{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Ant Farm","description":"On this week\u2019s Keepin It Real, Cam has learned that there are moments in time where a simple guttural sound really really matters. And they can\u2019t accumulate because they expire quickly. All this relates back to an incomplete Christmas present.  ----- I got an ant farm for Christmas. My kids laughed and they told their friends and they laughed but my family came through and on Christmas morning I opened an ant farm. It has a main chamber and two auxiliary chambers. I set it up just like the pictures showed. A few weeks ago, in March, I got the ants for my birthday. Apparently, the farm didn\u2019t come with ants, a detail we overlooked. They are harvester ants and I worked with an ant guy in Raleigh to select the species. He wanted pictures of the farm and info on where the farm would be positioned in relation to lights and windows and such. He considered Mobile\u2019s humidity and suggested harvester ants. I pretended like I gave his suggestion some thought and agreed. They are, right now, working diligently over my shoulder from their spot on the kitchen counter. Every day all of us stop in front of the farm to comment about the work they\u2019ve done overnight. Last night my wife and I spent a while on my new favorite AI called Claude \u2013 I call him Claudius because he feels Roman to me \u2013 and learned that ants can go a month without food, they really need water, they nap for two minutes at a time, and their poop is microscopic. I\u2019ve dropped hints about needing a big magnifying glass so we can see them up close, identify each of them and name them. Laugh all you want at my ant farm, but I\u2019ve become very proud and protective of the health and vitality of my ants. Last night as my wife was staring in at the ants, she made some thoughtful observations about them. Each of the things she said, grammatically speaking, ended with a period and not a question mark. I remained focused on whatever I was doing, and I noticed a sudden change in her body language as she quickly stood up and walked away. My inner alarms sounded. \u201cDid I do something wrong?\u201d I asked. Well, apparently, in my house, my wife\u2019s thoughtful observations about ants deserve acknowledgements from me. Some sort of something suggesting I heard her and am now also considering her shared observations. And that sound is, I think, this: Huh. For example, when my wife says \u2018That ant, I think his name is Bruno, is carrying a grain of sand all the way from the main chamber to the little water chamber and found a perfect spot to put it.\u2019 I should reply: Huh. Apparently, based on her tone and body language in the debriefing of my errant ways, that \u2018Huh\u2019 matters. A lot. So all last night I offered lots of Huhs. And gave some extras that I asked her to bank for when I forget to reply Huh to her future sentences that end in periods and not question marks. I was told, however, that Huhs don\u2019t bank, which is a shame. So, get an ant farm. Don\u2019t forget the ants. Don\u2019t forget to Huh after your wife says something about the ants and it gets uncomfortably quiet in the room. I\u2019m Cam Marston and I\u2019m just trying to keep it real. ","author_name":"Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston","author_url":"https:\/\/cammarston.com\/keepin-it-real-with-cam-marston\/","html":"