Ant Invasion/Surprise Visit

Ants have invaded our apartment. These are not your ordinary ants! They are the giant, black, longer-than-your-thumbnail, make-me-wanna-scream, carpenter kind. Part of me feels this desire to coexist and live peacefully with them but that part died when I woke up to them crawling around in our bed with me. Or maybe it was when I got to work and found one in my hair. Or when one crawled across the screen of my cell phone while I was texting my sister. 

Last week I was just scooping them up with sheets of paper and setting them out in the stairwell. When they returned with reinforcements, I had no choice but to go on a horrifying killing spree: rampaging any and all ants in sight and creating devastating massacre. Of course, an hour later more were back so Zach bought ant poison and I set out nine traps. For two days, bottles of sugar water mixed with boric acid lay on their sides, enticing our unwelcome guests to a hopefully painless death. Unfortunately, this just seemed to draw more of their friends to join the party. This morning, Zach ditched the bottles and just poured the acid (in powder form) all around the perimeter of our apartment. By this evening, all the ants crawling around were coated in white dust, which at least made them easier to see against the wood floor.

I feel like we're up against Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator ants. Is there any way to win? They've lost at least two hundred and without any casualties on our side, I'd say our odds are pretty high...right? 

Tonight I took out the garbage, dripping sugar water and boric acid all down my legs. Awesome. I ended up running back up to wash off, change, and finally arrive late to work. If I ever need to make a case for karma, this will be a great start. 

On a different note, we leave Buffalo in 19 days! An insta-smile fills my face when I think about our future. I also feel sad to leave. It's always the people for me. It's so hard to leave and know that relationships that will never be the same...but thus is life. The growth potential for a plant in a forest is much higher than one in a small pot. I've definitely transplanted myself many times and the growth I've experienced is incredible. I want to spread my branches to the sky, feel the wind, experience the death and re-birth of the seasons, and drink the rain. I don't want to sit on a window ledge, safe and protected from big change, and things that cause pain. I want to live!

Tonight, three girls from Zach's youth group came to surprise us at work. One drove over two and half hours! I worked a triple shift and Zach worked a double so coming to our places of employment was really the only option. It makes me cringe when think about leaving the kids in the youth group here. I love them all and they deserve to have someone wonderful like Zach as their youth leader. I know we have made a good choice in leaving but it just sucks when making a choice that is best for you doesn't feel like what's best for others. Though, ultimately, making the best choice for yourself is what's best for others as well. Plus we're sorta Buddhist so maybe they wouldn't want us as the youth leader anyway...

So, the girls ate dinner at my restaurant and I'm pretty sure I glowed all night because of it. Them surprise visiting felt like so many things I did in high school. I remember picking up a carload of friends and driving hours (sometimes over five!) to surprise other friends, attend school plays, graduations, and other random youth events. I remember breaking down late at night on scary mountain roads, playing "Slug Bug" and "Beemer", picking up hitchhikers, trying to get every trucker to honk, and singing as loud as possible to every song until we lost our voices. Seeing those girls together felt like seeing somebody I used to be. What a beautiful feeling.

I try so hard to give others the feeling those girls gave me tonight. It's that you're-worth-all-this-effort-and-more-because-I-see-your-beauty-and-I-love-everything-that-you-are sort of feeling. I don't know if it was their intention to make me feel so loved. I don't know if they know how much it meant to me but I hope they could tell from the way I shrieked, ran across the restaurant, and embraced them. 

I feel so lucky to live this life of mine/ours. And by ours I mean yours, mine, and everyones. Erasing the lines of separation and feeling each other's joys and sorrows as our own is a beautiful thing. I wish we all made each other feel as loved as we deserve.