threadwalker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
threadwalker) wrote2008-05-22 07:20 am
threadwalker) wrote2008-05-22 07:20 am
I am not ready...
I think the sore throat I've been dragging around for over a week actually means I'm sick. For the last week I've been super-tired, I've got junk in my lungs and throat, the same patch of throat has been raw and it's not going away. I thought it was allergies, but even with 7 hrs of sleep (I generally operate on 6 or less), I'm still crashing out at 9pm and I don't feel like I'm getting better. Blah.
Between zonking out on the sofa around 9pm last night and the ant-invasion in the kitchen that was going on when I got home, none of my projects got worked on and no fitness happened. Boo!
I'm so bummed. Maybe I can get the kids' stuff done tonight. No idea what I'm going to do for me. Hate to wear the new silk cote as "the thing that fits". I blame the ants, which spurred me to scrub the kitchen down and crawl around on my hands and knees on the floor going after every speck and crumb I could find. Darn ants. I hate them.
I HATE ants. I'm okay with lots of other creepy crawlies but I go freaking crazy when I see ants in my home. Nothing drives me into the crazy "must kill it now" zone like a trail of ants in my house.
I am adept at spotting small black ants in dark carpet from 3+ feet and my favorite bug death used to be pine scented raid. Since I have kids I've stopped using pine scented industrial bug death in favor of windex because it isn't designed to be poison, it evaporates quickly and the odor doesn't linger. Last night I transformed into a windex-wielding insane woman; I threw stuff away, I scrubbed the kitchen with disinfectants, and (I'm told) my eyes glowed bright green, steam came out of my ears, and my anger was palpable even though didn't say much. I did snap out requests for the audience to start vacuuming the carpets and to go get their own fucking bottle of Windex so they could spray anything that moved and didn't qualify as a family member. And I recall telling the kids that if I found candy in their toys and that's what the ants were after, I'd throw away the toys in the impacted drawer; we were not cleaning ants off of toys. Period. No negotiations allowed.
The brother was over and F had to explain my anti-ant frenzy in man-speak to the kids and the brother, "Mommy hates ants. I mean, REALLY hates ants."
I have hated ants for as long as I can remember. Our house was constantly being invaded by ants when I was a kid. They get into everything, including the fridge, they hang out in corners, they are hard to spot in carpet, and they taste terrible. ARGH!!! And they come in WAVES... they freaking INVADE. They could start in my bedroom, wander through the house and end up at the cat dish on the opposite side of our home. I hated that. I have a rule; "NO food in the bedrooms". When it's not adhered to, I flip out and become utterly unreasonable and can't calm down until the food is out of the bedroom. The ONLY exception is when someone is sick, and then I hover over them until the food is out of the bedroom. I never want ants in my bedroom ever again.
My worst ever ant incident was many summers ago when F had moved in with my mom and I. My mom and lil sis were out of town and we had one of those record breaking heat waves where it didn't cool off at all even at night. We got ants in the kitchen. I know the drill. Throw away all the food in vicinity of the trail, throw away whatever it is they are after (unless it's water, which gets wiped up), follow the trail to point of entry and lay down the raid, wait 30 minutes, use bleach or 409 to clean depending on the surface, and leave everything as bone-dry as possible, including the sink. But this invasion kept coming back and each time I was disgorging the contents of cupboards, cleaning invisible ant tracks off of bottles and interiors of cupboards and then putting it all back in place. Every few hours all night long, there was a new trail coming from the cupboard under the sink. I didn't sleep in my ant-vigil; I watched TV and every few hours went out to the kitchen to do battle. It was insane because there was nothing for them and it never stopped. It was unlike anything I'd ever dealt with before. I even had to go to the store and get more Raid because I used up the half-full can we had.
In the early morning hours I got tired of cleaning up all the under-the-sink stuff over and over so instead of putting it back, I just left it out on the kitchen floor. A few hours later, there were new ants going to the SAME empty spot on the kitchen counter, milling around the place and scouting their next target of aquisition. I cracked open the new can of Pine Scented Raid, followed the trail that lead to the cubboard under the sink and that's where I faced the worst out-of-nest pile of ants EVER!
The empty cupboard was a carpet of crawling, slithering black ants. There were so many of them, you couldn't see the wooden bottom of the cupboard and it was multi-layers of ants in thickness. I thought I was hallucinating, so I stared and I held my breath and that's when I heard their "swish swish" noise as they crawled and slid across each others carapace in their teeming pile. I may have screamed, which would be totally in character under the circumstances, I jumped back and I hit the nozzle on the Raid can like my life depended on it. And sprayed and sprayed. I don't recall if F came out when I screamed or if I had to go find him to freak at him. But we'd been invaded and they were intent on taking over. I needed a witness to the insanity.
He was also amazed and sprayed a little more for good measure just incase there were any survivors. I overcame the HUGE ick factor and my own naseau to clean up the mess. When I checked a few hours later there was another force large enough to try and make a stand in that cupboard, but I was no longer surprised at my enemy. I sprayed, I spritzed bleach, and I sprayed again. I'm sure the fumes in the kitchen probably fried a few of my brain cells even though we'd set up some fans to blow it out. I don't care. I won. Maybe I snagged a few Queen Ants who thought they were annexing our kitchen. I don't know, but they left that cabinet alone after the second failed attempt to make a claim of ownership.
The hair on my arms and legs still stands up when I recall that event. Yarg! I get that creeping sensation that one of them is walking up my arms or legs.
Ants are unacceptable. I hate ants. They need to stay in the garden where they can do their "thing" with aerating the soil, etc. They need to stay out of my safe space because no measure is too extreme to stamping them out once they enter my home.
Between zonking out on the sofa around 9pm last night and the ant-invasion in the kitchen that was going on when I got home, none of my projects got worked on and no fitness happened. Boo!
I'm so bummed. Maybe I can get the kids' stuff done tonight. No idea what I'm going to do for me. Hate to wear the new silk cote as "the thing that fits". I blame the ants, which spurred me to scrub the kitchen down and crawl around on my hands and knees on the floor going after every speck and crumb I could find. Darn ants. I hate them.
I HATE ants. I'm okay with lots of other creepy crawlies but I go freaking crazy when I see ants in my home. Nothing drives me into the crazy "must kill it now" zone like a trail of ants in my house.
I am adept at spotting small black ants in dark carpet from 3+ feet and my favorite bug death used to be pine scented raid. Since I have kids I've stopped using pine scented industrial bug death in favor of windex because it isn't designed to be poison, it evaporates quickly and the odor doesn't linger. Last night I transformed into a windex-wielding insane woman; I threw stuff away, I scrubbed the kitchen with disinfectants, and (I'm told) my eyes glowed bright green, steam came out of my ears, and my anger was palpable even though didn't say much. I did snap out requests for the audience to start vacuuming the carpets and to go get their own fucking bottle of Windex so they could spray anything that moved and didn't qualify as a family member. And I recall telling the kids that if I found candy in their toys and that's what the ants were after, I'd throw away the toys in the impacted drawer; we were not cleaning ants off of toys. Period. No negotiations allowed.
The brother was over and F had to explain my anti-ant frenzy in man-speak to the kids and the brother, "Mommy hates ants. I mean, REALLY hates ants."
I have hated ants for as long as I can remember. Our house was constantly being invaded by ants when I was a kid. They get into everything, including the fridge, they hang out in corners, they are hard to spot in carpet, and they taste terrible. ARGH!!! And they come in WAVES... they freaking INVADE. They could start in my bedroom, wander through the house and end up at the cat dish on the opposite side of our home. I hated that. I have a rule; "NO food in the bedrooms". When it's not adhered to, I flip out and become utterly unreasonable and can't calm down until the food is out of the bedroom. The ONLY exception is when someone is sick, and then I hover over them until the food is out of the bedroom. I never want ants in my bedroom ever again.
My worst ever ant incident was many summers ago when F had moved in with my mom and I. My mom and lil sis were out of town and we had one of those record breaking heat waves where it didn't cool off at all even at night. We got ants in the kitchen. I know the drill. Throw away all the food in vicinity of the trail, throw away whatever it is they are after (unless it's water, which gets wiped up), follow the trail to point of entry and lay down the raid, wait 30 minutes, use bleach or 409 to clean depending on the surface, and leave everything as bone-dry as possible, including the sink. But this invasion kept coming back and each time I was disgorging the contents of cupboards, cleaning invisible ant tracks off of bottles and interiors of cupboards and then putting it all back in place. Every few hours all night long, there was a new trail coming from the cupboard under the sink. I didn't sleep in my ant-vigil; I watched TV and every few hours went out to the kitchen to do battle. It was insane because there was nothing for them and it never stopped. It was unlike anything I'd ever dealt with before. I even had to go to the store and get more Raid because I used up the half-full can we had.
In the early morning hours I got tired of cleaning up all the under-the-sink stuff over and over so instead of putting it back, I just left it out on the kitchen floor. A few hours later, there were new ants going to the SAME empty spot on the kitchen counter, milling around the place and scouting their next target of aquisition. I cracked open the new can of Pine Scented Raid, followed the trail that lead to the cubboard under the sink and that's where I faced the worst out-of-nest pile of ants EVER!
The empty cupboard was a carpet of crawling, slithering black ants. There were so many of them, you couldn't see the wooden bottom of the cupboard and it was multi-layers of ants in thickness. I thought I was hallucinating, so I stared and I held my breath and that's when I heard their "swish swish" noise as they crawled and slid across each others carapace in their teeming pile. I may have screamed, which would be totally in character under the circumstances, I jumped back and I hit the nozzle on the Raid can like my life depended on it. And sprayed and sprayed. I don't recall if F came out when I screamed or if I had to go find him to freak at him. But we'd been invaded and they were intent on taking over. I needed a witness to the insanity.
He was also amazed and sprayed a little more for good measure just incase there were any survivors. I overcame the HUGE ick factor and my own naseau to clean up the mess. When I checked a few hours later there was another force large enough to try and make a stand in that cupboard, but I was no longer surprised at my enemy. I sprayed, I spritzed bleach, and I sprayed again. I'm sure the fumes in the kitchen probably fried a few of my brain cells even though we'd set up some fans to blow it out. I don't care. I won. Maybe I snagged a few Queen Ants who thought they were annexing our kitchen. I don't know, but they left that cabinet alone after the second failed attempt to make a claim of ownership.
The hair on my arms and legs still stands up when I recall that event. Yarg! I get that creeping sensation that one of them is walking up my arms or legs.
Ants are unacceptable. I hate ants. They need to stay in the garden where they can do their "thing" with aerating the soil, etc. They need to stay out of my safe space because no measure is too extreme to stamping them out once they enter my home.
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But Hubby talked me into hiring Clark Pest Control and ya know, no more ant trails in the kitchen for years now.
Cut the black widow population WAY down too.
About 86 bucks every three months.
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INVASION
This would have been okay, but we had a 15-year old watching the house and animals (only the three cats at the time, pre-dogs and chickens!). Needless to say, SHE FREAKED. In all her 15-year old wisdom, she grabbed spices from the spice drawer: Cinnamon and Cayenne. Unfortunately for us, she also grabbed the Cinnamon Sugar and spread it ALL OVER the hard wood floors from the front door throughout the kitchen toward the back garage door (where the column was exiting the house to get to the back yard).
Then she warned us by taping across the front door with this HUGE note "ANT INVASION !!!!!" "WARNING, WARNING"...
We had gotten to SFO at mid-night, home by 1:30... open the door to see the cats perched up on the furniture not wanting to hit the ground mewing loudly.
The column had NOT reduced in size... So I grabbed the pixie dust (ant poison)... spread it liberally over where the ants were coming in... as those ants started dying, I swept up the rest of them with 409.... Hideous!
That damned cinnamon sugar was a B&^CH to clean up. I was mopping the rest of the night... trying to get the stick off the floor. It was weeks before you didn't stick to the floor, really.
Thank HEAVEN for insecticides! I HATE ANTS!
No, she's never watched the house for us again.
!!!
Re: INVASION
How long were the cats left alone?
Re: INVASION
LOVELY!
Re: INVASION
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How does it behave on carpet? Would I be scrubbing/rinsing it out of carpet or vacuuming it?
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(I had to skim past your ant-y terror story, cause it's freaking me out, as are a lot of the comments)
I'm the same way about no food in the bedrooms, etc. Even when we're sick, we'll usually just eat on the couch, rather than bring it upstairs.
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Fortunately, the phobia only kicks in if they're actually crawling on me.
My worst home-invasion story? The time I discovered an ant highway running down the entire length of my bed. I discovered it by rolling over in bed and seeing them going by.
For my house, I generally only have to call the exterminators in once a year, but the timing is always right around the same time the raspberries are coming ripe. So there's this standoff to see if I can hold off on the poison until after the last berries are picked. (Yes, I could wash them off really really well, but on the whole I'd rather just avoid poisoning myself the easy way.) The problem is, they're generally coming in looking for water rather than because of food left out, so it's a lot harder to dissuade them.
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You've given me the shudders.
We had a small scale invasion when I was a kid. The little idiots crushed themselves trying to get into the tightly capped toothpaste. Nasty.
Heh.
>:}
I don't hate ants, and I'd rather not kill anything, but after having covered my kitchen solid with cinnamon and cayenne several times to NO EFFECT! I now use windex on the little buggers.
Don't use Raid, toxic for *everybody* and any simple cleaner works just as well, 409, windex, pine-sol, whatever.
And of course, easy to clean up!
:>
I'm with you on the ant thing...
I hates them I do!!!
I hope they stay out of your place this time!
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We've got ants outside the house here, but so far they've made no invasionary moves.
I too started out with RAID, but now I find it way too toxic for my home. I have enough problems with my health without breathing in pesticide fumes. I use Simple Green to clean, and it works just fine on the ants too. So does soapy water, for that matter.
Interestingly, my not-at-all hippie mom has lots of very sustainable garden pest control methods. She told me that the best way to quickly remove aphids from my roses is to knock them off with the sprayer.
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Nowadays I keep a spray can of pyrethrin-based stuff around, which is pretty safe around humans and pets, but I don't have to use it very often.
What used to really annoy me was the ants that crawled into my freezer and then died. I didn't have to kill them, but I did have to clean them up. I thought that was very unfair of them.