My Life is an Acid Bath

My hate-hate relationship with roaches is well-known and documented. If possible, my hate for them has increased over the past few days. Join me in my vendetta against them.

It all started last Wednesday with what I thought was going to be a truly wonderful day. The pest control people came out to spray the house on Wednesday afternoon (thanks for the tip Moms!). I breathed a sigh of relief just knowing that the poison was seeping through and spreading death in my house. I realized I would probably see a few dead roaches here and there for a couple days. Little did I know the revenge they would exact upon me.

It started Thursday evening. The fabulous three had some girls over for dinner. As we were sitting around the dining room table I heard someone gasp. I immediately realized what must be happening and jumped up on my chair. At that moment a cockroach ran out FROM UNDER THE DINING TABLE and ran across the room. He had been lurking under there...where our feet were. I was barefoot even! Kristen grabbed some paper towels and crushed him as I screamed from atop the chair. I wasn't really comfortable for the rest of the evening.

Friday morning comes around and Kristen finds FOUR dead ones scattered around the house. Well good, at least they're dying.

Saturday evening I have a friend over for dessert. I prepare some freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies to make cookie sundaes. She arrives and I give her a tour of the hellhole. The tour lasts approximately 15 minutes, after which we go back into the kitchen to serve dessert. I am standing in front of the tray of cookies, warming up the fudge sauce in the microwave. I reach out to pick up a cookie and nearly faint in the process. There is a HUGE roach ON MY COOKIES!!! He is raping the sanctity of my cookies. It was one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. He looked at me and laughed as he violated my cookies. Then he ran into our stove! Kristen turned on the burners and the oven in the hopes that we could fry him.

Sunday is roach-free. Praise God.

Monday I get home from work and find dead roaches everywhere. I am incapable of picking them up and my roommates decide they can't handle it either. So I send cry for help to a friend. Here's what the text said: "I need your help! There are SIX dead cockroaches in the house. I am frightened." My friend calls me immediately to see how bad the situation is. Turns out he is watching the NCAA championship game and isn't really in the area. So I decide to move on to my next victim, err, I mean friend. Another text message goes out. A desperate plea for assistance. By this time ANOTHER dead roach is found which brings our count up to seven. I get a call back and tell my friend about the predicament. He starts laughing at me because I can't even get my thoughts out in complete sentences. He puts me on speaker phone so the other person in the room can laugh at me too. I am not amused. He takes me off speaker phone and tells me he will be there in about 15 minutes. I feel a little better.

As I wait for him to arrive I decide I need a calming influence. I sit on my bed and open my Bible. I am there for about five minutes when I hear a slight rustling sound and notice some movement out of the corner of my eye. I look to my left and there is a GIANT cockroach CRAWLING UP MY CURTAINS JUST INCHES FROM MY HEAD!!!! I literally scream and fly off the bed and out of the room, clutching my Bible and starting to cry. My roommates come running and they don't see the beast right away. I am jumping up and down in the hall pointing at the curtains, trying to communicate the horror of what is happening. Finally they see him and go on the offensive. He drops onto my bed (shudder) and starts running around on my bed before jumping down to the floor. He is now scurrying on the floor in my room and Kristen shouts for someone to hand her a shoe. All three of us are screaming. Dinah grabs a shoe off my shoe rack (my second favorite pair) and Kristen beats him to death.

I am hyper-ventillating in the hall, still clutching my now crumpled and bent Bible. We all start laughing/crying and begin to settle down. I glance back into my room and realize HE IS NOT DEAD. The roach has resurrected and is attempting to make his getaway. I start screaming again and run into the bathroom to grab a can of Raid. Dinah sprays him and he starts twitching and convulsing. We leave the room again. Next thing I know, he is making ANOTHER getaway. Dinah sprays him into oblivion and I run downstairs hoping desperately for my friend to show up and rescue me from this nightmare.

My friend knocks on the door about five minutes later. He has arrived and he brought back-up. The two men go through the house, sweeping up cockroach carcasses. They end up with piles of roaches...they lose count. Then they go into my room to collect the bodies from in there. We think the beast is under my armoire. One of them leans down to look under and tells me my carpet smells really good, like Febreze. I inform him that he's smelling Raid. They can't find the roach. He's like the Houdini of vermin. After much searching, he is discovered burrowed under a corner of my comforter on the floor. I plan to burn my comforter tonight.

Finally all the bodies are removed from the premises and after much consolation and counseling from the two knights-in-shining-armor, I am calmed down enough to sit on the furniture and start normal breathing patterns.

I am going apartment hunting tomorrow...in Siberia. I am told they don't have roaches there.