the ants go marching

Once I became a mom, I found myself saying things I never dreamed I'd say. Things I couldn't have imagined even necessary to be said. Things like:

"Would you please stop licking your pee off the patio and come inside?"

or,

"Please try not to stomp on your brother's neck."

Or even,

"Take the underwear off your head and hand me the knife. Now."

And then there are things I never want to hear from my children. Things like,

"Mom, where are my ants?"

But that's the question my six year-old asked last night right before bedtime after examining his ant farm. Usually, upon closer inspection, I locate the ants huddled together in some obscure tunnel but this time they were nowhere to be found. And then I noticed that the lid was slightly ajar. Just loose enough for tiny ants to slip away, unseen.

So now I have a colony of ants parading around my house looking for a new place to burrow and things to eat. And to make things worse I don't even know what kind of ants they are because we found them at the park after the mail order batch mostly died in transit from the extremely cold weather.



Wish me well.