while david sedaris is not the greatest writer in the world since sliced bread, the whole concept of writing about ordinary occurences as a means of perhaps conveying some larger, more meaningful messages (or just an opportunity to talk nonsense) ... i give you:

war of the ants

every summer (all two of them that we've lived in this house), we find ourselves in constant battle against an archnemesis of the highest order: Hymenoptera Formicidae, a.k.a. the bane of (wo)man's existence outside of the constant fight against dirty dishes and hair growth, a.k.a. the ants.

who knows where they come from? what do they want? why do they return to the same places constantly? but there they are, little critters that, in and of themselves don't do much harm, but in the swarms and familias that they come in, become the ickiest and most annoying of annoyances.

it started out fairly harmlessly. one misguided singleton, wandering the bathroom counter. that singleton became a little family, sniffing around my contact solution and jenie's toothbrush. then that little family branched out, wandering the hallway in search of God knows what, crossing the family room floor and into the kitchen. it's truly amazing how they can ferret out the smallest of crumbs, and will even attack things that we don't leave behind -- namely, the dead bugs on jenie's window. true to form, the ants go marching one by one, with no hurrahs, cross jenie's pillow and blanket (with her in it, mind you) and demolish the poor deceased. heinous.

jenie, bless her heart, has largely been waging the battle against the growing hordes that move in on our domain with ever greater brazenness all by herself, and for that -- i salute her. many afternoons, i came home to find the 409 orange power spray bottle lined up next to the lysol kitchen cleaner who is being buddies with the scrubbing bubbles mildew cleaner on the floor, chairs and boxes askew-- a sure sign that jenie has been getting down and dirty in the trenches of ant warfare. all to no avail. as soon as you kill one, you kill ten, fifty, one hundred million more, and even if ants see their dead breathen all stiff and crumpled up in a puddle of noxious cleaning agent, still they come, relentlessly, tirelessly, foreveringly.

with hope waning, we decided to take bold, decisive, and offensive action. no longer shall we wait, reactively, to see when the next ant attack will occur! we shall take the fight to them! hideyo and i journeyed to the mothership of home improvement and care -- the home depot. after an ant killer query with jerry, we speak with eno about our needs, namely: "we have ant issues. we want something that will kill them forever so they never come back." eno stares blankly and calls on jenny, the fierce little asian woman that once snubbed me for my soil-clay-busting ignorance, and is the paragon of a good home depot pimp. she offers us a three-pronged attack:

1. an immediate solution: nothing works better than raid. kills on contact, but doesn't offer much long term help, as they will continue to come back.

2. a good starter solution: ortho home defense max. spray a perimeter along the outside of your house and wait for it to dry. keeps an invisible barrier for future barbarian invaders. spray along the inside of your afflicted areas, and kill the perpetrators as they enter.

3. a long-term solution: (jenny shared this one with an authoritay that would've made eric cartmen proud.) ortho ant b gone bait. little ants think there's a free buffet and brings loveley yummies home to the queen. queen eats, queen DIES. booyah!

my wonderful team applied the spray, i set out the bait, and we waited. and so far, so good. raid has not yet been put into use, as the enemy has chosen to retreat at this time.

ladies of the house, 1. hymenoptera formicidae, 0.

as my father would so artfully say: "peace, bitch."