Bad day

[cjsmith]

OK, it's not "no LJ comment notifications" but "no personal e-mail at all". Since about noon.

That's probably about the time I accidentally inhaled the fruit fly and started a coughing fit that lasted nearly an hour, but who's counting?

And one of my cats threw up today, probably while I wasn't home, and I discovered that the ants have found it. The area is not cat food colored but dark brown and wiggling. There is a wide ant highway leading off to one side.

And in looking for how the ants are getting in to the house, Rob discovered that they're coming out from inside the wall. In one room, the painfully cheap addition, the walls don't quite go all the way down. (OK, the paneling.) The list of things we need to fix about this place apparently wasn't long enough already.

My grumpiness might be exceeded by that of these ants, who, when all is said and done, are driven to invade the den of a dangerous killer so they can fetch and carry puke in order to survive. In the lives of these ants, finding an enormous puke pile in the home of someone who will kill them is a major positive. Plus many of them are about to get exterminated, like, right now.

(See? There's always SOMEBODY having a worse day.)

Comments

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

You're right. The ants beat us both for today.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I can't decide whether or not that's pathetic. I'm guessing yes.

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

I am arachnophobic but ants can give me the screaming meemies worse than any eight-legged critter. I think because there seems to be an unending supply.

Baking powder sprinkled along the trails and at the entrances to the nests will do them mighty damage. It tends to coat their bodies and they suffocate after taking it into the nest.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, ants and roaches are both just creepy that way. They never stop.

Given that your interweb is hinky...

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

I sent you an email last week--did it get through to you?

Re: Given that your interweb is hinky...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Urrrr. No. Did it have body parts in the subject line? :-)

Try my usual handle at mywavez dot com.

[allanh.livejournal.com]

I could always send over Randy to Make War Upon The Ants.

Or you could just go out and buy a couple of different brands of ant bait, and leave them where the cat puke was, and wait a couple of weeks.

The first option is more fun (for me) to watch.

The second option is more effective and more practical.

Re: Given that your interweb is hinky...

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

Ah! I tried "cjsmith@livejournal.com", but I know @livejournal accounts are heavily spammed.

Just resent it to you at mywavez.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing option one is also more practical than option two. In decades of trying, I've never seen ants take ant bait.

(On the other hand, I am perfectly capable of dealing with them myself without ant bait.)

Re: Given that your interweb is hinky...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotcha. My @livejournal account forwards to... the broken chain described above.

Thanks! I'll see it when I get to the office in the morning.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

That second-to-last paragraph, it is a thing of beauty and awesomeness.

(I have had fairly good success with the spray-with-Lysol-to-eliminate-scent-trails-every-few-hours method, but this probably won't work on carpeting.)

[oddhack.livejournal.com]

On the upside, at least they are removing the puke for you.

I spent some delightful time a few years caulking all around my power baseplates to keep them out. Thank heavens they can't get in through the holes the plugs go into :-)

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

We've had good results from a non-toxic mint oil spray. The advantages are, it's perfectly safe and it keeps them away; it clobbers their scent trails and they really hate the smell of it. The disadvantage is, it doesn't kill them unless you get it right on them.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

I've had cat puke problems, and I've had ant problems, but I've never had ants-eating-cat-puke problems. Thanks for the perspective.

[otterpop58.livejournal.com]

dunno what you use for email, but maybe it's configured with this? http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/03/25/2124224.shtml

talk to your admin ASAP

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

If I'm having a rotten day, the ability to make myself laugh about it is heartily welcomed. Some days it works, some days it doesn't. This time it worked. :-)

(I'm now trying to figure out how to get many dead ants out from between the carpet fibers. I want the Vacuum of Doom.)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought of just letting them finish the job. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

And mint smells nice to (at least some of) us human types!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*chuckle*

If I can laugh on a day like that, I'm doing well. :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, now that's a thought. It matches all too well. Of course, I know for sure that I had to be manually whitelisted last time, so my guess is still in the running. I'll talk to people today.

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

That is, in fact, a bad day. :( Sorry to hear about it and I hope today is treating you better!

And here I thought that cat throw-up was good for nothing. It's still not good for anything good, but at least you are keeping some ants fed. :)

I would complain that you haven't emailed me back, but I don't think I sent you anything. Once you get it all worked out, though, let me know and I'll randomly email you at some point in the undetermined future, just so I can say I did. ;)

[dieppe.livejournal.com]

I thought for a minute that you ran one of those "I'm having LJ drama" programs which generates random bad things... Very sorry that you're having a bad day though! :(

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Today is treating me much better, thanks! There are signs of loosening the plug, so to speak, on the e-mail blockage. The ants are dead. The fruit fly also didn't make it, but some casualties are to be expected, I suppose.

I was pretty impressed that to the ants, this was bounty. I almost wanted to let them finish the job.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

HA! It does sound like one of those bad day generators, doesn't it? :-)

[jupiter29.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'd hate to kill any creature having a day that much more productive than mine was. :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_opus_/]

Move to the frozen wastelands of New Hampshire. No ants this time of year.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

So I have to clean up the cat puke all by myself? Waaaaaah. ;)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It does seem rather sad!