August 19, 2005

Not a happy camper. I was excited to sit back and relax tonight, watch a movie and maybe even go to bed early. So I did the sit back, I did the relax, I turned on the movie. About an hour later I noticed something move out of the corner of my eye. Something large and black on my open closet door. Oh dear Lord, it is not what I think it is. I jump up. It jumps. It can see me! Yes, it's a gokiburi. A cockroach. In my house. In MY space, next to my things. How long has it been in here? How did it get in here? Oh dear Lord, help me, how am I going to get it out of here??? Needless to say I freaked out. Like bad. I consider myself a relatively stable person. Sure I get a little excited sometimes, but generally speaking I can hold my own. Um yeah. About that. Not so much evidently when it comes to dealing with cockroaches. So I'm thinking to myself how am I going to catch it or kill it? Mostly I'm just jumping around my flat making lots of noise and it goes into my storage closet. Thank you Lord it wasn't in my bedroom and in my clothes closet. I think I would be walking around naked after that as I would have burned everything I owned. It's in my closet, it's IN my closet. What am I going to do, how on earth am I supposed to get this thing out of my place? As I'm walking around it is freaking out as well and moving all over the place based on what I am doing. Oh Lord, it's aware of me, it knows I exist, it can see me. THIS IS NOT OKAY IN MY WORLD!!!! I grab a container, I'll catch it. I'll catch it like a spider. I've done that a million times. I can't even get near it it's so fast. It's so grooooossss. I can't. I can't do this. Lord, you've got to help me cause I can't do this. I'll call Michelle, she'll know what to do. I just need a pep-talk. I need to know that I CAN do this, I'm just not sure what to do yet. No answer. I'll put my shoes on. That will help. It can't run over my feet that way. As I pick up my shoes I think of my sink cupboard. I LOVE STEPHANIE. When she left the country she said she left roach spray under the sink!! I have roach spray. I root around in the cupboard and find it. How do I use this stuff? How close to I have to get? I hate this. I hate this. (You do realize that I'm crying hysterically now, right? I mean, you can read between the lines and get that, right?) Okay, okay. I'll go spray the thing till it dies a horrible, chemically induced death. As I'm spraying the entire closet, it's running all over the place while trying not to leave the "protection" it thinks it has found in the form of my vacuum cleaner and ironing board. I completely gassed the whole area. I'm sure it wasn't good for me but quite frankly I don't care. I can't tell if it's dead or not. There's something black under the ironing board that isn't moving but I can't tell if it's just a mark in the wood or it's IT. I spray under the ironing board again. Just in case. I finally decide that it must be it, not like I'm going to get down and look closely at it so I'm not positive. I move my vacuum and it, thankfully starts to pull the ironing board out with it. Everything is covered in roach bomb residue. Totally gross. To think that I'm touching a substance that could possibly kill one of those things just grosses me out. It's there, on the floor of my closet. I don't want to go near it or even look at it. I grab the container I was going to use to catch it and put it over it. Without actually looking at it. It's clear plastic. I can still see the thing. I don't want to look at it. It can't stay in my space. It must leave. How on earth am I going to get this thing out of here. I need a pep-talk. I can do this. I call Michelle again. This time she answers but she's at a friend's place so she can't talk. She has time enough for "Michelle. You're fine. You can do this. I need you to take a deep breath. Michelle. Breath, honey. I don't think you're breathing. Okay, now count to ten. You can do this. I'll call you back in a little bit. Breath." I try to sit back down. I can see it. Lying there under the clear plastic, dead. It's still in my space. It needs to leave. I go to the kitchen. I don't have any non-clear hard plastic containers. I have grocery bags but that will never do. Ah, but I can put one over the container and then I can't see it. Okay. So now I can't see it. I sit back down. The sweat is positively dripping off of me. I sit back down to my comp. Mum is on Skype. "MUM! I HAD A ROACH IN MY HOUSE!!!" After talking to mum for like over an hour and not being able to see it I had calmed down enough it think a little clearer. I still couldn't think of anyway to get it out of the house. I need some thin cardboard. I don't have any. I only have full cereal boxes. Bah, cereal be damned. Dump the cereal, cut up the box. Okay. I can do this. I open the front door. I slide the cardboard under the container, freaking out the whole time, I hold onto the top, I scoot out the front door and toss the whole lot off the balcony and into the neighbouring parking lot. Ew, ew, ew. I'm free. It's gone. Okay. So it's like after midnight and I'm going to clean this place. I go on a cleaning spree unlike you've seen before. I toss the garbage out on the balcony. I wipe everything down, even the floors. I didn't think this place was dirty before. I managed to finish the movie, clean my place, move my futon onto my kitchen table and I was a sleep, on my kitchen table, by 3:30 in the morning.