le n is right. And I hear you, bonny, but all you can do is live as you believe, and leave them to figure their shit out. I talked with a friend today whose house was broken into by a (former) friend and friend's husband. They deny it despite not having been very bright about things.

Sadly, my incipient headache is not low blood sugar, but a migraine coming on. I must have slept wrong during my nap.

I talked with a friend today whose house was broken into by a (former) friend and friend's husband. They deny it despite not having been very bright about things.

Seriously?

At least my friends are simple jerks...not so much criminals. How awful for those folks.

Dear dishwasher instructions:

"Open junction box" is a cruel joke, right?

I heard some scrabbling behind the (defunct) dishwasher and pulled out the dishwasher to find at least one way they're getting in. I need to get the dishwasher out to seal the hole. I got the hoses off fine, but to disconnect the electrical line, I have to get inside the damn junction box.

I have set two snap traps and put out ant bait.

I am not happy.

Ginger, ants inside are awful. My sympathies.

I get ants multiple times per year. It's the worst. Right up there with the termite swarms. Termite sex all over my kitchen floor. PARtay.

When I figure out where the ants are coming in, I create a barrier with Dawn and cinnamon. The last few times, it's really worked.

I am handicapped in tracking ants in the kitchen by my black counter tops. The ants really obvious when they're covering the inside of yesterday's cereal bowl, though.

Egad.

Until this very second, I had always thought that black counter tops were super cool.

Ugh.

Yeah, we get brown ants - on our brown variegated "granite" counters. Tricky. In addition to trying to seal up everything I can find, I've also had decent luck with the ant-bait things. I also have a little bit of a Jillifont problem, so that was amusing when the two came head-to-head (jillions of little ant-corpses by my bathroom baseboards. Shudder.)

Good luck, Ginger.

assholes are incredibly adept and finding people they can take advantage of.

Bingo. And (speaking from some similar personal experiences) if you're not a person who doesn't inherently and automatically look for people who can be taken advantage of, it's difficult to recognize right away when people are doing that to you. You're being friendly and helpful, because that's what you do, because that's what good people do. It's not your fault that other people are jerks.

Oh Ginger, I'm so sorry.

Bingo. And (speaking from some similar personal experiences) if you're not a person who doesn't inherently and automatically look for people who can be taken advantage of, it's difficult to recognize right away when people are doing that to you. You're being friendly and helpful, because that's what you do, because that's what good people do. It's not your fault that other people are jerks.

One upshot of this recent naval gazing is the recognition that I was never as bad a person as I thought I was...at any given point in my life.

Thanks for saying it's not my fault but there are two truths that spring from this patterned experience...I am somehow training people to treat me this way.

I'm not blaming myself, but observing the ipso facto rule. Since not everyone experiences this phenomenon, but I have consistent experience of it, there must be some attracting function I am not yet aware of.

The other thing is, it may not be my fault, but it is definitely a pothole in my life.

I've realized that my biggest problem is not so much money or health, but discouragement. Without doubt, it is my biggest...what is infinitely bigger than a stumbling block?

So, I come to this conclusion, and then, in rapid succession I get a three enormous reasons to be discouraged.

I can't seem to learn how to overcome it while simultaneously drowning in it.