The Pink Panther

Dead ant. Dead ant. Dead ant. Dead ant. Dead ant.

But not enough of them!

Even less spectacular than my actual posting is the updates on the "on topic" area. It's starred items from my Google Reader account. The most recent, on a cheap way to get rid of ants, is quite timely. Or maybe too late, I'm not sure. I linked it because we have an occasional ant problem. Well, occasionally inside. Most of the time for outside around the pool. The latter is annoying, but the former is upsetting. Generally when we get them inside, it's a clearly a matter of what we did wrong--getting lazy and not cleaning up after dinner. Leaving something sweet out. Or just doing something that has a tendency to attract them.

I swear last night we did nothing wrong. Or not that wrong, but there was a whole slew of ants in the kitchen. That is NG--no good. And of course I was not on the ball in preparing by having any boric acid on hand, not even after my mother mentioned it this past weekend. That meant I was stuck with killing them as I could and using a little ant spray. Just want I want to be using inside with Owen around. Awesome.

Fortunately it was a day one of us was staying home (Joanne in this case), so she kept Owen upstairs most of the day so the smell would dissipate. But this reinforces my goal/desire to up natural products and reduce chemicals in the household. This dovetails with the organic/healthier foods ideal--Owen being a good influence on us.

That leaves me with 3 items to buy/increase usage off: boric acid as a pesticide; vinegar for its loads of uses (we do use it a bit, but primarily as a rinse agent--it works great instead of fabric softener or hair conditioner), and baking soda (similarly linked in the side bar). Now I just need to figure out how to take adavantage of all the various options, add a couple more items to the list, and treat the stuff we do have as a sunk cost and toss it.