Ants in my Pants and Slugs in my Uggs

Mother effing ants.

As I sit here typing, I'm armed with my camera ready to capture the gravity of the situation. They crawl across my keyboard, they daringly trek upon my arm, and they enthusiastically pile up upon anything which resembles food. My kitchen sink is like a skateboard park for them.

When an ant enters my my line of vision I grab a Puffs with Aloe tissue and heartlessly go in for the kill; they end up flattened and moisturized.




That's a card from the exterminator with ant bait gel on it, yum.

The over-the-counter discs of death seemed an easy way to wage our war on ant infestation. Bait was put out, and in classic ant trickery they bring their deadly, yet delicious, finds back to the nest. After a few days the baits were no longer drawing big crowds, we felt victorious and relieved, enough so that we were even able to make a sandwich on the kitchen counter in peace. But lo and behold, within 48 hours the ants were back, and they looked pissed.

Last night I went to take a shower and the bigger and more daunting looking "soldier" ants had come out of the nest. My assumption is that the coup is working (for us), and hopefully the pion ants are dead so the big boys were coming out to show us who's boss. Did I mention that the exterminator said that the larger ants fly? Wtf? Needless to say, giant ants were on the bathroom ceiling, floor and counters-- it was like an ant freakshow. There were also several on their backs in my bathroom sink which appeared to be fighting for their lives. As I stared in disgust at the situation, a giant ant drops into the sink. I look up. I realize the ones in the sink had actually fallen from the ceiling which was covered. This unfortunate discovery sent me running out of the bathroom, and I spent the rest of the night wondering if there were any in my hair. I'm still scratching myself all over like an ape and I'm somewhat scared to go to sleep tonight because every morning something new is covered in ants, and tomorrow it could be me.

The good news is that during my numerous visits from the pest control company they have given me the ant 411 (that's American for information). We have Coastal Brown Ants, and these bad boys, all forty freaking million of them, are living in the walls of our house.

And as long as I'm bitching about pests in the house...

We have an awesome built-in planter in the new house. Unfortunately it too is home to some unwanted new friends... about a hundred slugs. I read on the internet that they are attracted to yeast. It said to put beer in a deep container near them, they will go in for a drink, and won't be able to get out. Apparently I have smart, agile, and now drunk slugs. They drank the beer, then went home, passed out, and came back the next night looking for more.





I've decided to focus on the ants (since they bite), so the slugs are getting a pass this week.

Two Year Expativersary

This whole coming to Sydney thing, this whole moving across the world thing... the time has finally come that I'm able to celebrate that we did it. I think I've reached this plateau before, but this time I think I really mean it.

Admittedly, the first year was more difficult than I could have imagined. The home-grown American fantasy o' awesomeness quickly becomes detrimental when you leave the mother-ship U.S. of A. And there are still days, many in fact, that make me feel sad and alone and isolated from everything and every one I've ever known.

But here we are, this week being our two-year expativersary, the things I thought were good a year ago are still good, and the things I thought sucked still basically are a real pity. But there is no longer any doubt, that this risk we've taken, this whole living on the other side of the world thing, was worth it-- and will have a profound effect on the rest of our lives.

When my little boys are taller than I, and acting like grown ups before they really are, the experience of having lived in Australia will help them adapt to new situations, of course it'll probably help them get the hot chicks too, but that's just a little expat bonus. It has been found that children who live in countries beyond their native land are generally more open-minded and accepting of people. These are gifts you can't buy your children; they are having unusual experiences which will mold them into the people they will become.

And of course they have bragging rights to this:



Weekends spent going to kids film festivals at the Sydney Opera House and chillin' on the steps afterward like they own the place.



Surely I'll never again live in a place where I can walk out my backgate directly onto a beach and which also happens to be two doors down from a ferry wharf which whisks you off to the Sydney Opera House.


Sitting behind the house we recently moved out of.

For godsakes, my four year eats Vegemite-- as in yeast extract spread which looks like tar and smells like beer. Our experience in Australia has changed us, and there's no going back to what once was... as in, peanut butter.

And if I didn't live here I couldn't do this:


When the time comes to go "home" I'll surely be in a panic having not done and seen everything I could have, but until then-- I'll just keep trying get a little piece of every offering here.
____________________________________________________

This seems to be how it always ends: the young, controversial, and famous to the extent of not being able to really live-- dead and gone. It's sad, it's tragic. So many profound words from a man we were unable to actually know, and aren't even sure we would have wanted to.

"I'm looking at the man in the mirror, I'm asking him to make a change." - Michael Jackson

Modern Australian Cuisine: Friend or Foe

I love the show MasterChef Australia. Love it!

Unfortunately, the whole Modern Australian Cuisine thing is just far too sophisticated for me.

It's menus like this, which I cannot interpret, that demonstrate that I am far too Ignorant American for Modern Australian Cuisine.

When I see the following items on a menu, I know I'm in over my head:

• confit
• bacon powder (separately I can accept either, but together-- well, why would someone make delicious bacon into a powder? Why, I ask you?)
• foam (now I'm getting a little nauseated)
• sweetbreads (now I'm actually considering where the closest vomit receptacle may be)
• prawn foam (why, why oh why? wasn't other foam enough, did they have to make foam from shrimp?) Please ignore if this all just sounds foamy-licious to you.
  

In other news:

According to my husband Maccas (that's Australian for McDonalds) has raised the price of the soft serve ice cream cones from $0.30 to $0.50. Still a bargain at twice as much I reckon.

And there's this:

My five year old loves sushi. Why am I amused by this? Probably because it's just so 2008, not so 2000late. I think it's amusing that Kindergartners eat sushi these days, instead of fruit rollups.



And you know your kid is turning Australian when they ask for a sausage roll for lunch.
It kind of turns my stomach, but I'm still supportive.

Chapter Three

Each house seems to naturally divide my life into the chapters of my story.

In Chapter One, I came home from the hospital in a Christmas stocking during one of the worst blizzards in Chicago's history. Coincidentally, my husband was also brought home from the hospital in a Christmas stocking-- I'm guessing that's unusual for two Jewish kids, no wonder we've evolved into such bad Jews.

Chapter two, a temporary apartment in Florida, was short and uneventful. My only memory is of there being loads of nasty ducks outside; perhaps it's not a coincidence that I love to eat Donald with pancakes and hoisin sauce.

For the majority of my childhood (six to seventeen years old) we lived in a townhouse in South Florida. I had chicken pox there. I watched the coverage of Ronald Reagan's attempted assassination with my cousins who were visiting in that house. I had mono there. In high school I used to shut my bedroom door and talk on the phone until 2a.m. Then in ninth grade, my dad moved out.

About a year later I answered the phone call that would change everything.

"Hi, is your mom home?" her voice sounded restrained and nervous.

"No, who's calling?" I answered, feeling a pit in my stomach.

"It's the hospital, there's been an accident and your father's here."

"Is he okay?" I barely got the words out, he was obviously not okay.

"He's going to be alright," she responded. Clearly, he was not okay.

He'd been in a head-on collision. He'd been pried from the car with the jaws of life. He'd broken nearly every bone in his body. His teeth were knocked out. The internal bleeding lead to his spleen being removed.

The other driver was dead.

It was the aftermath of his nearly fatal car accident which lead to confirmation that the rumors were true, my dad was dating a man.

Eventually he did recover, and my parents did divorce.

December of my freshman year of college my father asked me to come home, he needed to talk to me. He said he owed so much in taxes that he was leaving town, he couldn't tell us where he was going.

Years later we found out that he had embezzled money from the home owners association he was the president of, and also evaded taxes. When it all caught up with him, he ran, like a coward, leaving everyone he'd ever known behind.

I know there was an addiction to pain killers involved along the way, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's still addicted to them.

Today is his 60th birthday. I have no idea where he is and chances are I never will. He'll probably never meet my husband or kids. It's sad and pitiful and not fair, and not at all how it was supposed to happen.

Yeah, Mom-- it's soup alright.

We moved. I got a cold the day after we got in the new house. I had no voice yesterday. I know all that sounds like fun, a real barrel of laughs, and then...

Last night walking across the bedroom there was a spongy squish, squish. It was monsooning outside, they reported winds were over 108 kilometers an hour.

Today they came and pulled up my new bedroom's carpet. The corner of it's lying tented over an obnoxiously loud blower to dry the pad and all the rest of it.

I'm choking on deodorizer fumes from the "cleanup".

When my four year old makes his nightly 2am mommy call, he's likely to walk into either a moving box or my bed, which is inconveniently shoved against one of my bedroom doors.

I'm considering moving my mattress into the hallway, but then I'd have to go downstairs to watch the American Idol finale which is so incredibly-over-the-top-incredible, I can't take my eyes off it.*

The wind has blown and blown and blown. It's howling outside my window right now.

I've never lived higher than sea level, and the whole living on a hill thing is different. It's like we're trapped in a wind tunnel, it's weird and cool and I like it but it makes me a little nervous-- a good nervous.

The carpet is wet and my bedroom smells like toxic chemicals mixed with deodorizer.

And I'm about this close to needing a ventilator; I'm not sure if it's due to the deodorizer fumes, or the cold I've had since the day after we moved in.

Omigod, KISS. What the hell is going on here? Their tongues sure are long, wow.*

The wind's whipping my window screens around. I love window screens. This house rocks and I won't have flies anymore. Did I mention how many flies there are in Sydney?

Sadly, that makes the perfect segue to the unfortunate incident of having stepped in dog crap today while "carefully" carrying my kids across the grass to my car, to avoid dog poop. I had to wash my shoes with a dishbrush to get it off. Hmmm, did I use that to wash the dishes tonight? Psyche (that was for my neurotic husband), ah-hahahahaha.

Omigod, is that Steven Martin? Is he going to sing?*

And funny enough, my husband and I just keep looking at each other and thinking-- this is the best place we have ever lived, we are sooo going to enjoy it here. Which now that I think about it, is the same thing we said about the last place we lived.

Is that Queen? Holy shit.*

My husband just said, "I'm just stunned that guy lost, it just pisses me off." I know babe, I really can't believe Adam lost either, this shit's really messed up. And then for the tenth time, my husband says he doesn't really think The Blind Guy is blind.*


*If you didn't watch the American Idol finale you may not understand.


Oh, and there's one more thing... have you ever said "hot beef injection" to your mother?
I did... she asked if it was a soup.