Don't cry for the ants

Have you read the one about the little boy who asks the farmer to sell him a runty puppy that can't run or walk well? At the end, the little boy rolls up his pant legs to show the farmer the brace on his leg and tells him why the runt is just right for him.

Looking back up at the farmer, he said, "You see sir, I don't run too well myself and he will need someone who understands."

With tears in his eyes, the farmer reached down and picked up the little pup. Holding it carefully, he handed it to the little boy.

"How much?" asked the little boy.

"No charge," said the farmer. "There's no charge for love."

It's not the little boy, but the farmer that makes me misty-eyed every time I read it.

Beanie sent me that story this morning and I wrote back that it's not nice to make me cry this early in the morning. She wrote back and called me a cry baby. I admitted that in spite of what most people think about me, I do have emotions and am not always cold and logical and she calls me a cry baby. Well, she's a brat! Even the Idiot agrees with that, and so does Miss Priss. Show a little emotion and someone is bound to take it the wrong way, turning a misty-eyed moment into full on snotty, gulping, bawling. As if! That's the last time I'll show my soft underbelly to Beanie, the heartless brat.

I have ants. That means I have to paint more clove essential oil on the doorstep and all the other places they're obviously coming in. All the rain washed away the hundreds of ant hills dotting the parking lot outside. Every unsealed crack in the blacktop bloomed with dusty mounds like donuts with ants swarming all over them. I am not sure if it is one huge nest with a single queen or a hundred different nests, but they disappeared after the rains and have since taken up residence behind a wall in the bathroom. I also found that vacuuming them up doesn't work for long if you don't empty the dirt cup. They take up residence inside and consider it home. Where's an anteater when you need one?

Oh, well, time for a shower to wash away the salty evidence of my three tears and then off to get more clove oil to eradicate the ants after I vacuum up the ants and empty the dust cup outdoors. It's good to be green.

That is all. Disperse.