mexican ant dance

So, didn't do P90X tonight.  A very good friend had a birthday today and we went out to dinner to celebrate.  Mexican food.  I had a veggie tostada and a cheese tamale and it was fantastic.  Of course now I feel like a blimp - note:  rice?  not my friend anymore.  I can see how all those people get by on just 1 cup a day - it fills you UP.

And where, you might be asking, do the ants come into play?  Well I discovered this weekend, whilst working in the yard, trying to dislodge grass from around a clump of fantastic daffodils, that I am allergic to ant bites.  I didn't even realize I was sitting in them till they were all over me and while I am happy to say they didn't bite me everywhere, they did get me on my wrists.  Today is the 4th day and these things have swollen up to look like some sort of horrible acne or plague.  It's about all I can do to not scratch all the time. I have plastered Caladryl lotion (see: poison oak/ivy stuff) on them and that holds me for about 7 hours and then I have to do it again.

The thing is, I was thinking while out there digging in the dirt, killing off these industrious little (biting) creatures.  And (I realize that I'm looking for morals to the story but bear with me) I came up with a couple of correlations.  First of all you have the ants.  Working SUPER hard to create colonies and working in groups to do it.  They can carry an amazingly huge amount of weight, and they just keep on going.  Until the job is done.  And then they go on to the next thing.  Of course I'm thinking about exercise and how my job is not going to be done for a lot of pounds, but it's not impossible.  If those tiny little buggars can do it - I can.  

Then we come to roots.  I don't know if you've ever looked closely at the roots of crab grass or clover before but I have had multiple occasions over the last 2 weeks to see them.  At first glance they look like ramen.  Not even joking.  I'd pull up the old weed barrier and there would be this mass of curly white things in a bunch.  And they were DEEP in the ground.  Feet from where the stalk was defacing my otherwise beautiful landscape.  It took a lot of work to get them out.  The deeper the root, the harder it was to pull out.  And of course I related this to my eating habits.  I have had YEARS to create my bad habits.  Years of "oh just go to Taco Bell" or "I'll drive" instead of walking...  And the deeper that root is the harder it is to dislodge it.  But if you keep at it and just do something consistently you CAN get rid of the roots.

So that's my mission right now:  getting rid of the old roots and purposefully planting new ones.  And being as consistent as I know how.  (And I'm German and Irish - I can do stubborn until it's consistent...)

One day.  One step.  One pound at a time.
~N