The latst

We actually went 10 days without a sighting of ants. I was caught off guard this morning when I got out into the kitchen. Everything was going along swimmingly until I was almost done getting breakfast started. Then I saw a very large ant, just laying out int the middle of the floor in front of the stove. He was quite dead. I know he wasn't there all along. I surely would have seen him. I had no more than removed the carcass when I turned around and there were 2 more bodies. This was very odd because they must have been dragged and deposited, but it had to have happened quickly because I didn't see it happen. It's starting to creep me out. Finding the bodies all over.

On an unrelated topic, I doubt if any of you know that girls in college during the 40's were required to take a semester of training in working in a hospital, just in case they were needed to help in that way during the war. And that is how my mother learned to do hospital corners when making a bed. So now that's how I make a bed. But I have always had a problem folding fitted sheets. And I'm sure Mom never learned how to do that since fitted sheets were invented later. I did work in a laundry one summer during my college tenure, and learned how to fold flat sheets as they came out of the mangles. I think we laundered sheets for the hotels in town. And I could digress into just how the mangles got their name. But we didn't do fitted. There must be a way to do it neatly, but it eludes me. I even found a web site devoted to that sort of thing and the directions were impossible. Clearly, my sheets are prescient or something. It's like wrestling a 2 year old into the bathtub. These sheets have a mind of their own.

This is War!

Last week we had bodies littering the counter and floor. Bionic Man went to Menards to buy ant traps. Normally, for indoor use, you would buy those tiny little traps. But this called for more serious measures. He bought the big ones you are supposed to pound into the ground outside. He cut the stakes off so he could use them indoors. They were strategically placed. And we waited. We found a few ants the following day and then just random ones. I was not naive enough to believe that we had routed them or won. This morning I found 3 more, in the kitchen. Two were clearly staggering across the floor. They had eaten the poison. Shazam! The third one was larger and seemed fine. The big one must have come to investigate the untimely deaths of many of his friends, but had not, himself, imbibed. I remember the outcome of the poisoning in the other house. One morning I awoke to find several large ants dragging bodies into piles. I am not making this up! It was kind of like a scene from the Black Death in Europe. And 3 or 4 of the larger ants were really piling up their comrades. The piles were rather large too. I think I needed a tranquilizer that day. We vacuumed them up before we knew what they planned to do with the piles once they were done. Mind boggling. Maybe the next step was burning the piles so as not to spread the disease.

ants and tires

Yes, I'm back. It's been a crazy year and again, I am hoping to do better. But for those of you who may have read previous posts about the ants that live about me. I am referring to the large black ants, not the little grease ants. We could never rid the previous house of them. I enjoyed 11 years of respite from their harassment. They are back in full force. First, I would really really like to know where ants come from in the middle of sub zero weather in January?!? Shouldn't they all be dead, or hibernating or something? And why are they living with me? Why couldn't they go live with someone else? A friend of mine suggested that I was ant-free for 11 years because ants have really teeny legs and it took them this long to find me. I just killed 6 and 4 more got away. Now, seriously, shouldn't this be a July problem? We begin war games tomorrow. Meanwhile, Bionic Man is keeping the bodies in a jar to be an example to the rest.

Second, I know I have also mentioned the display on my car that notifies me of the obvious. You maybe slip a little on the ice and the display reads "Ice may be possible." So I drove my car for 3 months while it kept telling me the air pressure was low in my tires. Bionic Man said he checked the tires and everything was just fine. Something must be wrong with the sensor. I bought into that, until the usher at our church came and got him in the middle of the service one week. He said the tires were so low in back that he wasn't sure it was safe to drive and he would follow Bionic Man to the gas station to get air. I'm wondering what happened. It seems he was only checking the front tires. I suppose it's like the man who lost his wallet and never checked his dresser because he had looked everywhere else and if it wasn't on the dresser he didn't know what he'd do. So, I guess, if the display warns you that air pressure is low you have to check all 4 tires, not just 2 of them. Go figure.

Printers and Me

Due to some quirks of fate, we have 3 printers. Most normal people get along fine for years with one, but we have 3. It wouldn't be so bad except they have resided in the living room for several years, this phalanx of printers. My favorite one is the oldest one and it only prints. It's pretty archaic, and very slow, but it's faithful and dependable. The second one makes copies, and scans also, and the third one, well who knows. The first one almost always works for me, the second one is sporadic and the third one never works.

So this morning I happened to mention that I thought I would go shopping for a special unit that would hold all the printers on separate shelves, in another room. They sort of detract from the ambiance in here. Bionic Man was astounded. Apparently he had no idea I wanted them out of the living room. Thus followed some stomping around and muttering as he rearranged things. My favorite one is now disconnected and gone. I'm being punished. I will never be able to print again. I have been assured that printer #3 will work for me. But I think electronic things sense doubt.

Facebook frustrations, etc

There comes a time in the life of a person, such as myself, when you can no longer remain silent on some things. A couple things have been rolling around in my head so here goes. First, I believe I have communicated some of my displeasure with Facebook as an entity. I figured I could maintain my account and check it annually, and not miss too much, except perhaps, who is eating muffins for breakfast and whose toddler burped this morning. So, imagine my shock and dismay when I went to log in for my annual scan, and was told that my password no longer was valid. Believe me, I was dumbfounded. This is like adding insult to injury. I already consider it a supreme waste of time and effort and they have disabled my password?!?!  Apparently I missed the memo on how they were redoing things and I had to change things. rrrrrrrrrrrrr  This did not endear me further. But I now have a new password. I just hope I can remember it and they don't pull the rug out again before next October.

And now I can't remember the second thing. I was called away on a wooly worm emergency. Stevie was escaping soon if I didn't find new net to cover the opening in the cheese balls jar. And we had to go buy cheese balls to have a container suitable for Stevie's abode. Whatever will I do with a gallon and a half of cheese balls?

Maybe the other topic will spring to mind later.

Flame Throwers

I know it's been a while since my last post. I mean well, and I'm hoping some of you have been getting my mental blogs. But that's another subject. And I have no idea what possesses me today. I'm supposed to be packing a suitcase and getting ready to leave and here I am.

But this week was the week that Bionic Man bought his flame thrower. I had no idea an average citizen could just go out and buy one of those. And this was after he attempted to make one himself. ?! I guess he decided that making it himself was going to be more trouble than buying one. While he was at it I asked him to make me a rocket launcher. As long as we're building up our arsenal, why not? And all those ants won't know what hit them. Of course, it may be overkill, but sometimes you do what you have to do. It brings to mind the story of 'Henry's Awful Mistake', which is a story about a duck who destroys his entire house as he is trying to kill an ant, one ant! Unfortunately, the very same ant shows up in his new house. And this just points up how very intelligent ants are, and that I am not the only one to think this. I must never let my guard down!

But back to the flame thrower. Bionic Man is using it to kill weeds. Sure beats pulling them. Did you know you could just walk into Menards and buy one, no license, no certification of mental wellness, nothing?

Schlumpf and such

I was minding my own business today when Bionic man appeared in his bike gear. He was all dejected because his Schlumpf gears were broken. Seriously? There is really something out there with that name? To me that sounds like a sound you make when you sit down in a bean bag chair. Then I started thinking about other interesting product names. Smuckers always puzzled me. That should be the name of something you hit together in a game small children play. It does not make me think of something yummy to eat. Of course there are those who capitalize on their names, like Flatt Tire. But Schlumpf?! Really?