It's early and the ants are excited

Thanks for all the ant advice. Yesterday I tried baking soda, boiling water, Comet, the hose, the blower, and even a little bit of ant spray over a little teeming mound of eggs and ants I found under the tip of an old dog towel that was hanging off the edge of a chair and resting on the ground. I've found four mounds so far, and those are all desecrated and abandoned as far as I can tell. I actually used a strong liquid soap on them last week and voila! Sadly, I think I'm going to have to go the chemical route. I pulled up a little patch of grass where the patio has not been edged in a while -- like a flap of grass that has overgrown the edge -- and I almost fainted. There were seventy-seven million of them. I think my tame ways might need some professional help. I'm calling my cat-loving bug man this afternoon and asking him which he thinks is the best of the suggestions you wise and kind people gave me or if he has any of his own. I assume his cat love spills over into dog love.

If these ants did not bite or swarm the dog food bowls, I might not be so freaked out. But I have horrible images of the dogs standing in a pile or interrupting one of their marches (back again this morning, I might add) and being taken down by a thousand of them while I'm not here to watch over them. But then, I am an overly anxious person so hopefully this will not actually happen.

Meanwhile, I've been spending a lot of time with my oldest and dearest girlfriends this week. One of them recently moved away from New York City for the first time since 2000. We've been talking about Top 40 songs a lot lately. We're both very fond of Rihanna's "Umbrella," for example. Yesterday she asked me, "Have you ever heard a song that goes something like, 'everyone knows I'm in over my head, over my head?" I looked at her and said, "Um, yeah? Where have you been?" She said, "In New York! Without a car or a car radio!" Now that she has one, it's like the world has opened up to her again. It's like she's been in a radio coma. It amuses me.

I don't know what else to say except I have to go to work now. Meanwhile, does anyone happen to know the origin of this quote: "I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats"? This mystery is driving me almost as crazy as the ants.