I Declare War Against the Ants

As I've said before, our new apartment is in a very old house.  The well is still in the basement (from when they didn't have indoor plumbing!).  For those of you who don't know, old houses do not have much closet space.  I have no idea why this is - maybe they didn't have a lot of clothes or excess things to store like we do today.  Who knows.  The point of the story is that we have had to get pretty inventive with storage.  Kurt and I have both given away bags upon bags of clothes and shoes.  But alas, we STILL don't have enough closet space.  So we decided to make a trip to IKEA.  Now I can spend literally all day and all of my money at this store.  I love it.  I want everything.  But since I have no money, I had to settle for only getting a few necessary items.  One of these items was a wardrobe (see picture at right).  This was quite the purchase.  First of all, Kurt and I do not see eye to eye when it comes to home decor.  I like old-fashioned things, with crown molding, and he likes sleek and modern.  Luckily, we were able to compromise with this guy.  But that's not the end.  This behemoth is 8 feet tall.  I had managed to think far enough ahead to switch cars with my sister, so we had her Jeep Liberty.  But even Jeep Liberty's only have about 6 feet of cargo space.  If that.  Our friends were with us and after picking up all of the parts in the warehouse, we went out to the car.  An hour later, the men were both soaked with sweat and the pieces were tied down with twine in the back of the Jeep - with about 2 feet hanging out the back window.  Kurt and I were both so nervous that it was going to go flying out of the window that we literally drove the hour ride home in complete silence, holding our breath.  Somehow we made it home.

That night we attempted to put it together - and we thought getting it into the Jeep was hard!  The thing is ridiculously big, the pieces are pretty flimsy and are only held together with small dowels and screws.  First, Kurt cut his toe open on a hinge and bled all over the new wardrobe, then, while attempting to tilt it to a standing position, the top broke off and put a small hold in the wall.  Needless to say, it didn't get finished that night.  Kurt worked on it yesterday while I was at work (the back is still not on - it takes at least 2 people to hold it up while the other attaches it, and the hardware for the shelves are mysteriously missing.  But it's almost there!  We'll be very excited once it is, I can tell you that much.

As for the other fun quirk of old houses (especially old houses by lakes) - we have ants - see the one keeping me company as I type this post right now. Now, when I say we have ants, I mean we have unstoppable mutant ants.  They're not the big carpenter ones, they're little.  But these things can run!  They're so fast and it really takes A LOT of force to squish them!  I've never seen anything like it.  I mean, it could be they're so strong because they're being incredibly nourished by all our food they keep eating!  Last week I came home to a sink full of dishes and hundreds of ants feasting on our leftovers!  I attacked them with a frenzy previously unknown.  I sprayed them all with Lysol until the kitchen sink was covered in tiny ant carcasses.  But that's not the worst of it.  I've been good about keeping our food covered and in Ziploc bags, etc.  But I forgot about the cereal.  A few days ago, I went to get some Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast.  I opened the box and looked in - there were more ants than Cheerios.  Of course I screamed and threw the whole box in the garbage.  My appetite was nonexistent after seeing that.  So now we need cereal containers.  

Kurt keeps saying I'm going to have to get used to it.  It's an old house by a lake - we're sure to have more bugs than we're used to.  And I can deal with that.  I can handle spiders and the occasional fly, but as far as the ants go, I refuse to give in.  I will not be brought down by a colony of ants!  I will not adapt.  So far, I've been advised to use baking soda around the outside of the house, and ant traps.  I'm going out this week to buy both.  And I promise you, there will not be a single crumb for these ants to take from us!