Considering the Ants

Yesterday I was all determined to call a pest control operator to deal with the ant situation, a situation I probably caused by putting out ant so-called traps. Shame on me. During my ad agency stint I worked on a pesticide account. 

That's right! Two years of writing about insecticides and termiticides in general, pyrethroids in particular. Two years that included hanging out with National Pest Control Association members. Guess what? They do not want to be called exterminators and I don't blame them. References to extermination of any kind make me want to sew jewelry into my jacket lining, triple wrap my food, and go into hiding. 

About ants...

I've been wiping them up with a damp sponge and rinsing them down the drain for the past couple of days, using the vacuum crevice tool to suck up the army of ants marching along the quarter round molding leading to the cat's dish. Tonight I'm wondering why I should bother. 

Turns out I really don't mind the itty bitty brown ones. Big burly carpenter ants with their tools belts and mandibles can take down a house. These "sugar" ants are harmless. And very industrious. I admire that.

Tonight, as I leaned against the kitchen sink eating watermelon and dripping its juice onto the counter I watched them scurry into action. Very organized. I admire that, too. No surprise that a verse from the Book of Proverbs soon moved from memory to consciousness: "...go to the ant; study its ways and learn."* For now that's what I'm going to do.

*Proverbs 6:6, JPS

Falling Up the Stairs*

Not a good thing at all when a carpet cleaning professional gasps with horror. Horror. Not even delighted amazement at the challenge ahead. Turns out coffee does not play well with carpet fibers, even ones alleged to be stainproof.

Over a week ago I spilled coffee into the beige (not coffee-colored) carpeting. More precisely, I dumped the contents of a 12-ounce mug of coffee laced with fake sweetener, almond milk, and topped with a generous dollop (i.e., scoop) of fake whipped cream.

I was racing up the stairs when this happened. (Think Olga Korbut meets Kerri Strug...but not nearly as adorable or graceful.) I was also wearing flip flops and holding papers in my non-coffee mug-holding hand. The cat may also have been involved. What the hell, let's add the cat to this scenario.

After swiftly cycling through the seven words you can never say on television, I raced down the stairs for a fresh roll of paper towels and a bottle of seltzer. Dowse, blot, dowse, blot. Looked like I got everything. I left for a trip to Chicago (see the Storify here).

"You're probably going to have to call the carpet cleaning guy," my husband announced when he retrieved me at BWI. For the record, he didn't lay this news on me immediately. How could he? I'd swooped in first with my story about wandering into the men's room while reading crap on my phone. Smart phone. Me? Not so much, but that's another story.

Turns out seltzer, nectar of my Jewish upbringing, was the totally wrong thing to use. According to the carpet cleaning professional, it sets coffee stains and we might have to bring in the carpet repair professional who replaces sections of hopelessly damaged carpeting. So maybe I only imagined seltzer removing red wine from light carpeting back in the 1980s? Possibly. I imagined a lot of stuff during the drinking years.

Turns out coffee, in which I currently live and move and have my being, is somewhat eternal when it's spilled onto fibers. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to spiritualize this event, I'm trying to find God in this, of all things, but I can't even see the face of Christ in this damned spot.

Seeing the face of Christ? Yeah, me either.

*I'm back. More about my hiatus in another post.

Coming Clean

I'm irredeemably proud of the fact that I love to clean, even when my own safety is imperiled. Not  keen on doing laundry; beyond willing to do almost everything else, especially if organizing lots of stuff is involved. Close friends know this, which means I get "wish you were here" postcards when they clean out a basement.

While I tell delightfully self-effacing jokes about "the upside of OCD," I've never considered my passion for tidiness and cleanliness problematic. I often get some of my best ideas while cleaning.  Other writers can go take a hike to get back on creative track, I'm going to go clean something...anything...everything.

Imagine my shock to recently learn that psychiatrists ask this to assess mania: "Do you feel compelled to clean house at 3:00 in the morning?"

I think that's the wrong question.

They should be asking, "Do you feel compelled to clean out the edges of your kitchen sink's grommet with toothpicks at 3:00 in the morning?"

Putting a Lid On It

Mystery is everywhere. This past week, mystery was visible in the kitchen drawer where I store lids to food containers.

I developed this system during the decade I reigned as Space Queen ("No mess too big, no job too small!").

Space Queen's rules relative to food containers: 1) lids and containers are stored separately in separate, preferably adjacent, drawers; and 2) any container without a lid gets tossed or recycled.

I've been following and advocating this system for years. Trust me, following rule #1 makes it easier to avoid having to follow through with rule #2. And so, imagine my mortification to discover I somehow ended up with three containers without proper lids. This simply doesn't happen in my kitchen. Where did they go? Are they hanging out in household limbo with the three single socks whose partners have also disappeared?

And three??? Cosmic!!! Clearly, I am not beyond spiritualizing just about everything.

No mystery there.