One By One the Ants Are Stealing My Sanity

This week has been one of many, many, many run-ins with ants. I am sick of it, to be quite honest.

It all started on sunday night, after I returned from housesitting. I walk into the kitchen to find ants crawling all over the water filter. It was easy enough to clean them up so I tried not to freak out about the sudden appearance of ants in the kitchen.

Wednesday night I came back to my room, opened up my laptop and it was covered with ants. I had seen an ant or two on my computer before, but never this many. For some strange reason, unbeknown to me, ants like the heat. I doused my desk with ant killer, but I was really at a loss and had no idea how to get rid of the ones still on and in my laptop. After all, I can't just spray ant killer all over my computer. Finally, I settled for spraying the table with ant killer, wiping it up with a tissue and then wiping the tissue over my computer. That seemed to work, but after an hour the ants were back. So, I wiped it down again and stuck it in my laptop case, hoping that would prevent more ants from moving in. Thursday morning when I pulled my laptop out of its case I saw at least twenty to thirty dead ants inside the case. Since then I have been storing the laptop in its case when I am not using it and it seems to be working so far.

Kitchen, Round 2: I spent all of today (saturday) sitting in the office, in the air conditioning. I came back to the dorm at 6 and I walk into the kitchen and there is trash on the floor. Not just any trash either ---garbage. We're talking eggshells and some other sticky substance which I couldn't quite identify. The first thing that peeved me was that the other person who uses the kitchen had just walked out and left the mess on the floor, yet had the courtesy to tell me he thought the dogs had gotten inside and went through the garbage. I (not so) graciously swept up the eggshells and various other debris on the kitchen floor. It was then that I noticed thing number two that really set me off---stickiness on the floor. I found a rag and scrubbed it, thankful that the ants hadn't gotten there yet. When I looked at my hands I realized I was wrong because there were ants on them...some dead, some alive.

Kitchen, Round 3: This actually happened on friday night, but I didn't notice it til today. All day friday, I was helping homeschool a couple of the dorm kids and then I hung around and kept an eye on the dorm so that the dorm parents could have a day off. I come back to the kitchen friday night long enough to grab a bottle of water and notice that there is an empty ice cream carton on the counter. Apparently, that infamous other person who I happen to share the kitchen with had some friends over and they hadn't cleaned up. Ok, whatever. Tonight I was getting some water out of the hot water pot (I don't really know what else to call it because it isn't a kettle) and noticed there are ants all over the counter...in the exact spot where the empty ice cream carton was left. The carton had been rinsed out and washed, but evidently the counter had not. I got out the ant killer and killed the ants. Again.

One by one the ants are taking my sanity. And my goodwill towards the people I live with.

My sanity is also slipping away as the temperatures rise higher and higher. This morning it was 92° in my room. Outside it was only 78°. Lucky me. My room has windows facing all the wrong ways so it doesn't really cool down at night and since houses are built out of concrete here, they don't really breathe either; they just hold the heat in. I can't wait to return to cool IL.