My chemical household.

When I was a kid, it was my job to help clean the house every week. As I got older, it became my job to clean the house on my own (it was a small house - not a biggie). One of the things my mother told me repeatedly was, "don't ever mix ammonia and bleach products - it will make chlorine gas, and that could kill you." So I was always really careful about the products I used, especially when cleaning the toilet, since it was in cleaning the toilet that such products could be mixed.

Until last week, when I found myself cleaning the toilet with ammonia and about to pour bleach into the bowl.

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We have ants in the bathroom. They are the small, reddish-brown variety, the ones I've always known as "sweet ants." I sent Mr. Plain(s)feminist out last night to buy poison, and I set it out for them, right next to the hole they were coming in from, and I sat there and watched the little buggers for a half hour, and they completely ignored it. You know how if you drop a popsicle or something on the ground, and there are no ants anywhere in sight, and then you turn around five minutes later and it's crawling with them? Yeah, that's not what happened here. They turned up their tiny ant antennae and very pointedly crawled underneath the little plastic square, just so they could rub my nose in the fact that they were totally uninterested in what I had to offer. So then I got some black pepper and sprinkled it around and in their little holes in the caulk, and at first I thought that that had made a difference, but when I went back later, they had moved it out of their way so they could keep running around. So finally, I mixed up some Borax and sugar water, and I dripped it all around and in their holes and where they were walking. Hah! I've got them now, those little fuckers.