clothing cut for the bigger woman, complete with Mary Kay makeup and Cookie Lee jewelry. The other gal matched her almost entirely, except for the piece of clothing that could very loosely be referred to as a blouse.

Now before you get all offended, you should know that I fall in the 'big girl' category myself, but I'm not a big hair kind of gal. Anymore. (I did go through a very brief phase during the 80's where I had the big claw bangs, sprayed to perfection with a half a bottle of L'oreal super-hold hairspray in the Mondrian bottle. But having grown up in the miserable and notorious Western Washington rains, it usually ended up falling flat, and had to be brushed out and quickly restyled in the bathroom before school with my butane curling iron, and second time attempts after the rain never quite achieved the previous height. Thankfully that phase was shortlived, and I've never returned to it.) No offense is intended towards these women, I assure you. I'm just stating the facts here, folks, trying my durndest to give you a good mental image while still keeping my blog "G" rated.

Being a self-professed FrumpMama, I'd be first to admit I'm no authority on fashion. This isn't to say I've given up completely on my appearance, because I haven't. My clothes are wash-and-go, but I never leave the house without clean hair, teeth brushed, makeup on, and if I'm going somewhere special, a couple of spritzes of perfume. Every FrumpMama knows that the second you slip into forgetting good grooming, and go to the grocery store without makeup, you will bump into every person you know! That and the fact that you lose ground, slipping from Frump to Dowdy, skirting dangerously close to becoming one of the throngs of people that don't give a hoot about their appearance and just completely let themselves go.

As I have mentioned before, most days I schlep around in oversized, brightly colored t-shirts, jeans and flip-flops because they are practical. I'm a busy stay-at-home-mom that doesn't have time to worry over things like dry clean only designer fashions. If I can't get toddler stains off of my clothing with Dawn dish detergent (for greasy ones) or Shout out the rest, and if it can't be tossed in the dryer on accident and survive unscathed..it doesn't meet my criteria for purchasing it to begin with.

I buy nearly everything I wear at WalMart or Target, and I purchased my last pair of dress shoes at Big 5 Sporting Goods. Yes, you read that right. Dress shoes. Big 5. They were sensible slip on flats with black leather uppers and good arch support, on sale for $20. What can I say, I have a toddler and often have to dash after him, and so my motto is to always be ready to run (not away, just after my son.) Jimmy Choos, while stylish, would be ridiculously impractical for my lifestyle, and if it's not totally and completely practical, I don't own it.

Even things like sunglasses don't bear designer labels. Why? Because my toddler broke three pairs of my sunglasses over the summer, and I'm glad to say that all I was out was $12. Total. Two pairs were from dollar stores, and one was an overpriced pair I got on sale at Tar-che' while on vacation, only because I didn't know where the nearest dollar store was, and pair #2 had just been stepped on.

That said, I wear oversized t-shirts, mostly for modesty sake, and because I believe that women of my size and stature should just keep their stuff covered up. I'm a big girl, but I'm nowhere near as big as some of the teenagers and women in our area that I see with love handles spilling out of low-rise jeans, or a midriff bearing top that reveals a c-section scar and/or a spare tire just hanging out there uncovered for everyone to see.

Really, everyone should at least take a look in a full length mirror and make sure that nothing is visible that would cause hormonal pubescents to giggle or stare, or cause grannies to gasp. It's called decency. Modesty. And sadly, our nation is lacking it in all levels of society, thanks to Hollywood. And these things are especially noticeable in those that are, um, big. Major fashion faux pas, people!

And as a self-proclaimed fashion police...I'm zero tolerance when it comes to crack. Any kind of crack, anywhere. And I don't care how confident you are or how sculpted you think your body is, ain't nobody wants to see spandex anything outside of a gym, yo! And that goes for men and women alike!

What was so appalling, was that the gal I'm referring to was a big gal. And had very large...bosoms. Buzumbas. And the strained piece of fabric she probably thought was a blouse was nothing short of obscene, leaving nothing at all to the imagination. BMI-Bad mental imagery. TMI-Too much information. Nobody wants to see that much of a stranger, trust me. I was embarrassed for her.

As my husband mentioned when we got out of the restaurant, it wasn't in a "Whoa, she's hot" kind of eye magnetism, but more a drop-your-jaw-in-utter-shock and gape for a moment before uttering "Oh, good heavens, what was she thinking?!" kind of eye magnetism. One of those things you couldn't help taking a double-take at because it was just so hideous.

One family within sight of said party was so offended, they actually got up and shuffled their boys past while covering their eyes, and demanded a new seat. Around the other side of a wall. And with good reason!

This gal was sitting there with a look on her face that told you she thought she was hot-stuff, making eyes at her man, who apparently thought she looked good, too. If her husband (at least that's what I'm assuming he was, given the rings) thinks she's sexy, that's great for them...but could you please confine it to the privacy of your own home, and not go trotting it out in the public arena where there are people eating? Nobody else wants to see your sexy, lady! For gosh sakes, go put it back where it came from! At the very least adjust your 'blouse!' Ask for a bib! Don't just sit there, do something!

To say the neckline was plunging would be an understatement. It looked as though her scoop neckline had gotten hung up on the doorjamb of her car when she attempted to get out, stretched out as far as it could go, then stayed there. Did I mention this woman was...well endowed? I'm being kind here, when I say that her cleavage resembled what you might inadvertently see when the heavy-set plumber was bent over working under your kitchen sink (and recoil in horror), except that somewhere along the line, she'd apparently been in the sun, because the top half of said cleavage was well-tanned, but the bottom portion was fish-belly white, which made it all the more riveting to behold.

Her, um, 'over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder' wasn't quite holding in 'the girls', if you know what I mean, and that's just giving her the benefit of the doubt that she was even wearing one! Nearly every portion of her bosom was hanging out in full view of that great cloud of witnesses, and it appeared that she was either completely oblivious to it, or had intended it to be that way. Judging by the completely disinterested expressions on the faces of the rest of her party, they were apparently used to this manner of dress by that member of their party. The woman herself no doubt thought she was dressing to please her man...but, to put it lightly, she hadn't dressed enough!

Remember the old Aesop's fable about the council of mice that got together and decided that they needed to put a bell around the cat's neck, but they had to find someone brave enough to do it? Well that was the waitstaff at said restaurant. Nobody was quite sure how to handle it, or what to do about it. The manager stood by fretting, sort of wringing her hands. In the end, they decided to just let them be. Come to think of it, I didn't notice a "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" sticker on the window there, but my guess is that they might just get one after this little incident.

The waitresses were all scurrying around, gaping from their stations across the restaurant, and there was much whispering behind leather tab folders, as they gossipped about the audacity of the woman at table 23.

Did this woman wish for everyone in the place to be discussing her in such a way? Did she even care?

Other customers around the place paused mid-bite to stare.

The cooks, dishwashers and even the busboys were called out to witness the spectacle. Many of which were young men...none of which were impressed. Most of them faked coughs to cover their sudden amused laughter, as they doubled over and turned around, retreating immediately from the scene. Everyone who looked upon her was flabbergasted.

Suddenly, the two women from the afroementioned party got up to go to the restroom together. Because, you know, that's what women do. Except that these women had to do a fair amount of shuffling and side-stepping to get around their table before finally gaining the main aisle. Every head in the place was following their progress, this wardrobe malfunction-in-progress, the restaurant oddly quiet, except for the Shania Twain song, "I feel like a woman" piped in through the speakers. As soon as they entered the hallway leading to the restrooms, the place erupted into a frenzy of whispers and horrified, hand-over-mouth "Oh my word" kind of chuckles and gestures.

I'd have been mortified. The man she was there making eyes with, saw all this going on, and just smiled, as though he thought it was just par for the course, everyone thinking his woman was hot. Which she was not...at least not to everyone else in the place.

They returned a short while later, and once again, the restaurant again fell strangely quiet. People just couldn't help but to gawk.

My husband and I have an inside joke for moments like that where you just can't help but to stare. We got it from the animated movie A Bugs Life, where there is this obscure yet brilliant little scene were a flying bug, I think it was a mosquito, is heading straight for the light of a bug zapper saying in a warbly, singsong voice, "I can't help it...it's so beautiful" and then you hear the telltale, "Ztzzztzzzap!"

And that was pretty much what people throughout that restaurant were doing, gaping aghast. Except that it wasn't beautiful, but appalling.

In the name of all that's pure and holy, lady...cover thyself up!

Oh, and by again? I meant that I saw someone who I think must have been her mother or another sister in the grocery store checkout line a couple weeks ago. Wearing stretch pants so tight that the seam over the stomach made her belly look the same on the front as she did on the back.

I looked over just in time to see some little children that had noticed the same thing gawking at that spectacle and giggling behind their hands.

Please, people, this epidemic has got to stop! Some things are just meant to be covered up!

My Cheesy Ant Rant (with Haiku)

I realize that I am typing this post at the risk of the entire blogosphere thinking my housekeeping must leave something to be desired, considering I've already done a posting about the cricket in my kitchen, LOL. I'll just mention here that I live with two boys and a husband, and leave it at that. Nevertheless, the blog-topic cupboard was also rather bare today, and seeing as I seem to be waging an ongoing war with ants, the following is my cheesy Ant Rant (yes, again with the haiku...because nothing quite expresses anything like a good haiku!).
But nobody is forcing you to read this, so if you so desire, you may stop here. Or here. Or here or here or here. Do not read any further if you already feel a yawn coming on! Nobody is forcing you to read the following, mindless drivel.

Bugs make me shudder.
Especially many ants
crawling through my house!

I have suffered from a plague all summer long. Armies of sugar ants marching around the perimeter of my kitchen to hang out under the kitchen sink in the garbage can. The same garbage can that gets emptied more than once a day, I might add.

Why in my kitchen? Under my sink?

I just don't get it! There is a virtual ant smorgasbord outside in the big garbage can where we take all the trashbags, yet they still prefer swarming inside and to the kitchen garbage for the one crust of an egg salad sandwich that was put in it after the trash was taken out earlier! And they never come alone. Nope, these babies come in droves.

Why, exactly, are they called sugar ants? They certainly aren't sweet. Well, maybe they are, but I've never tasted them to know for sure. I always just assumed they were after sweet stuff, hence the name. But at the end of August when I made a wedding cake, I had powdered sugar all over the kitchen...but were they interested in all that sugar? Not in the least. They've also been known to bypass all sorts of sweet morsels that Judah has thrown from his high chair. What is it that they are after?

I simply must know
Why not sugar, sugar ant?
What did you come for?

And where do they go? Straight for the kitchen garbage can every time!

Once, they came for the handful of potato chip crumbs they found inside that garbage can. And then there was a separate band of ants headed the opposite direction from whence they came, returning victors, bringing back the spoils to their colony, which I believe is nestled down below the concrete of my back patio, accessed via the beauty bark covered soil of the flowerbed.

You hide so secure
don't you, tiny little ants?
Soon, I will get you!

When I first saw their little ant army, marching as to war through my kitchen...I pulled out the Windex...because you know, Windex is good for everything. I sprayed them until they were surrounded by liquid, then looked away so I wouldn't have to watch them perish. It was like a minature natural disaster, puddles of blue windex filled with ant carnage.

Just when I was sure they had to be dead, I saw brave warrior ants, wading into the puddles and removing their dead and gravely wounded, carrying them back to the colony. I will give them that much...they are meticulous.

Tiny medic ants
take fallen comrades home. No
soldier left behind

A couple of days ago, I cooked plain chicken breasts in the crock pot. When they were done, I took them out and put them into a covered dish which I put in the fridge. I poured out the water in the crock, leaving it in the sink to cool, then spent a few minutes reorganizing my refrigerator and emptying out the dishwasher. When I turned around to fill the dishwasher, the inside of the white crock in the sink was covered with ants. Undulating might be a better word, tiny black speckles moving all over the surface, my granite countertops having provided perfect camoflauge for their covert operations.

And it's not just me having this problem. Several ladies at church were recently bemoaning the fact that the only product that had worked to kill them is no longer sold to the general public. Now you have to hire a pest control outfit to come in and spray excessive quantities around your house if you're to ever be rid of them.

Ahhh, Chemicals. If there is anything I dislike almost as much as the bugs...it's the harsh chemicals they have to use to kill them being poured into the environment in large quantitites. Aside from the pollution, I have extrememly sensitive skin, and I have athsma, and it doesn't take much to make me miserable. Contact dermatitis is commonplace.

Needless to say, I don't do well with chemicals. Or fumes. But I have yet to find a successful 'green' method of ridding myself of the ant problem. The Tabasco/cinnamon/garlic spray that I read that was supposed to get rid of them? I think that may be what drew them back to begin with. Well, now that I think about it, it might have been the honey nut cheerios Judah had spilled nearby. Nevertheless, I sprayed the Tabasco mixture near where I very first saw them coming in. But I'm pretty sure those scouts went back and told all their comrades, "There are giants in the land, but the place is flowing with milk and honey!" And thus began the ant stampede.

We probably have a worse than usual problem because our entire backyard is a concrete patio (except for the flowerbed around the perimeter where the dog, Raisin, does her business). It wasn't my favorite feature, but the house came that way, and it looked nice when we first saw it. We've grown to appreciate that the concrete is easy to maintain, nice for entertaining, and keeps Raisin's nails filed short so I don't have to do the horrible task of clipping them. *cringes* But I do miss having grass. In our old house, it seemed to act as a natural barrier to ants. Here, the concrete acts as a perfect place for them to come up for food and then retreat to their secluded little colony hidden down below where we can't get at them. An ant autobahn, getting them to and from our kitchen more quickly.

Did you know that there is even a scripture in the book of Proverbs about ants? "Go to the ant you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest."

Which is precisely what they are doing in my kitchen. Storing up their provisions. Gathering their food at harvest. Grrrr.

Personally I think those ants feel vindicated, having their very own Scripture in the Bible. And now I'm not so sure those are potato chips they are carrying when they leave the kitchen. I think if a person were to get down there with a magnifying glass, they'd see they were tiny little picket signs reading, "Proverbs 6:6-8" and others, "Go to the ant you sluggard!", "Consider our ways and be wise!" and "Read about us in the Bible!"

Smug little creatures. I'm about ready to cave in and call Orkin.

Talking to the Dog