It's Friday, isn't it?

I've got a bunch of stuff to do, so instead of keeping logging on to It Comes In Pints for the FFOT, I'll list a few things that have got under my skin this week here:

1. Ants. Ants can go to whatever kind of Underworld exists for insects. I hate ants. No, I don't hate ants across the board. I only hate them when they come in my house. I had a small plastic bottle of honey that apparently self-destructed some time Wednesday night. Thursday morning I found a few ants walking across the counter. I cursed, wiped them up with soapy water, and went to work. Came home at lunch. There were approximately 10,000 ants streaming through the tiny crack where the windowsill meets its frame, down the wall, across the counter. I figured it had to be SOMETHING attracting them - so I looked and found the plastic bottle of honey with the crack in it. So I wiped up all the honey (and the ants) and proceeded to clean my entire kitchen. Again.

2. Ortho Home Defense "Max," which should be renamed "Min" or "Zero," can bite the wax tadpole. I went outside after finding the ants and saturated the window frame and the wall the ants were walking up with the stuff. And they did not all die. In fact, many of them did not die. This product claims "4 months ant-free life!" if you use it outside. I STILL HAVE ANTS COMING IN THIS MORNING. (Of course, they are out of luck as there is absolutely no food for them to find - everything is sealed up and put away). I don't like using chemicals that could be toxic to me and I especially don't like using them when it turns out they don't work as promised.

Off to the Lowe's today to see if they still sell those "Terro" baits - which are corn syrup with borate in it. Ants eat it, ants die. It worked last year.

3. Vandals. A few towns over from me a bunch of a-hole d-bags have vandalized the senior center. AGAIN. They destroyed a compressor (didn't steal the copper tubing - just destroyed it to be mean) that served the cold room where food for the Meals on Wheels program was stored.

This kind of thing infuriates me. Not just because it's so pointless - I could even understand it better if they had stolen the copper tubing, which they did not. But because I have had elderly relatives (in other parts of the country) who got Meals on Wheels. And it made a HUGE difference in their lives - not just that they got a hot meal when they were not really capable of cooking one (towards the end of her life, my grandma was blind, and she was afraid of using the stove because she feared she might burn herself. And although she had some of her children and grandchildren near, they couldn't ALWAYS be there to cook for her). The other thing that Meals on Wheels does that is valuable is that they check up on a person - when my grandma fell, not too long before she passed away, the person who first found out she had fallen and got help for her was the Meals on Wheels volunteer. So I guess I feel kind of protective of the program and it makes me very angry that some idiot would compromise its ability to help people. Especially elderly people.

I hope that idiot's grandma wasn't one of the people getting food from Meals on Wheels. And I hope they find that idiot and assign him (or her, I suppose) a GREAT many hours of community service to make up for it.

There has been a lot of vandalism in my region lately; it's always that way in the summer. I don't know if it's the heat making people act stupid, or if it's teenagers with no jobs and no parental supervision going out and getting into trouble. (And if it is a teenager who did it, I hope they throw the book at their parents as well. If my parents caught me even PLANNING something like that, they would have tanned my hide - yes, even as a teenager - and then grounded me for several months.)

4. I'm also getting kind of sick about all the complaining about gas and food prices. Yeah, it's bad. But it is what it is and we can't really do a lot to change it. Listening to people gripe about paying $4 a gallon for milk doesn't make paying it myself any easier. I'd rather just suffer in silence at this point, or try to figure out some kind of ingenious way of saving money. (Lentils. I bought a pound of lentils for 94 cents this morning, and I have a recipe that potentially sounds good. I may be using dried beans a lot this summer because they're a cheap source of protein).

(That said? If OPEC does increase production - which was hinted at in the news this morning - and gas prices drop a little, I hope grocery retailers also lower the prices of food that have been affected by the higher gas prices. I suspect they WON'T, but I'd hope they'd cut us a little break.)

5. I know I said I thought stimulus checks were a bad idea - and I still think they are - but where the hell is mine? It still hasn't come. Maybe they're screwing me out of it because (with capital gains) I made just a bit over $75K last year. But I'd at least appreciate a letter from the government saying "HA-ha! Your investments did too well last year!"

But if I am getting one - well, I've done a 180 on this and I'm NOT going to chunk it into my savings account (where it can earn less interest than what inflation eats up). Hell, I'm spending it. I'm going to go out and buy something FUN. What that is, I don't know yet. I'll figure it out if and when the check comes. Because I'm tired of hearing the constant drumbeat from some sectors of the news of "sit in the dark, turn up your air conditioning to 85, don't eat much, don't drive anywhere, save all of your money, don't have any fun, because it's going to get lots, lots worse before it gets better - if it ever gets better."

No. Fun is good. I like fun. I want some fun. So I'm going to spend that check (if it ever comes) on fun.