You have heard of ant lions. Those bugs that build funnels in the sand and then hide at the bottom waiting for some happy little ant to blunder into their trap and become their next meal.

That was me this morning. Not the ant lion waiting to pounce but the happy little ant. Well, it was morning, so perhaps the blundering ant is more accurate.

I was just stumbling along through my morning when it was decided that Jane was too sick to go to school. That was the edge of the funnel and I didn’t even know it.  I blundered my way down into the sandpit, dragging Jane along with me to my parents to be half sick at their house while I helped with an all day plumbing project.  I spent the day thinking I should have sent her to school, watching her wilt and then thinking that I should have kept her at home to recover all while crawling around under summer cottages, removing dead raccoons and praying 100 year old plumbing would keep it’s issues to a minimum.

When the two of us returned home I was just happily cruising toward my doom without even knowing it. Jane was on an upswing, the other girls were in a good mood. Then John was really tired. And Clara threw up.  And John went to bed early with her. And then right at bed time (after a few more good vomits from Clara) a thunderstorm swung in and Jane was too scared to sleep.  And John was too busy getting up with Clara to sleep. And Ivy was sleeping until she was puking on her floor.  Which is how at 11 o’clock at night, as I was pulling old pet hair out of the steamer vacuum so that it had enough suction to get the rest of the puke out of the carpet, I realized that I was the happy little ant about to become lunch.

Cross your toes for me, I don’t think the ants make it out alive very often…