This weekend I had a four day weekend for the Fourth of July. Under normal circumstances, I would have gone away just because I had the time off. This year however, I am trying to be more financially responsible and stop wasting money on going places just because I have the time off. I really prefer longer trips because you get more bang for your buck on airfare. I can not take a long trip this time by adding onto the holiday because I just took 892347832947 days off and I am running low on vacation time. I am not allowed to gamble until my birthday so Atlantic City is out. There is pretty much nothing else anywhere near here that I would want to pay holiday rates on hotels for.
So I decide to be extra responsible and spend a long weekend at home. I had a bunch of mental plans. I managed to score some good books at the library, I picked up a DVD from Redbox, I thought I would do some NYC sightseeing to get some filler content for this blog…
Then on Wednesday, night one – I was sitting on my couch trying to decide if I was going to watch my DVD before I went to bed, or save it for the next day. As much as I love living alone, it would have been nice to have anyone hear me inexplicably say out loud “If you don’t go to bed right now, you are going to regret it” just moments before turning on the light to put in the DVD and suddenly start screaming when I spot the fucking ginormous super sized roach sitting on top of the crown moulding around my windowsill. God fucking DAMN IT. I should have gone to fucking bed.
For the next half hour, I lived through hell. I tried to get him with a broom. He vanished. I wasn’t sure if he was stuck IN the broom so I kept smashing that on the ground to see if he would come out. When he would not, I kept going until the broom broke and straw flew everywhere which caused me to again scream bloody murder as I thought all that straw was a family of roaches flying out.
I end up throwing the broom outside my front door, hoping that bastard is indeed in there and go back to trying to watch my DVD. After about five minutes, it happens.
Let’s go back to 2010, shall we? that is the last time I saw a huge fucking disgusting fucking roach in that very same spot. It was during Hurricane Irene. That time, I could not get him with a broom, much like this time. This is because of the fucking crown moulding. He isn’t on a reachable surface, he is hiding behind the stupid fancy “oh how pretty” crown moulding.
So I tried to Dyson him out. I thought I had succeeded until I sat back down post-dumping the bin out in the toilet and not looking because I was too scared to look, before I flushed. Then UGH DEATH, antennae kept popping out of the spot. DHKJHFKJSDHKJDSGFDSKJGDKSGFSDKJ
The top of my windowsill is so high up that I cannot see up there unless I am far away. But no matter how far I would back up, all I could see was antennae. Did I Dyson his body out and are the antennae stuck there? Or is ALL OF HIM stuck back there? Is he in a hole? Is that maybe please possibly not even antennae? Maybe it is a piece of my hair? One of the side effects of one of my medications is hair loss and I shed a LOT. Like a LOT a lot. There is hair everywhere all over my apartment. Back in March I was sicker than I have ever been in my life, complete with hallucinations from having a fever that was so high. I didn’t Dyson my carpet for a week because I could not stand up long enough to do so. When I was finally feeling better, I Dysoned. For the first time in a week. Upon instant I started FREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKING OUT because I had shed so much during that week that when I turned the Dyson on, it began pulling a week’s worth of hair out of the carpet and it freaked me out to see something dark running across my carpet. It wasn’t something dark running across my carpet. It was a week’s worth of my stupid hair being pulled from the carpet. THAT is how much I shed. That is why back in 2010 I was hoping that this stupid thing was maybe a piece of hair.
I ended up Dysoning that spot like a maniac for a bazillion hours and then had to stop to fixate on my fear that the hurricane would pull my air conditioner out of my window. I never saw any evidence of this mother fucker again, and believe me, I check to the point that if anyone were watching me on a hidden camera in my apartment, they would think I have a nervous tick that causes me to randomly whip my head up to check if there is anything up there.
Now here were are three years later, and either IT is back, or there is a new one in the same freaking spot. All I see is antennae, which is the most disgusting part of any bug. I want to kill myself. I keep stabbing away at the antennae with a mop since I no longer own a broom. For hours.
Finally I just give up. There is nothing I can do here. I go into my bedroom and shut the door and blocked off the bottom with a pair of sweatpants so it can’t crawl under. Never mind that the door barely opens at all anyway since there is no space under there, you can never be too safe. Then I spent the night tossing and turning and having nightmares about roaches crawling all over me.
Thursday. I wake up and look for this gross disgusting bastard several times, never see him. I think I may be safe just like back in 2010. I begin to wonder if he is the same mother fucker or if maybe there is some infestation back in that stupid spot. Surely if there were, I would have seen one at some point in the past three years. But at the same time, can it really be the same one hiding back there for three years? Doesn’t seem likely. I fixate on this for a while. Then I can’t take it anymore and I manage to fall asleep on my couch since I never slept the night before. I get up and go to return my DVD. I come back and check the spot. Nothing. I keep checking the spot. Nothing. I check every other second. I am trying to read a book and I cannot read because I cannot get through any one sentence without checking. I am driving myself insane. Every time I see anything at all move, I freak out. My hair is longer than it’s ever been before so I can feel it touching spots on my arm it has never been able to reach before. Every time, I think it’s a roach. Every time a stray hair blows, I think it’s a roach. There are SO many stray hairs all over my apartment. I Dyson every day, so much hair. At some point during the night, the wind blew and the tree outside blocked the street lamp outside for a second and I was convinced that the shadow was a roach.
I could not take my eyes off that spot.
Which of course, is how I manage to see the antennae the very second it makes its appearance. OH FUCKING CHRIST. The next two hours I am fighting this. I cannot kill this fucking thing; it is clearly stuck behind the moulding. Nothing I do knocks it out. I just keep scraping away at the antennae (KSHFJKDHJD) and it keeps vanishing and then coming back. I cannot take this anymore. I end up going to bed completely mentally exhausted.
Friday! Today I take a trip to Target and buy some Combat gel to kill this mother fucker with. I read the directions. You have to put it out in dime sized dots in spaces you saw the mother fuckers. I cannot reach that high. I am petrified to go up on a ladder since the time I changed my bathroom light and fell off the ladder, grabbed onto the towel bar to save my life, BROKE the towel bar since it was made of plastic, and smashed into my bathtub.
But I have to do this. I have to.
So I get up on the ladder and am sweating and shaking and panicking. I think I am more scared of falling off the ladder than I am of a roach popping out. I didn’t actually look above the ledge because I am too scared to, but I get the tube up there and blindly squeeze out what I am guessing/hoping are dime sized dots. Once I am done, I am so relieved and I go to step off the ladder. I miss the last step. I trip and fall backwards. I reach out to grab onto anything and there is nothing. I end up crashing into my living room table, which is the exact opposite of stable. So that collapses for the millionth time (ask anyone who has been in my apartment if they have collapsed my table and you have great odds that they have) and stuff goes flying everywhere.
So now I have to clean this up and put the table back together again. I go into the kitchen to get paper towels since there is an entire bottle of water spilled everywhere. I come back in the living room and start having a heart attack HOLY SHIT FUCK JESUS CHRIST. UH. The dime sized dots that I blindly made. They are HUGE globs. Now I knew that the Combat was dark colored. I did not realize that I was squeezing out WAY too much. So now when you walk into the room, there are these large Hershey Kiss sized brown globs on top of the windowsill and they look like roaches. WHAT THE FUCK COMBAT, WHY WOULD YOU MAKE THE GEL BROWN?
I go back to dealing with my table. I clean up all the water. I take advantage of the fact that the huge glass top is off to clean the entire underside of it, which I normally can’t reach. I put everything back together. I sit back down on my couch and try to breathe a sigh of relief that EVERYTHING is done and GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT. Oh god. The table is now soooooooooooo clean with the underneath newly Windexed that the television is being mirrored in it and clearly whenever I see any movement in any spot where there has not previously been movement in my apartment, I am going to have a heart attack.
Now I am having a heart attack. I discover that as long as I am on my couch, I cannot see the tops of the windowsill. I cannot see my new Combat Gel roach molds. I will be able to see if antennae pop out, but from this angle I will not be able to see the dark gel and mistake it for a roach.
I take a bunch of Lonely Planet Guides and place them all over the table so there are no open spots to see mirrored television in. I try and read a book but I am so freaked out that I keep checking for antennae in the spot. At some point, I feel confident that this mother fucker is dead. I get up to pee. I check the spot. There is nothing. I walk the 1.5 seconds to the bathroom. I pee. I wash my hands. How long could this possibly take? I walk out of the bathroom. I make the mistake of looking. THERE IS A ROACH UP THERE FOR REAL THIS TIME. IN THAT FUCKING SPOT. HE IS UP THERE EATING THE GEL OH MY GOD I CAN FUCKING NOT I WANT TO DIE I CANT DO THIS ANYMORE. HE IS SO FUCKING HUGE I CAN NOT LIVE ANY LONGER.
So again, I try and kill him. Again I cannot. He runs behind the fucking moulding and there are his fucking antennae I cannot live like this I am going to die.
I spend the next hourssss Googling “how long does it take Combat gel to work” on my flip phone. I normally do not ever Google anything roach related because whenever you do, there are pictures that make my skin crawl. But I have to do this. It takes an average of three days for an entire infestation to vanish. It does not kill roaches on instant, because it is designed for the roach to bring it back to its friends so that they all die.
While reading this, I read people who are elated that within that 72 hours, they begin finding dead roaches. I DON’T WANT TO FIND A DEAD ROACH. I DON’T WANT TO FIND ANY ROACH. So now I am sitting here like a maniac reading all these posts, while whipping my head up to look for antennae, I am such a nervous wreck at this point. The only plus to all of this is that this is day three of me being SO freaked out that I am actually able to sleep because I halfway pass out from fright.
Saturday. Today I went to Starbucks. I was waiting for my coffee and I saw something scurry out of the corner of my eye and I gasp so loudly and jerk out of the way. Oh look it is a tiny piece of paper, the top of a straw wrapper moving across the floor. It isn’t even fucking brown.
I come back home and begin my nervous watch. I now understand why this Combat stuff is brown. So you can see if it vanishes because if it does, you know a roach came out and ate it. Mine is still up there save for one glob that I caught this BASTARD eating last night. He may very well be dead. But I don’t know so I watch. For about twelve straight hours. Like a maniac. I need to know he is dead. It is too late for me to have to try and kill him again. I cannot do it so much as one more time. If he comes out again, I am grabbing my bag and taking the train to my sister’s apartment, stepping over the gross fucking SLUGS that adorn her doorstep and moving onto her couch, which will be my new bed since I am never going back home again.
NOTHING
EVER
APPEARS
AGAIN
I think he is dead. I also think he is dead behind the wall. Which is what I wanted. But I do not want to get comfortable. Just in case.
Today is Sunday. I have not seen this mother fucker since Friday night. I do not want to be confident he is gone until tomorrow, which is 72 hours, which is how long it takes for an infestation to die. I do not have any idea if there is an infestation back there. Logic says there is, these rat bastards travel in packs. But I have never seen an infestation up there and I have been watching that spot for THREE YEARS NOW.
I am scared if I leave the room, he will come out like he did when I peed on Friday. So again, I am spending my day giving myself whiplash checking the spot. There has been nothing. But I cannot stop looking. You would not believe how sore my neck is from checking. I would document the amount of times I turn and look while I am typing this but it would be quadrupled in length.
None of this would have happened if I did not try to be financially responsible. I am being punished for trying to be financially responsible.
If I had not been home on Wednesday, I would not have seen this mother fucker. He either would have come fully out and been waiting for me inside my actual apartment when I got home, in a spot where I would actually be able to kill him. Or he would have gone back behind the wall before I got home and I never would have known he was there. Hell, even if I came home and found him on top of the windowsill, I would have had to go to work and would not have spent four fucking days scared to leave my apartment for fear he would resurface and I would not be here to kill him. I would probably be in a much better mental place.
As an added bonus, for the past five or six hours or so, the fucking asshole who lives below me has been stomping around like a maniac mother fucker. Nonstop stomping. STOMP STOMP STOMP around the apartment, STOMP STOMP STOMP to the front door, door SLAMS, he is then outside screaming at someone on his phone*, then STOMP STOMP STOMP back inside, door SLAMS, and STOMP STOMP STOMP all over his fucking apartment. None of this is really out of character for him. But in light of what I have suffered through this weekend, I am now picturing all that stomping that he has been doing for years could possibly be him killing mother fucking roaches in his apartment.
*I am dying to know who the hell keeps picking up the phone for this fucking asshole. He is forever screaming at people on the phone. WHO KEEPS PICKING UPTHE PHONE FOR THIS MANIAC??
So anyway.
The moral of the story is: If you are ever faced with having to choose between financial stability and reckless spending for fun, PICK FUN. FUN IS THE BETTER CHOICE.
ADDED BONUS: I do not have the internet at home. I typed all this out and went to save it on a flash drive so I could bring it to work and post from there and OH HEY my flash drive isnt registering on my laptop type thingy. This is likely because I spilled an entire bottle of water on it, when I fell into my table, when falling off my ladder, when trying to kill a roach. Great weekend guys, great weekend.
You know what is even better? When I got to work this morning, I went into the kitchen to make oatmeal and crawling across the kitchen floor was…a giant roach. We do have three kitchens here. But the damage is already done.