Ewwww

I apologize in advance for the subsequent content, but I really need to vent right now.

First off, I don't generally have a problem with bugs, or any creepy-crawly things. I can happily share my living space with arthropods from numerous subphyla. Give me your arachnids, your myriapods, even plain ol' insects and I don't bat an eye. Through many of my teenage years I lived with a box of feeder crickets in my room for my pet frog. Unlike some members of my family, a harmless silverfish doesn't cause me to freeze and holler at the top of my lungs for somebody else to come and kill it. (Warning to those of you who do exhibit such behavior: Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, stop reading right now.)

BUT.

I draw the line at roaches. In my mind they're dirty and totally unwelcome in my living quarters. Since I'm living in an older (rehabbed) apartment building, though, I understand that this may be beyond my control. The management has already come in and sprayed a couple of times since I moved in. Funnily enough, my first two incidents with roaches in my place happened in the week after these fumigations.

I suppose I should recap the first one... a single roach, apparently living in my doorjamb. I'm pretty sure I saw the same one twice, since it was sitting in the exact same position, a few inches down from the middle hinge, two days in a row. If it hadn't run for a hole on the floor at the base of the door (on the outside, thank goodness) I would have probably never seen it. It got away, but I consoled myself that it was merely at the threshhold of my living space and tried to forget about it. A few days later, however, I came home and started washing the breakfast dishes I'd left in the sink... when one scuttled out from under a dish and down behind the stove. I ran to get a roach-killer (aka tennis shoe) but I was too late. I finished washing up, re-washed the contents of the drain tray and the tray itself, and swore not to leave things in the sink. I moved the shoe back into my room, though, and when I walked back to the bedroom after a few minutes there it was (or possibly another one, perish the thought!) on the floor next to my sneaker. Splat.

They came and sprayed again last week. I thought things would simmer down. Ha.

This morning, I made my usual instant oatmeal before heading into the lab. I opened the trash to pitch the paper packet, and something was moving. That's right, one of the buggers had gotten into my trash and was living it up in there! I grabbed the bag, because that sucker was going out to the dumpster whether or not I had a full trashbag. Grab twist tie, seal bag... double-take. There's a teeny tiny beetly bug, maybe twice the size of your average black ant, sitting on another twist tie in the little handy pile I keep right next to the sink. There's several teeny tiny beetly bugs, actually. Waving their itsy bitsy antennae as if they own the place. I grab a tissue and commence wholesale slaughter, carefully moving the ties out of the way and examining them to make sure I don't miss any. Something like 25 bugs die by my hands in a few short minutes, and that's when I get to the bottom of the pile and find it... the spent egg case. That's right, they're breeding on my kitchen surfaces!!

Now, I keep a clean place. I vacuum regularly, don't pile stuff on the floor, never had more than one meal's worth of dishes waiting to be washed, wipe down food prep areas after use, and my kitchen trash has a lid (though apparently that won't stop them.) Except for the contents of the fridge, all of my food storage is in a pantry apart from the kitchen on an upper shelf. I simply can't fathom why these creatures can't go reproduce in some dank and damp space between the walls somewhere. Why my kitchen counter?

And I worry that if I call and see if the management will come spray again, it will just get worse. The dratted bugs will set up a dayspa in the bathroom, or start putting their family photos on my fridge.

Ugh. Just... ugh.

We're taking over the world...

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 13 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Distractions are fun!

I don't want to talk here about how my monster exam came out (if you really want to know and haven't heard from me already, you'll just have to track me down...) but I did promise a friend that I'd post a link this weekend for a brand-spankin'-new internet time-wasting venture of his.

Thus, without further ado:

Kiss or Diss

Enjoy!