Ants stay outside; I stay inside. It's a deal.

The fortunate thing about our current ant infestation was the fact that we knew very well where they were coming in. And they were clearly coming from outside. Under that big gap under our door.

Stage one of my war on ants:
Stage zero was spraying the floor and doorway with vinegar, which we tried to no avail last night. This morning, they were swarming all over the floor, and had gotten up onto part of our counter as well. My brain a little crazy from the sight of ants on my kitchen counter, I decided to try to make my floor smell worse. I grabbed the Fantastik, the cleaner that I hate so much, and that makes me feel sick. I figured that ants wouldn't be attracted to Fantastik. It turns out that it kills them on contact. I sprayed the floor and the counters with that stuff. The problem was that it didn't really deter ants from coming under the door; it just killed them when I sprayed them.

Stage two:
In the comments of my previous post, the lovely Tabitha Grimalkin suggested sprinkling cayenne pepper where the ants were coming in. We tried it as soon as I read the suggestion. That worked much better, for keeping the ants outside. Most ants fled the cayenne immediately, except for this one hardcore ant who spent the entire day hanging out on the cayenne. He could've wandered off the pepper and onto the bare floor, but he wanted to show us that we couldn't stop him! He liked spicy peppers!

Crazy Pepper Ant notwithstanding, the pepper served as the perfect deterrent while we ran errands, including an important stop at A Certain Large Hardware Store. We bought this:

Stage three (and hopefully the final one): Yes, we've come to the place where we make minor improvements to our apartment without asking our landlords' permission. They would've just insisted on doing it themselves, and then they'd have spent the rest of the week apologising, and we were fine. As an added bonus, drafts will no longer come in under the door. And sweeping will get easier, because those drafts used to bring bushels of dust with them.

And now the ants are staying outside, and I have conquered another enemy. Now I should attempt to devote such energy to conquering my assigned reading.

Roused out of my silence by ants

I was trying to think up a post reflecting on how lovely it's been this past week, quieting my brain for a while. But then I saw them: ants again. My old nemeses. Well, I guess it's been a year since I last went insane with the cinnamon and got rid of them from our storage room.

So much for quieting my brain! At least they're not currently nesting in our living room carpet, or forming a solid line coming from our landlords' half of the basement. They're just coming under the front door, which is the easiest for us to deal with. But I did go a little crazy, spraying Fantastik all over the kitchen floor and outside the front door, in hopes that it killed their scent and a few of the ants.

We'll see how far my crazy goes this year. It's a good thing that my allergic-to-cinnamon sister isn't here right now.

(For now I'm hiding out in the office, where ants never come, and where I can't smell the cleaner that I sprayed everywhere.)

Recommended Podcast and Garage Sale Finds

Today's Definitely Not the Opera had: a.) a procrastination theme, b.) an interview with Jorge Cham of Piled Higher and Deeper (the PhD comic), c.) an interview with Don McKellar, and d.) discussion of season finales with Tara Ariano, aka Wing Chun of Television Without Pity and Fame Tracker. Tomorrow the podcast will be up on the CBC website. (Update: apparently, the podcast will be up next Sunday.) (Another update: here is the website for the DNTO podcast page. Including the first podcast, starring Ricky Gervais. Ky: take note.)

In other news, Chris and I had a successful day of garage saling! On Monday (Victoria Day, which is a big holiday here in Canada), Chris is working a bunch of overtime, to take advantage of all that holiday pay. Because he's going to have a long workday immediately after working a night shift on Sunday, I told Chris that he got to pick today's activity. He picked garage sales, because of course there are fabulous garage sales in this city on the Saturday of May Long Weekend.

We got:


1. A telescope for Chris ($20). (It turns out to be missing a connector piece. Chris says we'll be able to replace it cheaply, but this means we can't use it yet.)










2. A bubbler foot massager (brand-new, still in the box, $15). The lady asked for $20, and so I looked non-committal and said I had to go and talk it over with my husband. As I was walking towards Chris, the lady called out, "Fifteen dollars!" We had a deal. (My landlady thinks I should've taken a couple more steps. "Twelve dollars!")






I apparently misunderstood the instructions about adding a bit of "bath oil." Apparently, it's a bad idea to add body wash. As you can see.

3. A solid wood set of table and chairs ($75). We found it at a moving sale in the suburbs, and we came fairly late into the sale. The guy was pretty desparate to get rid of his furniture, and had been looking for a couple hundred dollars earlier. (He got it at a garage sale, two years ago, for $200.)







My favourite part is the fact that it has a stored-under-the-table, fold-out leaf. It expands to be huge.










I'm quite pleased with myself right now. Chris especially had a good day. When we got home, we found out that our block's having a garage sale in a few weeks. Chris is going to be all over that. (We're going to sell our old table and chairs at that sale.)

Finally: an update on the ants. Some ants are coming in on the sides of the door (where we really can't be sprinking pepper), and were getting in to the pantry. And so we combined the advice of "spread double-sided tape because ants don't like sticky surfaces," "block off their trails" and "sprinkle cayenne pepper" and came up with this:


Yup, Chris painted cayenne pepper onto tape, which surrounded the cabinet and lined the front of each shelf. I spent quite a while, watching ants act all confused, as they tried to find some way into the cupboard.

Mortal Enemy of the Day

Ants! Grrr....

Now today's goal is to get the house properly clean, but to do so with stuff that doesn't attract ants. (I washed the floor with lemon-scented Mr. Clean yesterday, and I think the ants loved it more than just the dirty floor; they've been swarming under the door ever since.) We also have to put some weather-stripping on the bottom of our door.

Yuck.

A list of baking ingredients currently spread over my laundry room floor

Across my kitchen doorway and the entrance to the storage room: cayenne pepper and cinnamon.*

Inside the storage room: a mixture of icing sugar and baking soda.

The method to my madness: the pepper and cinnamon are to keep the ants in the storage room (they're coming from the storage room, somehow) and out of my kitchen and laundry room. And baking soda is apparently lethal to ants, but they need to be attracted to it with icing sugar.

I'll tell you if it works. I might not tell you if I end up resorting to filling my home with toxic chemicals again.


* First I tried the pepper, and the ants were walking through it too easily. Then I tried cinnamon. Conclusion: cinnamon works better than cayenne pepper. The occasional ant still got through the cinnamon, but very few even tried. Other conclusion: try not to get cinnamon and cayenne pepper into a cut in your finger.

QoWP: Now with more Heebie-Jeebies

Sometime after our Flood,* the Ants** returned. But this time they didn't seem to be coming in around our door or anything. They were just existing in our living room and bathroom. Especially in our living room, progressively.

They got really bad in the past week. Grossly bad. To the point that I left the house today (it's really hard to get me to leave the house), just so that I could escape the ants for a while.

But, when Chris got home today, we took a flashlight and I followed an ant all the way back to its home. In our carpet. There was a tiny hole and a puffy place in our carpet, right in the corner in the entryway to our bedroom. Our living room carpet had become an anthill.

Gross gross gross gross gross.

(I think we've taken care of the Living Room Ant Problem now -- most of a can of Raid and some dizziness later. Now we just have to take care of the ones coming in through our storage room and into our kitchen, and we'll be good.)

I understand if you never want to come to our apartment again. Especially since, just after we finshed off the can of Raid, the first Giant Spider of the season came running out of our bedroom.


* Yes, it gets capitalised.
** See above

Did you miss me?

(And a happy Memorial Day to all our American readers. Happy Being Able to Wear White Shoes Now. And all that.)

It's been a while, hasn't it? I've had a weekend of actually leaving the house, because some relatives were in town. Here's a summary of the Life of Procrastination that you've been missing out on:

1. Ant Genocide: I had a bit of a meltdown on Friday, because we were trying to get the house clean for visitors and there were still hoards of ants inside our house. They cared nothing for our bait traps. And so Chris took a big can of Raid and started spraying everywhere that he saw ants. He sprayed it all around the door, on both sides, and in every crack and cranny outside as well. We haven't seen an ant since then. I think they associate our house with death. They might even be setting up memorial outside.

2. I was strapped to a biofeedback machine. My uncle just finishing training to use said machine, and so I was his guinea pig. I think I was a little dubious, even though Chris reassured me that these things work really well (who'd believe that the scientist in the household would be less dubious?), but it really worked. The freaky thing was when it did all the tests of what was wrong in my body, and came up with a pretty complete list of my allergies. Oh, and then it showed up evidence that I've been exposed to a bunch of insecticides recently. Stan thought it was an error, and then I reminded him that I'm living in the House of Raid. Did I mention that it said my most stressed organ is my brain? My response was, "Well, yes. I'm a grad student."

3. We visited the gardens around Hatley Castle again. So pretty.

And now I launch into the week and a half before I leave the province. That means: a.) lots of origami, and b.) lots of time at the library. That also calls for some procrastination.

Unoriginal 600th Post

Since Clare started this weather conversation over at Pink Cupcake's, I'm continuing it. This is the reason why I haven't had much initiative to a.) post anything interesting for the 600th post, b.) go return those overdue library books, or c.) mix up that non-toxic ant bait Brandy just taught me (equal portions of icing sugar and baking soda, sifted together, and spread outside to lure the ants outside and then kill them when they take it back to the nest).


Yes, the temperature's nice enough, and there's hardly any wind (and so I could take the umbrella), but it's just so blah and drizzley outside. And look at it! All that rain and cloudiness, spread out endlessly before me. Boo.