If You Need Me, I'll Be Worshipping at the Church of Dora

I think it's a pretty well-documented fact that I loathe the little Latina known as Dora. It's not that I'm opposed to her Spanish-speaking ways. After all, I speak Spanish and have started to teach a little to Alexis (She's been known to proclaim, "Claro que si" for no apparent reason--I did that, thankyouverymuch!). It's not that I have a problem, per se, with commercial characters. I tolerate Mickey Mouse and Pooh just fine. My problem with Dora is that I have no doubt that her puppet masters have smoked a whole lot of crack. If those scripts aren't written by a bunch of drunken doped up teenagers, then . . . I don't know what. You'd have to be blind and deaf not to realize that Dora's writers are about as in touch with reality as Britney Spears after a night of hanging out sans underwear in a gas station bathroom.

And yet, I suddenly find myself suddenly MADLY, DEEPLY IN LOVE with Dora. Really. I want to give her a big wet kiss on the lips. I want to stroke her hair, hug her, even caress her very-kickable, football-shaped head. I want to make out with Dora. There, I said it.

Remember how we bought Alexis Dora bedding? Remember how I made a big deal out of the new sandpaper sheets? Guess who has bought into my sales pitch?

Oh, yes.

My kid? Has been staying in her bed all night. She has even resumed sleeping through the night. In fact, she has only called for me in the middle of the night twice since we bought the tacky linens.

I have actually gotten a solid eight hours of sleep several times in the past week. And for that, I will forever worship Dora.

Long live Dora! And her crappy bedding!

Ants: The Backstory

Last night when I mentioned my little ant problem, I thought I was going to be able to link to last year's drama. Turns out, that post is on the other (super-secret and super-scary) blog. So, let me just tell you about last year's ant drama.

We get invaded every year. It's been going on for as long as we have lived in Pittsburgh (six years?). So, there was no shock when I started spotting a couple around the joint. As usual, there were a few in the kitchen trying to steal the Bulldog food (they don't touch the Iams, just the extra-expensive Bully food--I don't want to know why). I practiced a few little Earth/pet/baby friendly removal methods on their butts, and away they went.

Upstairs, however, was a different story. Those ants were big. Those ants were malicious. Those ants LAUGHED at my non-chemical attempts to shoo them away. I couldn't figure out where they were coming from, I couldn't figure out what they were looking for, and I couldn't figure out why the hell they were in our house in the first place. All I knew was that they were big (as in one could not fit its whole self on a key on your keyboard--seriously), they were ugly, and I wanted them out.

After I exhausted every non-chemical remedy known to man, I decided to go for something a little bit more powerful. I spent hours scouring shelves at Home Depot, trying to find a product that claimed to be kind-ish to kids and pets. I finally found one. It was some sort of powder that claimed to kill on contact and that you just had to sort of squirt into crevices wherever you saw ants.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that when you have ants in your house, they are probably spending their free time wherever you have pipes. They can't survive without water, so if you strike at their water source, you'll get them. That meant if I wanted to kick some serious ant booty upstairs, I needed to squirt my powder gunk in the wall between Alexis' room and the bathroom. So I unscrewed a electrical outlet cover and squirted away, chuckling to myself as I imagined all those little creepy crawlies withering away in misery.

Not so much.

The "alleged" ant killer was more like ant REPELLENT. And HELLO! there were not just a couple of ants living in the wall, but LITERALLY THOUSANDS. How do I know this? Because they came pouring out of the wall. POURING.

Thousands of carpenter ants.

Walking around my hallway.

Covered in alleged ant killing white powder.

At first I figured it was just going to take a minute to take affect. So I stood around, dodging ants and thanking all sorts of deities that no animals or a certain troublemaker had decided to come upstairs.

And I waited.

And I waited.

OK, not really. I did absolutely no waiting, I just spun around in circles spraying the alleged ant killing powder on every single ant in my vicinity. Until I ran out of powder. Then I figured I would vacuum up the thousands of ants that were marching all over our upstairs, even if they were still alive. Two hours later, our see-thru canister vacuum was full of creepy crawlies and looked like it was alive.

As I am occasionally really stupid and very naive, I still figured the alleged ant killing powder would kick in.

Not so much.

Getting rid of the canister full of still living ants covered in alleged ant killing powder? Tons of fun, let me tell you. I've never had such a good time never, ever, ever.

At that point I went a wee bit crazy (OK, crazier). I ran to the store and bought the Serious S%*t, guaranteed (by an exterminator, no less) to kill the suckers. I'll tell you, Sevin dust did work, but I still get eeked out when I think about all the other stuff it can kill.

No matter. This year I ain't screwing around. The ants will go marching two by two all the way to ant hell. Because seriously? If I find them crawling around on the floor next to this one? I will go all Chuck Norris on their asses.

Signs of Spring

The daffodils have made an appearance,

as have the tulips.

Even the hyacinths are poking their little heads out.

The Pussy Willows are looking boo-tee-us. (Quit snickering, Mr. Husband.) (Mr. Husband can't talk about or hear about Pussy Willows without giggling like a 14-year old boy.)

The surest sign that Spring is just around the corner? The mother (&$#^*(% ants have invaded our house AGAIN, like they do every.single.year.

But don't worry, I am ready to fight this war. I learned from my errors last year and went straight for the good stuff. And lots of it.

Anything that promises to kill "crazy ants" should do the trick. After all, the dumb little things must be crazy if they think they can come into my house. (Are these scientific names? Who the heck came up with them?)

I wonder if it works on crazy aunts, too?