Sigh. Another night, another round of screaming at my kids about the goddamn bedtime routine.

I swear, if I have to hear "But DADDY lets us [do thing I said they couldn't do]" one more time I will put an icepick through my brain.

Perhaps I shall make myself a martini.

At slightly before 8:00 this morning, I had to chase Charlie down the sidewalk of a pretty busy street, because I hadn't been awake enough to make sure his leash was actually attached before I manhandled him out of the car onto the sidewalk.

Things did not get any better from there.

We've embarked on a DIY ant-killing project. Of all the homemade remedies I found online, we went with baking powder and powdered sugar, since we had no boric acid or cornmeal in the house.

I have evolved quickly from "There are ants in the house, I'm a terrible person" to "DIE, you bastards, DIE."

For the non-flammable surfaces, I've always enjoyed the Aquanet/lighter solution to ants. But you've got to be a soft-touch or else the linoleum tile will melt... okay, that was in the barracks when I didn't give poop about if it was a dumb idea or not. But I'm sure I've got the skill to flambe on a hardwood floor without damage.

Funny that I was reminiscing just the other day about boiling kettles of water to kill ant nests. Man, I was such a vicious little kid. Not to mention killing the lawn.

My brother used to do that. He had a flaming (boiling?) hatred for ants. Not that I like them, but I didn't go out of my way to hunt them down and boil 'em.

One of his sons inherited that.

My baby brother is pretty phobic about ants; I never got it at all -- they don't tromp all over horrible stuff and then land on your food like flies, they don't drink your blood like mosquitoes, the bitey ones are big and obvious and only rarely come indoors, and the tiny ones are relatively easily dispatched or diverted. A nuisance, but not a viscerally disgusting nuisance like flies. Which I hate. I'd totally pour boiling water on them if they stayed still long enough, and if I could get my skin to stop crawling long enough to get near one.

Possibly flies are to me as ants are to him.

If we had an infestation of roaches, I would be dropping a nuclear bomb on the house and then moving out, probably in that order.

Are they those tiny ants (known as "pussy ants" in some parts of Bmore), Dana? I had good luck getting rid of pussy ants by spraying diluted cider vinegar around where they were getting in. Or are they some kind of scary Texas ant?

mac's friends are asking me to put Hamachi on his computer. anyone know anything about this? these are his friends that he plays minecraft with and is on skype with every night.

Because I should not say these things on Facebook and thereby make drama I have no patience for:

Hi angry libertarian dude! I really appreciate your stance that in the current political crisis, every federal employee should voluntarily give up all pay and benefits because government too big and should act just like a household budget yada yada. I assume you're volunteering to go first, seeing as how you're career military, and therefore one of the federal employees least likely to ever, ever not get paid? (Also, how's that overthrowing the hand that feeds you thing going lately?)