The One About Ants

Category: weekleez

The One About Ants
November 12, 2002

hi kids!

i just got off the phone with a saleslady who, i’m certain, was drunk.

“kelly signs”
“would uh, your company …*gasp belch (then she blew the burp into the phone)hoooh* … a free web page for 15 days?”
“uhhhhhhhhhhh no thank you.”
“your welcome, bye.”

i suppose her brain processed the gross-gaspy burp as “be interested in”, but i processed it as, ” *gasp*brahhhhoooooh”.
nice. really nice.
i hate the phone at work.

so i asked laura to write the weekly about ants but she wouldn’t do it because
#1. she’s lazy and wants to spend all her time reading harry potter slashfic. and
#2. she thinks she’s not funny.
when actually she’s funnier than i am AND she knows the rules of grammar…and uses them.

anyway, it’s november now. it’s rainy and dreary and chilly and gah. i like the colder weather though, but i don’t like the uninvited guests that it’s brought to the apartment: ants.
ants are like thieves y’know?

this one time i was in this hotel right? i woke up in the morning and my backpack with all my CDs, CD player and all my cool stuff was gone! someone came in my room while i was sleeping and stole my favorite stuff! i was sleeping!
i mean sure i’m happy that the freak didn’t wake me up, rape, torture or kill me, but still it’s a creepy feeling. violating y’know? i did not enjoy that morning at all.

much in the same way that i did not enjoy waking up to a kitchen filled with ants.
feh. we are not filthy people y’know? we had some dirty dishes in the sink. that’s all. a couple of bowls or something.
well, it didn’t exactly start out like that.
two days before the invasion we saw a couple of ants on the floor. but what can you do about 4 ants meandering the floor? you don’t know where they came from (a slit in the hardwood floor) or where they are going (the sink! they’re going to the sink! stop them!) so really a couple of wandering ants is a total waste of deductive thinking. besides you can follow the ants around but they never go anywhere and just look totally lost and stupid until you squash their guts with a napkin. then you spray the 409 and then you totally forget about the whole thing.

until you wake up two days later and there’s a massive invasion in your kitchen sink and counter. gheederp! the violation! the gagging! you are not a filthy person! you should not have ants in your kitchen! you live in the city for crying out loud! do ants even live in the city?! did they all pile in the trolley and ride over here?! why are there ants in the kitchen?!
we bought poison. lots of poison.

after ranting about ants in the kitchen laura and i stopped being victims and then went on a mad killing spree.
then we cleaned the kitchen up spic and span. you could eat off the counter… y’know, if that’s your “thing”.

the next day there was even more ants.
they were coming up through the dishwasher.
well that’s just great. i mean, it’s not like you can just poison up your dishwasher is it?
feh. so we drowned them and cleaned them and eventually we did poison them…and ourselves. on accident.

a week later the ants managed to sneak into the pantry.
bastards!
lucky for me, laura and kris cleaned out the pantry and the ants and that was the end of that.
yeah right.

next day i wake up and get ready for work and i’m running late. me? late? for work? is this bizarro world? so i go to the cupboard for to make my lunch and there! and there! there there there! ants! NOOOOOOOO!!!
hells bells how did they come back so fast?!there’s not even any food in the cupboard anymore! just a can of tuna and my jar of peanut butter. the ants are all over the can of tuna (morons) so i grab it and throw i in the sink and wash it off. then i grab my peanut butter and hot dog! there’s no ants on the jar! god loves me! i can have lunch today!
i get my bread out and open the jar of peanut butter and oh my god, the maggots in poltergiest had nothing on this, it was a creepy, crawly ant nightmare in my peanut butter!
how did they get inside the jar?!
i hate you ants! i hate you!

well, at this point i was devastated. no lunch for hi-may. and sure i could’ve just tossed the jar into the trash, but i needed closure. i poisoned the peanut butter. then i threw it away.
i hate you ants.
then i went to work.
now, the thing is, and this is the thing, work is no better. there are ants all over my desk at work. how?
why god? why?
ants are coming out of my keyboard! they are everywhere and yet they aren’t going anywhere specific. i just don’t get it! there’s no food on my desk! why are they here?!
i killed them.

so my boss, Hydrogen Molly, comes in with a bag of donuts. tatdow!
so i put them on the counter and nowhere near my desk, ’cause i’d just poisoned my desk right? about 30 minutes later i think to myself, “hmm, i think i’d like a chocolate filled donut. mmmmm” so i turn towards the counter and *gasp* the white bag of donuts is covered in black ants. they are all over that bag and inside too! the sack was only there for a few minutes. where did they come from? how did they get there so fast? trolley?

and sure, i could’ve just tossed the sack of ants into the dumpster, but y’see, they were crawling all over my chocolate filled donut. i needed closure, you guys.
so i gassed those mamajammas.
then i tossed it into the dumpster.

so first they stole my peanut butter. then they stole my donut. what could they steal next?

the other night i woke up and it was like, 2am or something so i got up and did the bathroom thing and got some water and there on the wall was an ant. in my bathroom. smoosh. and wait, over there on that wall… another ant. smoosh. huh, that’s weird. i’m tired. back to bed.

next day there’s an ant in my shower. drown. and hey! there’s one on the wall! smoosh.
there’s no food in here. stoopid ants. oh well, off to work.
to fight more ants.

so i get home that night and i’m getting ready for bed and oh my god there’s ants in my bathroom, not one or two, but like, lots! what are they after?! i follow them up to a cabinet on the wall above my toilet. well, that’s odd, the only thing in that cabinet is towels and washcloths. there’s no food in there! ants, what are you doing?! so i open the cabinet and there are ants on the shelf….with my wash cloths…and my…cherry NyQuil.
they are in the bottle of cough syrup.

how hard up for food do you have to be to turn to cough syrup for sustenance?
i think i might have gone a little crazy after seeing them on my NyQuil because i remember saying something like, “get off my NyQuil you damned dirty ants!” and grabbing the industrial poison and totally gassing the cabinet and walls and floor and then i woke up the next morning wondering if it had really happened and then i saw the poison dripping from the mirror and toilet and yeah it really happened.

and then it hit me. what have i done?! i’m an idiot! and not for nearly poisoning myself!
think about it… think about the last time you took a big gulp of NyQuil. just think of the affect it would have on a teeny ant. there was a whole amazing experiment right in front of me and i totally poisoned it down the drain! i suck!

the only place that’s remained safe from the ants so far is the ‘fridge. i honestly don’t know what i would do if i opened the ‘fridge to find ants all over say… my piece of pecan pie or the butter or the booze.
i’d probably just close the door and go back to whatever i was doing. because i mean, to the victor goes the spoils.

the ants at work are really giving me fits because they are all over my desk, but they only come out like, five at a time…from different directions. so it’s like every 28 seconds i have to kill 1 or 2 ants.
and now the shop is infected with flies.

and they’re big flies too. i mean, really big. and they aren’t scared of me. they buzz my head all day long. filthy buggers.
so i fashioned a cudgel out of newsprint and vinyl and i’ve been clubbing flies for two weeks.
gah. these flies are huge. and they’re filled with blood! isn’t that gross?! i didn’t know that flies had blood y’know? i thought they were like y’know, fireflies or something, just filled with white stuff or something. not red stuff. i’ve been splattering files all over the place, and it’s just really tiring ’cause after i kill each fly i have to spray a 2 meter radius with cleaner just to mop up the guts. they’re really big flies. really.

i’m like the rambo of insects. er, rambelle. rambette. whatever.

anyway, laura didn’t write the weekly but she made this easy to follow map and military-esque narrative:
note that her words are in green. that’s to enhance the militaryness.

The time? October, 2002.  The place? Apartment 313. The problem? Enemy invasion.

Subjects were first spotted entering apartment from small hole in between baseboards of kitchen floor (1). Duct tape was applied to hole. Chunky shoes were donned, subjects stamped repeatedly. Hours later, re-entry was attained via separate flooring breach (2).  Re-appearance of duct tape and chunky shoes deemed necessary. Roommate called, inquiry made about procuring ant spray.

The next morning.  Subjects spotted on countertop (3).  Expletives deployed. Chunky shoes found. Subjects spotted swarming on sink (4). Unintelligible grunts of displeasure heard. Roommate alerted of problem. Heavy use of 409, paper towels, ant spray ensued.

Day of bliss.

Opened the dishwasher. Subjects everywhere. Ran dishwasher. Went to store and purchased ant bait. Put some in the dishwasher. Regime of ant bait, ant spray, new industrial ant spray, mopping the kitchen floor and ceasing of all meals in kitchen reduces ant situation. In that room.

* Lesson learned that if you are going to put poison of some kind in the dishwasher, it might be appropriate to put a sticky note on said dishwasher saying so. Such a note might prevent honest, helpful boyfriends from running the dishwasher without first removing the poison they hadn’t been informed was there.

isn’t that laura a funny person? don’t you wish she’d write next week’s weekly? me too.

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