How to Kill Your Grass

A couple of weeks ago I discovered a huge fire ant mound in the yard. First I sprayed it with Raid and when it didn't work, I googled "how to kill fire ants." It said I needed to dig up the mound, destroy the nursery, and poison the whole thing. Well I found something more powerful than the Raid and thought I did all of that. The little dead ant carcasses all over the sidewalk were convincing evidence, but several days later, though the grass was completely dead on that area, and new little mounds started popping up all over the yard. I don't seem to have any luck getting the weed killer to kill weeds, but since the bug killer completely annihilated the grass, maybe I should use weed killer on the ants and see what happens. It has been a constant battle of me against the army of fire ants.

Yesterday I went to Lowes and bought a large bag of fire ant poison guaranteed to start killing them within minutes. I went to town sprinkling the granules all over and around the mounds and watched to see what would happen. I expected to see the little suckers just fall over as they walked through the poison, but that did not happen. No, turns out, I should have read the instructions in advance because I was supposed to pour water over the granules to activate them. done! If only I had taken that route in the first place.

Today my son yelled for me to come look at the mound. He said the ants were laying eggs all over the place. It turns out that what he was seeing as eggs were actually balled up dead ants. Hundreds of them! I got all excited that the poison had worked, and as I smugly leaned in for a closer inspection, I felt little pin pricks all over my feet. There was a swarm of un-dead fire ants attacking me! I guess they were just using the dead ones as decoys.

I'm starting to see some parallels between the fire ants and my sinful nature. I try to fix things my way and ignore that God already has the perfect formula for healing me. I take short cuts, and I don't take God's Word seriously in my life. Then before I know what's happening, the meanness, backbiting, and anger just multiply exponentially and take over. You're all shocked that I'm a mean, angry person, I know, but it's true. God's grace is the only thing that keeps me from going over the edge most days.

Back to the ants, I'm all out of ideas. Maybe it's time to buy some hip waders for the kids to wear in the yard and just let them take over.

Home Alone

Last weekend my oldest son and husband went camping and left the rest of us at home. It's not a small or quiet house, so I don't do a lot of sleeping as the lone grown up, and I depend on the dog, Zelda, to help guard the fort.

It was a peaceful weekend until around midnight Saturday (or Sunday morning). That's when Zelda started growling at the front door. She's a 95 lb rottweiler, and she doesn't get upset very often. Well that's not entirely true. She really hates the dumpster truck, and every time it comes down the alley, she barks and charges the door, defending out house against the evil garbage truck. Twice a week she acts like she could hurt someone. Other than that, she is quiet. So when she was upset about something outside in the middle of the night, I got upset too. I already had all the lights on, inside and out, but I was not about to open the door or blinds to see if someone was out there. If I saw them, then they'd see me too! Why is that hard for a man to understand?

I got the baseball bat, but I had the thought that in order to use a bat on someone, they'd have to be close enough to hurt me, and I put it back in favor of the gun. It's kept in a hard to reach spot, locked up with the key in another hard to find location, really hard, because I still haven't found it. But I had it out nonetheless. Finally the dog settled down and went to sleep, so I returned the gun to its hiding place.

In the morning, the boys called to tell me about catching fish, and I in turn told my husband about the dog flipping out and scaring me enough to feel the need to defend our home. I could feel him rolling his eyes at me through the phone.

Later that evening when they got home, the other kids and I were at church. Brent called to tell me they made it back safely and to let me know what the dog had been growling at. I was hoping for validation. I wanted it to be something not bad enough to give me nightmares, like evidence that someone tried to break in, but something to make it ok that I was ready to resort to deadly force if needed. Oh no, he couldn't even lie to me to make me feel better. In fact, he was quite smug when he told me it was the wooden Halloween decoration on the front door rattling in the wind. And to add insult to injury, here is his facebook status that he couldn't wait to post: "okay, my wife had a police officer talk to her MOPs group at church about personal safety last week. Now she thinks that she needs to leave bright floodlights on outside of our house 24/7, and while I was out of town she almost shot the halloween decorations that she hung on the front door."I blame the dog because she's the only one who heard the wind or the wooden thing scraping the door. But since I never found the right key for the trigger lock, is his assessment really fair?

true story

Today I will get to experience the thrilling joy of my first mammogram and a subsequent needle biopsy. My view of the whole ordeal is that someone's going to plop my girls onto a chopping block and smash them with a cold metal anvil. Then another stranger will take a large sharp thing, stab it into the flattened tissue and suck out the pieces just pulverized by the smasher. Should be fun. If I could get them to re-inflate the girls with a healthy dose of silicone (or helium to keep them upright longer), then it might not be so bad. Unfortunately, I fully expect to come home with matching flat, square imprints on my chest. If it's not as bad as that, I will be pleasantly surprised.

10 hours later:

Ok, it wasn't as bad as I had expected. First, all of me is in the same shape we started in. Not fully inflated, but not flat either. Second, it was quick and mostly painless, but by no means pleasant. And by a miracle, I completely avoided the needle, so that was a huge bonus.

My vision of the anvil smashing thing wasn't totally off base though. If you haven't been through a mammogram, let me tell you how to prep yourself. First, place one bare breast on your kitchen counter, cover with a plastic tray, and set a watermelon on the tray. Then repeat three times on each side. I offered to demonstrate for my husband using his man parts, but he declined.

There were also little stickers that the tech placed on each nipple. Not the kind of sticker you give kids for good behavior or the kind pop stars wear when exposing themselves, but a little round thing with a metal bb on it. I'm not entirely sure of its purpose other than to be a target. But if your going to squish the whole breat anyway, I don't know why you would need to aim for the tip of the iceberg. I learned later as I was dressing that the adhesive on these stickers is the same as you would find on a bumper sticker. Rip slowly or quickly, it's the same either way; if you don't bleed, you will still cry.
All in all, I was worried about nothing. I will not, however, be signing up to do it again anytime soon. If they start using the same method to screen for testicular cancer though, I will happily sit in the waiting room just to watch the patients faces as they leave. Happy Breast Cancer Awareness Month!