Not moments after I posted the last post Joey jumped out of bed and crashed to the floor.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Do you really want to know?" He said, hesitantly.

"Um...yes...." Joey slammed his hand into the carpet numerous times.

"It's dead." He said, stoutly.

I screamed. Loud.

"ONE WAS IN OUR ROOM?!"

"Yeah...Henry was pawing at it..."

And so now I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep tonight. I think those slimy creatures are nocturnal or something. Maybe if I sleep with a light on...

It Gets Worse

We were just getting ready to go to bed tonight when Joey said, "I haven't read your blog yet today." So he sat down and did just that.

He finished it, looked up and asked asked, "So are you really going to call them?"

"Um, call them?" I got up off the couch and stretched.

"Yeah, the exterminators."

"Of course. I can't handle those nasty things."

Joey looked down at his lap in a Very Mysterious Way.

"What?" I asked.

"Well....I didn't want to tell you..." he started.

"Tell me what?" I demanded.

"They're coming on Tuesday. To exterminate," he mumbled.

"Wow, is that supposed to be like a surprise? Did you read my mind?" I asked.

"No."

"Well, what then?" I probed.

"I saw a cockroach in here last night--"

I screamed bloody murder, louder than I have screamed in a very long time.

"Where?! What!" I ran straight to the bathroom (don't ask me why) all the while looking around very nervously to see if any cockroaches were in my line of sight.

"It was in the office. It flew by my head and I thought it was a rubber band...then it climbed up my desk and I realized what it was."

"Did you get it? Is it dead?" I wailed.

"No...it got away."

I screamed again.

And so between now and Tuesday I will probably be living on pins and needles. Honestly; cockroaches in MY house!! (My very clean house!) What's worse is that it'll take something like three rounds of extermination to be sure all the little roachies are dead, too, said the man at the leasing office.

It doesn't make any sense to me. We have a very nice apartment in a very nice complex with very nice, new carpet. Now, how the stink do we have cockroaches? Joey said the guy told him they're in the walls. (That's reassuring...)

Oh my gosh, we might have to move.

And on that note, I'm going to go to bed before one flies past my head and I freak out and throw the laptop against the coffee table in a mad dash for someplace where the cockroach is not. (Granted, I'm not sure where that would be anymore, though.)

Cockroaches

Two nights ago Joey and I were going through the Dumpster in search of our old trash. This was, of course, in a last-ditch effort to find my cell phone.

The Dumpster had recently been emptied, so fortunately neither of us had to climb in. (Had that been the case, Joey was definitely the one that was going inside!) We shone our flashlights inside and threw trash bags around to ascertain whether or not our trash was still inside.

It was not.

I was getting bored and my arm was getting sore from holding the flashlight. Out of the corner of my eye I saw what I thought were leaves blowing around on the pavement. Since I was (am?) fairly distracted, I skipped over to see what the movement was.

It was not leaves.

It was....

"OHMIGOSH! OHMIGOSH! OHMIGOSH! OHMIGOSH!" I screamed, running around the parking lot. At 9:30 p.m.

"WHAT?! What's the matter?" Joey asked, trying to figure out what in the world was wrong with his suddenly hysterical wife.

"I.....they....there's...." I couldn't say it, I just pointed to the ground.

Cockroaches. Rather large ones. Circling the Dumpster and running around the parking lot.

"It's OK, it's just cockroaches," Joey said.

I did one of those full-body shudders and ran to the sidewalk.

"I hate cockroaches." I wimpered.

"You're OK now. They won't hurt you," Joey rationalized.

"I hate cockroaches," I repeated, "Can't handle them at all."

Seeing he wasn't going to get anywhere with that line of reasoning, he took my arm and guided me into the house.

In order to properly appreciate my irrational fear of cockroaches, one must understand just how irrational it is. Joey and I went to China a couple months after we were married and, fortunately, our apartment was on the top floor of our building or we'd have seen a lot more cockroaches than we did see.

However, one evening I was going downstairs to place a call back to the US (a phone interview for a job, no less) and there was a cockroach on the stairs. A huge one. I refused to go past it and went back upstairs to get Joey so he could do something (who knows what) about the situation.

I was actually late to make the phone call because of this cockroach.

I sheepishly admitted to the man I was interviewing with that a cockroach had made me late for the interview. Fortunately for me that guy has a great sense of humor and, last time I checked, he still tells the story about one of his employees who called in from China to do a phone interview...and was late because of a cockroach.

And when I got back the roach was still there.

Only this time he was defying gravity and hanging on the wall ledge in between the stairs. I said lots of rude things to the roach as I walked by (much to the amusement of the members of my team who were staying on the same floor that this cockroach was on) and forced myself to walk up the stairs anyway.

I didn't take my shoes off for days after that. Wouldn't want to accidentally step on a roach, now, would you?

I'm going to call maintenance to see if they can schedule an emergency roach-spray of our apartment. Just in case. Our apartment is nowhere near the Dumpster...but what if they followed me?!

The whole thing gives me jibblies just thinking about it.