TAMI DO NOT READ

I'm not joking, Tami. Stop reading! You will never forgive me or even speak to me again if you read this, I fear.

****

I had a little trauma last night.

I woke up last night because something was brushing against me. I brushed it off, mostly still asleep, and something about the way it moved woke me fully up.

There was a cockroach in my bed and it was wanting to crawl all over me.

I've never moved out of my - or any - bed so fast. I stared at it, and it stared back. It had no fear, and it seemed to think it was tucking itself in for the night.

I looked around, but I have no shoes up there, and I'd already used the book Bayou Farewell to kill the wasp in my bed weeks ago and it was not successful. I needed something substantial. (Good book, by the way - just not solid enough for vermin elimination. In fact, I recommend that anybody reading this right now go read the linked review of Bayou Farewell instead of continuing with this stupid post.)

I went downstairs, shaking, and pulled out the Raid I'd just put away in my cleaning frenzy (thinking my life was going to be cockroach free, I'd put away all the weapons of roach destruction).

It was still on my bed, so I had to spray Raid all over the bed and pillows. Then it decided to scuttle away so I sprayed the hell out of its writhing poisoned body on the floor.

And then I stripped my bed, scrubbed myself clean, grabbed some clean sheets, and made up a bed on the couch downstairs. Where I woke up every little while to do a quick perimeter scan to feel safe.

Now, I KNOW that I'm being a drama queen here, but just let me be a drama queen. This is really, really disgusting. If it happened to me in Africa or South America, I wouldn't really sweat it - it would be a cultural experience and I'd take my response cue from locals. But this is my home, and the bed I planned on sleeping in for years to come. I'm not on a vacation in a tropical destination with circumstances out of my control. And the locals here, such as Tami, flip with far more vigor than I do about roaches. I think that I handled the reality of sanitizing all surfaces on a regular basis quite well, and of living with all my food in serious containers, and cleaning up every single thing immediately - I think I've handled this infestation fine. But in my bed? I draw the fucking line. Maybe I'll put up a bed net. It's just a pain in the ass and overkill - I have no mosquitoes inside.

So, when I talk about the wasp and the roach in my bed, I'm not talking about really bad dates that I brought home. I'm talking literally about a wasp and a roach. And I'm very unhappy about this.

So I texted the Hot Honduran. I wasn't going to blog about this because I actually WANT my friends to visit me and not be scared off by the vermin. But I have to talk about it. The Hot Honduran never got back to me. So I just texted him again saying, "Hello? I'm traumatized here." Still nothing.

And I'm sure that he thinks I'm being an extremely annoying girl, and if his attitude doesn't change to considerably more sympathetic then I'll be putting his meatloaf in a to-go container and kicking his sorry ass out the door. I'm willing to put up with a lot from him because it's not a relationship, and I think maybe I'll influence him positively as a hang-out buddy (seriously, he makes ME look like the one with the soft heart rather than the hard-ass). But I will NOT hang out with somebody who isn't sympathetic to my trauma, however stupid it may be. Not as a friend, and certainly not as a booty call. I don't even care if it's real sympathy or fake - I just need a show of it. Which he won't do, and now he's being stubborn about it, especially after yesterday when I told him he was being an ass. And I can be just as stubborn, and as badly as I need to get laid, it's not nearly bad enough that I will put up with anything less than perfection in a Rebound Boy. He thinks I want him and that's that - why do men always seem to think that? It's far more complicated than that. So, I'll give him a chance tonight but it looks like he may well blow it. And I'll end up being a crazy spinster - because lack of sex makes me crazy, and I have really unreasonable expectations for men. Which I know is my biggest problem, but seriously - why would I settle? Once I get really fully over Dayton, I'll be ok again with being single forever. Not just ok, but thrilled with it. It was just D that changed me. And yeah, it was a rough night because I knew exactly how D would have responded if he were there and it would have been perfect. And of course it's not fair to compare anyone to the memories of an ex, but when will I stop doing that as my first reaction to anything?

Now I will insert a metaphor I came up with that I've been wanting to use. When I was in high school my dad had a big pickup that I'd drive. It ran ok overall, but had a major problem shifting - frequently the clutch wouldn't work and it would get stuck in gear. (I clearly don't understand the mechanisms here, but I just know that I couldn't shift gears.) Then I'd have to pull it over to the side of the road (there was no road allowing over about 40 mph anyway, so it wasn't a big deal), pop the hood, and manually move the gear out of the notches. Then it would ride along ok for awhile, then get stuck again, and the process would repeat.

This is how I'm doing about Dayton. I'll be riding along doing just fine and then something will happen and suddenly I'm stuck in 2nd Dayton gear and my heart freezes up and whatever I'm doing in that moment becomes completely meaningless and he's all I can think about. And I have to do something to kick out of that gear, until I get stuck in it again. Clearly I need a new pickup.

So anyway, I'm way exhausted and grossed out, and haven't yet "mustered the guts" (HH would tell me to do that - he has before) to go clean up the roach death mess upstairs and start all the numerous loads of laundry I'm going to do to rid all traces of it.

And if the Hot Honduran doesn't end up in my bed tonight, I'm sleeping on the couch again probably. Some mighty powerful force will be required to overcome the bad roach juju up there. It was supposed to be my sanctuary, so I feel a little betrayed by the universe right now.

So, thanks to Jenny who was on-line last night when I was handling my trauma, for showing appropriate sympathy. And I will be happy to take anymore shows of sympathy for this calamitous trauma. Yes people (anybody who has made it this far deserves a medal anyway), just let me be a freakin drama queen today, please.