Ho Chi Minh Trail Revisited

You're thinking this is going to be another one of Claudia's boring history rants, aren't you.  Something she's been reading triggers a little history lesson she's going to share because EVERYBODY loves history just as much as she does.  Well, you'd be wrong.

Well, maybe not too wrong -- I do happen to be re-reading A Bright Shining Lie, a really good book about the Vietnam War, re-reading because I happened to watch a History Channel doc on the War (well done, I thought - lots of interviews with 60-65-year old vets).

However.  The Ho Chi Minh Trail I am referencing is the effing trail of ants that has been running along my ceiling molding.  These are not the normal smallish black ants, or the even smaller fire ants that we have to watch for on our patio outside.  These are teeny-tiny, rather light in color, smaller than a pinhead.  They travel along the trail in packs of three or four, heading in both directions.  Sometimes they meet head-on, exchange a few words of greeting, or maybe saliva or something else disgusting, and continue on.  If there is a dirty plate left on the counter (HUSBANDS!), they make a beeline, ummmm, antline to the plate.  So gross.

I think they might be ghost ants???  They don't bite and they really don't get into my cupboards, perhaps because every speck of food in my house is either in the fridge or in a jar, an airtight plastic container or zip bag.  Seriously, buy stock in the zip bag company -- I'll make you rich.

So, yeah, I've been googling ants and ant killing techniques like mad.  I may go with the Borax and powdered sugar concoction.  A good squirt of Raid works like a champ, of course, and is very gratifying (drink this, suckers!).  But you can really only smell that stuff for a short time before you can feel yourself sprouting antennae and a thorax.  I'm off to war.  --cds

As Promised...

Grandkid update photos!

The Utah girlies attended a wedding yesterday, Randi's next-to-youngest brother Michael got married.  My girls look so sweet and grown up.  Such a nice family shot.

Oh yes, do check out the footwear below; they are their mother's girls, very stylish!

Three generations of lovely Utah women - left to right, Randi's sister Tessa, her daughter Olivia, Randi's mom Becky is holding Evie, Isabella and Randi.

Evie and Uncle Nate, Randi's oldest brother:

The Utah-ers will be here in Florida in three weeks -- yay!  Grandpa and I are moving into exercise-mode in the (probably vain) hope that we'll be able to keep up with them.

And our Vermont babies:

A couple of pix from March, I believe.

From our most recent trip earlier this month - Marcus in his camo sweats:

Ruthanne did a lot of earth moving.  The weather was fabulous during our whole visit.

Ruthie also loves role-playing - reminds me of the hours I spent with Isabella on this deck while she was a beautiful princess and I was either a handsome prince or scarey dragon, witch, or mean stepmother (I NEVER got to be the beautiful princess).  Here Ruthanne is a Kitty-Mom (love the beads, huh?).

She buckled her baby in this stroller every-single-time.  Such a good parent.

Picking flowers for the baby.  The forsythia was in beautiful bloom while we were there, but we just missed seeing the lilacs - they were still in a tight bud.

Do not despair.  I'll have more pictures up again soon. But before I go, a Happy Birthday to MY baby, Joshua, 32 years young today (yikes).

 --cds

Long Time Gone

Our mockingbirds are raising a child.  It peeps incessantly from its hidden home in the bushes alongside of our house.  I'm thinking that probably right now it's the human equivalent of a twelve-year old.  It can achieve a low sort of swoop from the bushes to the branch of our smallest palm tree, but it still peeps for its parents to bring breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Which they immediately do, because even mockingbirds are not immune to the anguished call of a hungry babe, and let's face it, all parents are suckers that way. 

So, yeah, I've returned to my poor neglected blog.  In my defense, I've been having technical difficulties uploading photos to my ancient laptop.  I now own a Samsung Tablet, so modern and speedy, but who can type on one of those things?  I'm a one-finger-texter at best.  Pardon me for being able to type 110 words a minute on a regular keyboard (thank you very much, dear typing teaching Mrs. Folsom - I always liked you even though you were a fearsome looking woman with an unfortunate underbite and the cool kids made wicked fun of you).

So now I've had to get used to using a new browser, Google Chrome, instead of Internet Explorer to post blog photos.  I don't know why - I just scrolled though a bunch of help topics until I found one that said to try Chrome and turns out that worked.  See?  Baby mockingbird on the back of the chair.

Tomorrow hopefully I will get back to the important business of posting pictures of cutie grandchildren, which is, of course, why blogs were invented.  --cds