Okay, maybe I AM dirty.

The ants, they are worse today. 

I am beginning to think that maybe we are a dirty people, indeed.  Because yesterday, I cleaned.  A lot.  And the filth?  It appeared out of thin air I kid you not.  Read on.

I tried the vinegar.  I sprayed vinegar all day long in fact.  The whole house smelled of vinegar.  I even poured boiling vinegar down the disposal, just in case they were in there.  (And let’s just say you shouldn’t get too close to the disposal when you’ve just poured boiling vinegar down it, lest you burn your nostrils with the steam of the boiling vinegar, just FYI.  Not that I would be stupid enough to do that.)

Alrighty.  Moving right along.

So, I sprinkled talcum powder all over the carpets where there have been no ants, but I was in the zone.  (Ants apparently do not like talcum powder.)  Then I vacuumed the entire house.  It was powder fresh.

Then, I scoured the floors.  I swiffered.  I cleaned the floors.  I sprayed vinegar and cleaned again.  I doused the quarter-round with vinegar. 

I scrubbed the cooktop.  I scrubbed the kitchen sink.  I cleaned the coffee maker and toaster and all of the counters.  Everything shined.

I even pulled the fridge out, to make sure there were no ants underneath it.  Just so you know, that is the second time in less than one year that I’ve cleaned behind my frigo.  Before y’all call me dirty, I ask you…when was the last time you cleaned behind your frigo?  Alrighty then. 

I saw more and more ants.  Clearly, they are not deterred by the vinegar and the cleaning.

The funny thing is, I would vacuum, right?  Then, I  would lay on the floor, eye level, and look for crumbs under the island.  No crumbs people.  Five minutes later, there were 10 or 15 ants, hovered around a crumb the size of a small pea.  Now you tell me where they got that crumb.  I could not have missed a crumb that large. 

So I decided to out-clever them.  And I made some peanut butter bait with borax, put it in a jar with a lid poked with holes (so that Ella didn’t decide to have herself a little snack), and baited the little creeps.  Instantly, they swarmed the jar.  Okay, “swarmed” might be a little intense, but there were five or six ants that mounted the jar. 

Then I lay prostrate on the floor and watched their slow march to death.  Yes I did.   

Except they didn’t take the bait.  They turned around and left.  So anti-climactic. 

The ants, they out-clevered me.

So I vacuumed them and the magical, out-of-thin-air crumbs up.

Then the kids came home.  And therein lies the problem. 

They came home.  They broke out the snacks.  And, despite my pleas for cleanliness and neatness, they scatter crumbs everywhere.  There are ants everywhere.  And the children?  They didn’t clean up after themselves. 

Then I threw a bag of cheese.  (It was a moment of weakness.  I had a little  meltdown over the crumbs, the ants, and the boy whining about his spelling homework.  Oh, and The Man who informs me at 4:15 that he cannot go to the boy’s baseball game on time because he’s in a meeting.  Which gives me fifteen minutes to help the boy with his homework, get him dressed for baseball, pack a snack for Ella, get 5 pairs of shoes on, have everyone go to the potty, fill the water bottle, find the baseball glove, bat and umbrellas because it looks like rain).  Mm-hmm, so you can understand the cheese throwing. 

I probably shouldn’t admit to throwing cheese bags around. 

But I’ve already admitted that I have bugs. 

So now, I have the Terro.  Three days.  Three days is the claim they make, people. 

But my ants? 

They are clever. 

And I’m running out of the clever.  And also, the sanity…definitely running out of that.