Cereal is my favorite thing to eat in the mornings when I'm writing. It’s fast, easy, delicious, and I really like the heat differential between a spoonful of O’s and a sip of Earl Grey.  My latest box was an old classic: Honey Nut Cheerios, but I’ve not be eating them as General Mills had probably ever envisioned, though I could say it’s as nature intended: Sprinkled with ants.

As soon as the ground thawed we realized that by moving into this house we’d inherited an ant infestation from the hoarder who lived here before. The Hoarder Before sounds like one of those books you'd find at a Hudson News in an airport.

With the housing crisis still collecting cobwebs, it’s a buyers’ market and Austen Pratchett is buying up everything in her old neighborhood. The raised ranch on the corner where the bully used to live? SOLD. The modern, three bedroom family where she used to climb the rose trellis like in that Melissa Etheridge song? SOLD.

Austen just closed, sight unseen, on the oldest house on the street: a three-story Victorian owned by Jeanine Stavros, who the local kids used to call Granny Doom. BUT this is the first house Austen has purchased where she inherited the owner’s past as well.

Oh man, what does that MEAN? She “inherited the owner’s past”? I’m not teasing you, I literally wrote that before thinking about what it might mean. Anyway, this is the worst I’ve ever seen ants except like, when they find an orange creamsicle that your little sister knocked out of your hand-- maybe by accident…? --and you just leave it to melt on the sidewalk.

Been thinking about it and Austen Pratchett needs to be played by Will Forte:

So we've got ants and they got into the box of HN Cheerios and I didn't notice before I poured myself a bowl, and there they are swimming in the milk like that scene in Honey I Shrunk the Kids, which is super weird because that’s what inspired the post last week.

Rather than pick them out, or throw them away I just added milk and started chomping away (it’s not my first time eating ants after all). Though there was one time my Mimi tried to feed me a bowl of Rice Krispies filled with meal worms when I was like seven. But I have to say, the only noticeable quality of eating ants as part of my complete breakfast was a slightly tart hint of orange from their formic acid.  Though I do seem to remember hearing someone tiny yell, “Aaaaaah, don’t eat me!”

Should have thought of that before you starting playing hula-hoop in my breakfast, assholes.