EEEEWWWWWWWW!!!!

Before I go off on today's rant, I would like to make it perfectly clear that my house is not "nasty" -- cluttered, sure, but not grimy, nasty, gross.  Yes, there is often spilt apple juice or grape jelly that needs to be wiped off of the table or counter top, but it is not like that for days on end or anything.  And yes, I have found the occasional half eaten Pop Tart in the kids room or the playroom, but there are 4 of them and I only have 2 eyes.  I DO miss some things.  And in fact, last week while picking up laundry, I found half of a grilled cheese sandwich from that days lunch and I totally freaked and started vacuuming and wiping down things.  The reason is I. Hate. Bugs.

SO, having made all of that abundantly clear, it will make more sense to you all why I did not sleep AT ALL last night. 

I got all of the kids bathed, teeth brushed, and tucked into bed at a relatively decent hour.  I then cleared 2 whole shows off of the DVR, brushed my own teeth, washed my face, and prepared for bed.  I was drifting off...in that blissful twilight where you are thinking that you should have turned on the dishwasher and then you are suddenly in Willy Wonka's factory, when my eyes fluttered open.  Just for a second.  Just long enough to see a huge, nasty, winged, cock-roach crest the edge of my bed.  Right in my face.  Twitching his horrendous little antennae inches from my face.  I think that in order to have seen me move, you would have had to slow down the film.  I was LITERALLY out of the bed, lights on, SHOES on, within 3 seconds.  This was not a normal household cock-roach -- it is the kind that lives outside around woodpiles and flies around the street lights.  It took me 15 minutes to track the offensive creature under my bed, another 5 to chase it out with the use of bug spray (by this I mean "OFF" not Raid, because I could not find any bug spray since we never have roaches), and 0.06 seconds to squash it to oblivion.  My heart was pounding as if I had just fought off an attacker twice my size, there was sweat on my upper lip, I was breathing heavy, and my adrenaline was through the roof.  I went and unrolled no fewer than 6 feet of toilet paper to dispose of his remains before flushing him down the toilet.  I managed to find a 1/2 empty container of "Home Defense MAX" bug spray that Gary uses to treat the garage and outside of the house, and I sprayed all around the door to my bedroom.  The bathroom.  The hallway.  The doors and windows to the outside.  Basically everything I could until the damned thing was empty. 

I was so freaked out that as I lay there trying to calm down so that I could get a little sleep, I thought every little noise was another bug.  The AC kicking on was the flutter of wings, the tick-tick of the clock on the bathroom wall was hairy little roach legs walking, and then of course, there were all of the bugs that I "felt" that weren't there.  One of the problems with having long hair is that you have strays; little hairs that tickle the back of your arm or your face.  This, is NOT a good thing when you have just been molested in your bed by a roach.  So I stayed awake, rather unintentionally, just unable to settle down and relax.

Even now, more than 12 hours later, the slightest brush of hair against my arm sends me reeling.  The slightest shadow in the corner of my eye makes me think I am about to be attacked.  I had an exterminator in Georgia once tell me "Oh, those are wood roaches.  They cannot survive more than 3 or 4 days in a house."  As if this somehow made it okay that they got in in the first place.  We did have one in the house last year.  I was in the kitchen, barefoot, making lunches for the next day and the damned thing attempted to crawl up my leg on the INSIDE of my yoga pants.  I screamed like a mountain lion and danced around like a whirling dervish and the kids had to help me kill it because I was so shaken.  I do not care if they are only able to live inside for a few days, I do NOT want them in my house.  Ever.  Period.

Man, I HATE bugs.