It's dry out there.

So, it's ant season. We recently had a roach problem, that currently seems to be at bay, but now we have ants. Roaches are not as common here in San Diego as they were on the eastern side of the country where I came from. So, having roaches come into one's abode here, when there were no roaches previously means one is a dirty fucker, or the neighbors brought them in. The roaches did start to appear sometime around when the neighbors who share an adjoining wall with us moved in. So, I'm going to say it was their fault. I mean, after all, the husband or father or whatever did get handcuffed and hauled away in a police car one morning. He did come back, but, still. If you can get arrested, it's possible you imported roaches.

So, the roaches were coming out in the kitchen and we tore the kitchen apart. We didn't see any evidence of nests, but we put roach gel and boric acid and bait stations everywhere. After a week or two, I started seeing dead roaches on the floor under the cabinets. It was gross, because some of them had their miscarriages laying next to them - undeveloped eggs with translucent teeny babies scattered around. Roaches are one of those examples in the animal kingdom where babies are not cute. I mean really, that goes for all insects. Anyway, every few weeks I have to redust with boric acid, and knock on wood (that is hopefully roach nest free) we haven't had an outbreak.

But, the ants. Every morning there is a trail of ants to this little piece of food that dropped on the tile floor. And so the FP sprays with that ecofriendly spray, and then the whole place smells like a pine forest, because it has peppermint oil and rosemary oil. Right now there's evidence of a mass ant genocide a couple feet away from me under the shelving unit that needs to be mopped up. I do believe in reincarnation, but I don't really follow Hinduism or Buddhism. I guess I just liked the idea of having an alternative ending to heaven, hell or purgatory. Also, I have met so many people over the years who look like someone else, or have a similar personality or mannerisms, that reincarnation makes sense to me. Although a more plausible theory would be that there is a limited number of human characteristics that a person can have, of course they could be mixed and matched, but then personalities who resemble others would be encountered quite often.

The part about reincarnation that I guess I don't worry about is the killing of lives. Pest lives of insects and vermin, that is. So, if someone is a human in one life, and he or she comes back as an ant, doesn't that mean that his or her karma was not good in his or her past lives so he or she is suffering the consequences. So, if ants or roaches that I kill were humans, then they were most likely not good people. Also, if I am shortening their lifespan, then am I not giving them a chance for another more interesting life sooner?

Although, I do feel like ant ghosts are haunting me. I have had many an ant crawl on my skin, so now I constantly feel like there's something crawling in my hair, on my arm, or my leg. It's really irritating, and I probably look like I have turrets or I'm going through withdrawal. (I love turrets syndrome. That will be a great topic for another day.) So, I do believe in ghosts as well. I never really contemplated how ghosts and reincarnation fit together in the scheme of things, but I'm not really a deep philosopher. Contemplating squirrel poop is one thing, but thinking about the beginning and end of the universe and the meaning of existence is too much for me. In fact, I think I scored poorly in the subject of philosophy. Anyway, I just like to patch together general ideas that I find desirable to make up my own little twisted world view. I just want to be in the sun and water as much as possible, and to be irritated as little as possible.