Which Lead Me To Tell My Husband That I Needed Dog Therapy

It's been a day.  A long day.  And a l.o.n.g. week.  And it occurred to me that since my hubs and I just agreed to teach a first-second grade Sunday School class at church, that the devil is wanting to get my goat.  And oh my, has he.  By giving me (in addition to mice) ants.



Once upon a time on a mid-June morning, I opened my dishwasher to add a few items only to be greeted by ants.  Big black ants.  I mean BIG.  Big enough to carry off small children.  And did I mention that there weren't just a few?  That there must have been at least 20 of them prowling around in there doing their ant-y thing?  But I just went all She-Ra (truthfully, I never watched that show despite being a Child of the '80s) on them and ran my dishwasher and then sprayed some clorox kitchen cleaner down in the bottom after I'd emptied out the clean dishes.

And oh, how proud I was.  Proud enough to brag on Facebook, of course.  Yes, well, pride go-eth before the fall, so they say.

A longtime friend read of my triumph over the ant and warned me that she had had a similar problem that required the assistance of Professional Pest Control.  Those ants will come back, she said.  But you see folks, I knew better.  Who was I if not She-Ra after all, right?

And really, those ants didn't come back into that dishwasher.  No ma'am!  OK, so well, I might see one every now and then on the counter, but you know, that's not the same.  And then I started seeing a few here and there on the kitchen floor, but you know, that's totally different.  And a few migrating into the dining room?  Smoosh!  No big deal, right?

WRONG.

Because come early August, my friends The Carpenter Ants decided to come back with a vengance.  Oh my.  Open the dishwasher and there are 30+ squirming around in there.  And open the kitchen cabinet door under the sink, and there are 30+ swarming around the syrup bottle.  And pick up some (speech variety, but I'm ready for the other kind) therapy notes from the dining room table and 30+ stream out from the papers.

And then I pass all the way out grab the vacuum cleaner and go to town. And reach for the phone and make an appointment with our favorite Professional Pest Control friends.

And who do they send but sweet little slimmy, braces-wearing, young enough to make me feel like I'm old enough to be his mother (oh my!  I'm not that old am I?) Chris.  And he's all loaded down with pesticide and a special flashlight and is ready to go all GI Joe on that nest of carpenter ants, only we can't find the nest.  Chris suggests that it's possibly in the floor under my dishwasher or in my walls (which means that they are snacking away on the studs).  Fairly inaccessible places.  Grand.  He tried to pull out dishwasher to spray those babies down, but oh my it was hard to get out.  Despite his repeated tuggings.  And yanks.  And grunting pulls.  So, you know, he just sprayed under it the best that he could, pushed that dishwasher back in, and then moved on to spraying the outside of the house. 

He was so cute.  I totally wanted to pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in his Superman lunch box and remind him that he had soccer practice after school.

But do you know what?  Do you know WHAT?  While there were several ant corpses on my kitchen floors this morning, there was not ONE ant scurrying around.  Yippee!!  Success!

Or was it?  Because three hours later this morning, in our finished basement (hello "Trading Spaces" room/in-the-midst-of-redecorating-office), I heard drip, drip drip...

To be continued...