ANTS IN MY EVERYTHING

Wow, it's been a loooong time since I've had to just throw in the towel, stop what I'm doing, and stomp on over to my computer to have a good ol' vent session on my blog to just let out all the rage and feel better about something. Whatever. I do all my best writing when I'm angry and exhausted. (sarcasm.)

I am exhausted. Early morning seminary has turned into this thing where the boys I teach will sneak out during the lesson and break into my car (I lock all the doors and triple check them, so this is concerning) and press all the buttons and steal my pepper spray and spray each other and then somehow I never see my pepper spray again? (Scary.) And when seminary's over and I'm like, "Guys, get out of my car and walk up to the bus stop. You have to go to school and I have to get home to work." (Because we are broke. But to them we are rich Americans. Which is why they always try to steal my iPod. And my ghetto car. And everything form the "spare change" compartment that has/had 20 bucks in it.) And then they'll have a little sit-in in my car with those little grins on their faces while I try to drag them out and eventually throw little pieces of candy out into the parking lot so that they'll scramble for it and I can hop into my getaway car and screech away down the left side of the road. Don't get me wrong, they're awesome kids, but when you get half a dozen teenage boys together in a little church room, crazy things start to happen. Like comic books. And paper airplanes. And strange drawings on the board while my back is turned. Guyz, sign me up for motherhood. (sarcasm?)

Ok, not even the point of this post. ANYWAY. So after seminary this morning I came home and claimed some papers to edit, and clamored to finish them before their 20-minutes-away deadlines. That little cycle of accepting and rushing to finish papers went on for about three hours, and all the while I'm trying my best to keep my eyes open because if I fall asleep now, there won't be any papers left this afternoon and I won't be able to make any money today since I was at seminary when the early-morning rush of papers came in (this is why I probably will not be teaching seminary much longer--it's making me be broke).

I'm nearly finished with my editing when I look up and see that there are thousands of tiny little ants crawling in a line from our vaulted bedroom ceiling to the chair right by the computer. There isn't a crumb of food in our bedroom, so I can only assume that they wanted to eat our furniture? Yes, probably that. But nothing I could do about it until I had finished working, so I threw some vinegar at them and carried on.

Eventually I finished and went out to the kitchen to grab a snack. But oh wait, ants swarming everywhere in there too? A reasonable explanation for this might be that I didn't wipe the kitchen down last night, because exhaustion, but the kitchen really wasn't that dirty. I went back to my room and the ants were back in there with double the numbers. I marched out to grab a box of ant traps from the closet, but by the time I had brought them to the bedroom, my arm was covered in tiny little bitey evil ants. Yeah, they'd already broken into the ant trap box and swarmed it to eat all the fatal sweet goo inside of it. Can they exercise no restraint?? At that point I dropped the traps on the ground, washed my arm off, and stomped out here to write this blog post. I wish I could say that this is the first time that has happened, but alas, no. Yesterday I got out our securely closed Costco-sized peanut butter jar. Opened the lid to scoop some out, and boom, thousands of ants doing some sort of angry dance ritual on my hand. Goodbye, peanut butter. Just an hour ago I pulled out our bag of several dozen instant oatmeal packets that we brought from home (where that sort of treat is affordable), in double bags and sealed shut. Ya, so much for that.

You guys! They are eating everything! Food is expensive here! And I enjoy my flesh! Whyyyyy won't they leave? We're cleanly people!

Phew. Rant over. Not because I got it all out of me, but because I need to go look for caffeine (there's not any) and wipe vinegar over every surface in our entire apartment. My professional-level bug-killing uncle is sending some hard-core ant killer my way. Too bad it takes mail weeks to arrive. It's ok though, they'll still be here. Oh! Just opened my purse. Guess what poured out? Yup. You got it. There was one (one!) wrapped hard candy in there. It is now a sticky mess of a million little demons. Also, an ant literally just crawled out of my pants.

Are there ants in Alaska? Or giant flying cockroaches? Because Jared's been trying to talk me into moving there after med school, and right about now that's not sounding terrible (well, other than the isolation and 20 daily hours of darkness thing). Waaaaah!

p.s. I just opened my clothes closet and found a horror movie inside. I think it might be time to call an exterminator.