Biting Ants!

Hey friend,
Sorry it's taken so long to write again, but I have been stateside and didn't have access to the internet, which doesn't make sense when I read that sentence, since in the states EVERYONE has access to the internet! Except my 86 year old mother, which is reasonable -- I was staying with her and could'nt leave her alone to check my e-mail. Enough about that.

One thing I've learned in my short blog experience is that you need to be in the mood to blog -- or at least, I do. To me, it feels weird to yammer on about things and wonder "Who gives a rip?" about anything I'm saying, which I can understand; so the mood needs to strike and I need to say "Who cares about what people think" and blog. Blogging feels a bit like "mouthing off" since you can say whatever you want, so here goes :)

Living in the Philippines poses it's challenges -- tap water doesn't just come into the house all the time like it does stateside. Everyone has a tank in their yard, and city water fills it periodically; or for us, we have a well, so we need to turn on a pump every morning and afternoon to fill our tank. This assures us we will have water in the faucet every time we turn on the spigot. So, that's the background.

Our pump is half across the property attached to a termite infested "in-law" quarters -- it is uninhabitable. Why, oh why attach it to that stinking house?! What were the builders thinking?! I have to trudge through ant infested walkways to get to it! Thus, my title for this blog -- "biting ants!" These ants are crafty -- you don't feel them crawling on you until they take a bite out of you. And they sting like the dickens; and swarm. You can't stand still for a minute or you'll have hundreds crawling up your legs; I still feel like they're crawling up me and that was 30 minutes ago. It's material for a serious horror movie.

I'm going to try and Raid spray the life out of them today, but there are so many. Surprisingly, there are few pest control companies in this country, which doesn't make sense because biting and crawling pests reign supreme here. And really, the Raid spray I have is only for cockroaches, but it's poison so it ought to kill them. You would think someone would say, "Hey, I should invent a way to get rid of these annoying biting ants." They would be millionaires in no time!

So the moral of this story is: Be thankful if you don't have to turn on a water pump just to have tap water from your spigot, AND be thankful your yard is not filled with biting ants!

Blessings,
just julie :)