It's unfortunate that ants won't die if you just swear at them. After yesterday's scrubfest, I have airtight scientific proof of this fact. While ants will die if you spray them with orange-scented cleanser (is it the fact that it's a cleanser or that it's orangey that does the killing, I wonder?) and swear at them, swearing alone does not seem to do the trick.Ants are difficult to squish.

The phone rang.

"Hey, can I get you to do something for me?"I put down my cereal. "Sure," I said. "What's up?"

"Have you seen Edmund this morning?"

My mind raced. Oh, dear, had Edmund gotten himself stuck in a closet again? This could be bad. He tends to get destructive if he gets shut in somewhere. "Yeah, he's right here in front of me, looking at me. Why?"

"Would you ... would you take a look and see if there's something still dangling from ... his ass?"

To which I responded with the only possible reply: "What?!?"

1. My current read, Booth Tarkington's "The Magnificent Ambersons," is proving to be one of the most delightful literary exhibitions of schadenfreude I've ever had the pleasure to read. I'm about a third of the way through, and I know that the lead character is going to get everything he deserves: to wit, nothing at all.
2. While we'll miss Sex And The City, we'd like to note that the characters depicted in the show, despite protestations to the contrary, bear as much resemblance to the rest of humanity as a soap opera about mutant Prada-wearing cockroaches.

If you aren't on Misty and Stephen's "Sprout Updates" list, it's unlikely that you'll get a link to what Stephen wrote:

"To Elijah on his First Week Anniversary"

:D

Yet another from the Jody Vault, in his attempts to provide me more interesting ways to serve up the healthily-cooked poultry we seem to be consuming a bit of these days. (Reminds me. I need to do a Penzey's order soon. Mmmm, Penzey's...my personal crack dealer. Any of the locals want to go in on an order?)

Weights regimen #2 began 4 February, and for those of you doing the mathematical home game, that means I'm in my third and final week of this regimen. After the débâcle that was the first aerobics class, Laura-the-trainer informed me (with much glee, I might add) that I now had a very good idea of just how much my body could take, and that she wanted me to raise my weights as appropriate.