an uninvited "guest"

so today . . . the cock roach is dead. rollie must be home.

rollie left on tuesday for kansas city. he had to attend some meetings with all the other new guys doing the same job he is doing, but in different parts of the country. now that he has actually been doing the job for three months, i guess it was finally time for some training...

and so, diandra and i were home alone.

i don't mind being home alone. i never really feel like i am alone anyway, because of our two pups. and this time i had the added advantage of having diandra living with us--which is a situation that i am not going to be able to enjoy much longer. because at the end of the summer her husband will come home from kuwait, and then i am pretty sure she isn't going to be living with me any more! so i was looking forward to having some fun with my daughter while rollie was gone...

...and then i heard the scream. "MOM!!!!! THERE'S A COCK ROACH IN MY ROOM!!!!!!!" (believe me, the uppercase letters and exclamation points are not an exaggeration!)

this is not the first time we have found a cock roach in her room. this is the second time. in a month.

the last time we found one, rollie was gone too. diandra saw it on her dresser, behind a box, among some envelopes. and that's when she screamed. i went running up to her room, but when she showed me where she had seen it, i did not know how we were going to trap it, because it wasn't on a flat surface. and those things are hard to trap even when they are on the floor! then i remembered how our preschool director had sprayed a spider with an aerosol substance to kill it, so i said to diandra, "go get some hairspray!" she looked at me like i had lost my mind! i explained what we were going to do with the hairspray, but she said, "what if it doesn't kill it--what if it just makes it mad!!" an interesting idea. i wasn't sure i wanted to deal with an angry cock roach. what would an angry cock roach do? it occurred to me that it might resort to flying to escape. i said to diandra, "ok, maybe we shouldn't do that. it might try to fly away." "IT MIGHT TRY TO FLY AWAY?!?!?! COCK ROACHES CAN FLY?!?!?!?"

oops. perhaps i should not have mentioned that to her, because this resulted in some hysterical crying. now she had one more thing to worry about. "GET IT, MOM, GET IT!!!" i was trying to get it. but i didn't want it to get me! and it was not cooperating!

i finally decided that we were going to have to get it off the dresser and out into the hall, where we could trap it, (because it didn't look like killing it was going to be an option for us if we couldn't hairspray it to death,) but we were going to have to accomplish this without losing visual contact--which is not that easy, when you remember that cock roaches prefer the dark and will just keep trying to move out of the light. and they are fast! i thought about it for a minute and formulated a plan.

"ok," i said, "here's what we are going to do. i am going to try to flick the cock roach off your dresser toward the door. hopefully he will ricochet off the door and out into the hallway. then hopefully i can get out there and trap him under the cup before he scuttles away." "BUT WHAT IF HE STARTS FLYING?!?!?!" she said. and then the hysterical crying began again.

this was not going well. i was not all that confident in my abilities, but somebody had to be brave here, and it was clearly not going to be diandra. it was time to be the mom! "diandra, get on the bed! you should be safe there!" the bed was behind me, the exact opposite direction i was hoping to fling the cock roach. she was not reassured. "BUT WHAT IF IT GETS ME?!?!?!?" she said. and so i said, "put that blanket over your head. then if it does fly, it can't get you." i said it couldn't get her, and technically it couldn't, but i'm telling you... if that thing flew into the blanket she now had over her head she would feel it, and i did not think there were enough sedatives in the world to calm her down if that happened!

i carefully positioned myself between diandra and the cock roach, and prepared to fling it against the door and into the hallway. i just prayed it wouldn't fly and land on me. because if that happened, i was pretty sure i would scream or faint or something, and if that happened, i would probably just die, because there was no way diandra was coming out from under that blanket to save me! she would probably run screaming from the room and leave me there, passed out, at the mercy of the giant cock roach...

the cock roach climbed up on an envelope. i lifted it, (the envelope, NOT the cock roach,) ready to fling, but it just sat there. so i slowly moved toward the hallway (yes, i had the heebie-jeebies--i could just feel it crawing on me...) and then it moved! i screamed and threw the envelope out into the hall. diandra screamed, and started crying again. i yelled at her, "GIVE ME THE CUP, GIVE ME THE CUP!" i was trying to maintain visual contact so that it wouldn't crawl under something and escape. she practically threw the cup at me, ran back into her bedroom, and closed the door--leaving me alone in the hallway with the cock roach...

clearly, we were not in this together. it was sink or swim. do or die. i was on my own...

i zeroed in on the cock roach. it attempted an escape--it headed for the bookcase and tried to crawl behind it. had it been successful, it would have evaded capture. but i did NOT want that thing loose in the house. if i didn't catch it, we were going to have to load up the dogs and head to the motel 6! so i kept pursuing it, until i finally managed to trap it under the cup.

and there it waited until rollie got home the next day.

which brings us to last tuesday night. again, rollie was out of town. and again, i heard the scream, "MOM!! THERE IS A COCK ROACH IN MY ROOM! AGAIN!! COME AND GET IT!!!" i grabbed the cock roach cup and headed up the stairs. diandra was on the bed crying. she was crying, because she had LOST visual contact and didn't know where the cock roach was.

i wanted to cry too. this was serious, people!! that thing could ambush us at any moment!!!

but i couldn't cry--i'm the mom. so i talked to her in soothing tones, moved her away from the danger zone, and started slowly moving things around, sort of hoping i would find it. (and sort of hoping i wouldn't! because if i found it, i was going to have to try to trap it again. but if i didn't find it, it would be loose in the house! talk about being between a rock and a hard place...) and then diandra screamed, "THERE IT IS!" which resulted in me screaming, "WHERE?!?!?!" as i jumped up onto the bed with her. ( which, let's be honest here, was not going to save either one of us. this was a cock roach, not a mouse. and as we both now knew, cock roaches can fly!!!) she pointed, "RIGHT THERE!!" i slammed the cup down over the cock roach. i didn't even think, or gauge distances, or take into account the size and position of it's ridiculously long and creepily roving antenne--i just slammed that cup down and trapped it. it started running around and around and around the inside perimeter of the cup. this creeped us both out, so we ran out of the room and closed the door.

and left the cock roach there for three days until rollie came home.

i sort of figured it might just suffocate before rollie got to it. but it didn't. those things are tough! diandra, of course, had to occasionally go back into her room to get stuff, but there was NO WAY she was going to sleep in there. the cock roach was trapped on her dresser, right next to her bed! she said that every time she went in there, it was trying to dig it's way out!! now i had a whole new nightmare to deal with... because not only can cock roaches fly, they apparently can also dig!

i'm not sure we are ever letting rollie go out of town again. ever.

a rude awakening!

so today . . . i had a near death experience. in the shower.

when i get up in the morning, i am not really alert. my eyes are open, but they don't really see anything. my brain struggles to begin conscious thought. really, i am on autopilot until about 10:00. so i am not always aware of the details of my surroundings...

this morning i felt my way along the wall until i reached the shower. i turned the water on, and continued sleeping. i opened my eyes briefly so i could find the shampoo, and then closed them again--because really, i can't see my hair while i'm shampooing it anyway...

near the end of my shower, i finally opened my eyes all the way. and then i saw it--a big, fat, hairy (well, i couldn't actually SEE that it was hairy, because i wasn't wearing my glasses and my eyes were five feet away, but i know it was hairy!!) SPIDER!!! IN THE SHOWER!!! WITH ME!!!!!!!

let me just say, if i was diandra, shrieking, screaming, crying, and panicking would have ensued. we would have all gone running, thinking she was fighting off a knife-wielding psychopath instead of a spider. she would not have been able to get out of that shower fast enough!! i, however, kept my cool. mostly...

i am not so much afraid of spiders, as i am creeped out by them. i am capable of grabbing a tissue and eliminating any feckless spiders that happen across my path, but that doesn't mean i want to be surprised by one. i don't want my bare foot to find one in my shoe. i don't want one to drop on my head and crawl down my arm. and i certainly don't want to take a shower with one!

my poor sleeping brain wasn't quite sure what to do. my first thought was to drown it. i was in the shower, after all--there was plenty of water. but i was kind of afraid that if i moved the stream of water to kill the spider, it might flee from the water--toward me! i couldn't squish it with a tissue, because a) there were no tissues within reach, and b) a tissue would just disintegrate in the shower and then i would be HOLDING a spider! i couldn't yell for help, because i was alone. in the house. with a spider. IN MY SHOWER!!!

i decided that perhaps my best course of action was to get out of the shower. and fast. so i turned off the water, grabbed my towel and started to dry off. in the shower.

yes, i dry off in the shower--i have to. our shower is right inside the bathroom door, so if i step out onto the bathmat without drying off first, then the bathmat is wet! and then every time i go in or out of the bathroom, in my bare or stockinged feet, my feet get wet. and i hate having wet feet! (technically, we probably don't even need a bath mat since we can't step on it with our wet feet, but i just think we should have one. at least it feels nice on my feet before i step into the shower.) so yes, there i was, drying off in the shower, with one eye on that spider.

actually, both eyes were on the spider. i just knew that once the water was off, he was going to start running laps around the shower floor, and then he would eventually get dizzy and stagger into the center of the shower WHERE MY FEET WERE!!! sure enough, he started moving clockwise. he got to the side where the door was (i don't know how he knew that was where the door was... do spiders even know what a door is?!?!?) and started to climb up the side toward freedom. i thought this was an excellent idea! but he couldn't seem to get out!! he would crawl a little way up and then slide down, crawl up a bit and then slide down. clearly he was not getting anywhere...

and then he turned around and headed straight. for. me!

by now i was almost dry--everything except my feet and my dripping hair! i backed into the corner of the shower, drying off one foot. he kept coming. the foot that was still on the shower floor started tingling. i just knew he was going to be on my foot in seconds! i slid my foot as far away as i could get and started angling toward the door...

and then he crawled down the drain.

DOWN THE DRAIN!! OF HIS OWN FREE WILL!!! didn't he know that there was water down there? didn't he know that spiders can't swim? didn't he know that soon rollie would be getting in the shower and he would be toast???

i don't know. maybe the spider was not a morning person either and was running on auto pilot like i had been. (you notice i say "had been," because now i was thoroughly and completely awake!!) or maybe he had just had enough! maybe he was tired of living in fear of diandra's screams and my looming tissues... maybe we had annihilated all the other spiders in our house, and he could see the handwriting on the wall...

either way, apparently i was not in the shower with a knife-wielding psychopath... just with a suicidal spider...

the nerve of some bugs!

so today . . . a spider crawled on me. don't worry. i survived. i didn't even scream. at least, not out loud.

i was sitting on the couch, watching a little tv and playing on my computer. rollie had already gone to bed, and diandra was out at a high school football game (ah, the life of a youth pastor . . . ) and i was just sitting there, trying not to cough. i felt a tickle on my arm, glanced down, and there it was. a spider. on my arm. my BARE arm.

you know how moms and teachers always say, "oh don't worry. they are more afraid of you than you are of them . . . " it isn't true. trust me. i am absolutely certain that the spider on my arm was not even a tiny bit afraid of me--if he was, he would not have been strolling down my arm! and while i'm not sure i would say i was exactly afraid of it, i wasted not even one second trying to GET IT OFF OF ME!!!!!

diandra would have never survived the experience. for some reason, she has a seemingly irrational fear of any kind of spider. she will yell to me, "mom! there's a HUGE spider in my room!!" she says this with every expectation that i will come and kill it. and i usually do. but when i get there, and she shows me the spider, i realize that her definition of huge is not quite the same as mine. she seems to think that any spider visible to the naked eye is huge. to me, it isn't classified as huge unless it looks as though it is going to be yukky if i squish it.

i don't enjoy killing spiders. i know they are an important part of the bug food chain, and there is a part of me that wonders what evil creepy crawly things will overtake me if the spiders aren't there to eat them. so as long as they are not bothering anyone, i tend to leave them alone. but since diandra is so freaked out by them, i have learned to do my job as the mom and get rid of them.

my method isn't unique. i grab a big handful of toilet paper, hover over the offending arachnid, then quickly grab and squish. and then i flush it--just to be sure. i didn't know there was any other way to eliminate a spider. then one day i was out on the playground with my class, and one of the children found a spider. of course, everyone went to look, and i was all ready to give my speech about how the outdoors is where spiders live, and we should leave it alone so it could eat other bugs, and how it is important to respect all living things, blah, blah, blah. and then i saw the spider. it was a big black widow. i decided the speech could wait for another day, and sent someone inside to get the director. this looked like something that was in her job description, not mine.

a few minutes later, she came out with an aerosol can and sprayed that spider to death.

i had never thought of that. i didn't know you could kill a spider with a chemical weapon. i thought it had to be hand to hand combat.

i know i sound brave, but spiders are the only bugs i can work up my courage to kill. we also occasionally see crickets or cock roaches here in the lovely southwest--this is one of the downsides of our mild climate. i try to deal with the crickets myself by shooing them outside. i grab a magazine and sort of herd them toward the doggie door flap (which is probably how they get in.) this is not all that easy, as they seem incapable of jumping in a straight line. getting a cricket from point a (anyplace in the family room) to point b (outside) can be a nearly impossible task--especially since i am not willing to touch it. or have it touch me.

and then there are the cock roaches. thankfully i don't see too many of them, because that is the bug that freaks me out. talk about HUGE!! i'm not even sure how you can call a cock roach an insect. insects are tiny and cock roaches are not. i am sure they are really some sort of small animal disguised as an insect. i cannot even imagine stepping on one--i might never recover from that! so my method of dealing with cock roaches is to trap them and wait for rollie to come home and dispose of them. but they are hard to trap, because they are so FAST. and they seem to have special mind reading powers, so they know exactly when i am about to drop the big glass measuring cup over them, and they move. once i do trap them, they run around and around and around in circles at the edge of the cup. i can't stand it--i have to leave the room.

one time rollie came home and found one half in and half out of the cup. he asked me if i had dropped the measuring cup ON the cock roach. i said no. the only explanation i can come up with is that it managed to lift that big heavy glass cup just enough to start to get out. thankfully the escape attempt was not successful. and yet, just knowing it tried creeps me out. so now, i put something big and heavy on top of the glass cup--just to be sure.

once i found a cock roach on the dining room drapes. this was the first time i had seen one not scurrying around on the ground. i yelled for rollie (in much the same way that diandra yells for me when she sees a spider,) and he came to the rescue. that is the day i learned that COCK ROACHES CAN FLY!!! you do not want to hear the story behind that revelation. trust me. it involved much running about, hand flapping, screaming, and fear of death by gigantic flying bug.

thankfully, i survived. unlike the spider that chose my arm as his route from point a to point b.

just get me a BIG jar . . .

so today . . . i again had a classroom full of four year olds before 9:00. and they were pretty good this morning--everyone was engaged in an activity, they were talking quietly, no one was arguing or fighting over a particular toy.

and then . . .

. . . a little girl saw a spider.

"AAAHHHHHHHH!!!! A SPIDER!!!!!!" she screamed.

for a bunch of children who were apparently afraid of a spider, they certainly all ran over to see it rather quickly!

i'm not really afraid of spiders. i'm not fond of them, and i prefer not seeing them over seeing them, but i can kill one if i have to. this is a skill born of necessity--rollie is usually either not at home or not awake when i spot the creepy crawley creatures, and diandra . . . well, let's just say that for diandra, spiders are much larger than life. so i have just learned to "suck it up" and squish them in a tissue. and then flush them. because even though i'm not afraid, i don't want to take any chances . . .

so i walked over to see what the fuss was about, and there it was--the scrawniest, skinniest spider i have ever seen! it was almost invisible, it was so skinny! and yet there was a crowd of 8 small children huddled around, scared to death but unable to stop looking at it.

"oh please," i said. (i would like to say i said it with concern in my voice, but the truth is, there was probably more sarcasm than concern . . . ) "it is a teeny tiny spider. let's just leave it alone and let it find it's way back outside." i'm not a fan of killing things, even spiders, in front of children, so i usually try to foster the idea of live and let live. however, this idea was met with skepticism, but i am the teacher, so they all slowly backed away and resumed their play. although a couple of them were keeping an eye on that corner . . .

pretty soon one little guy came up to my desk, and with a big smile on his face he said, "how about if we catch it and put it in a jar?"

i am not a fan of spiders in jars, especially in my classroom. so in an attempt to discourage this idea, i said, "i don't know. would you like it if we caught you and put you in a jar?"

he looked at me with big, blue eyes and said, "no, not me . . . the spider!"