La Cucaracha

My Mom gave me this nickname when I was a baby. She says it's because once I learned how to crawl, I got into everything. There was no stopping me. But that's not what this post is about. You see, Sunday night after I finished dinner and washed my dishes, I curled up on my super comfy couch, wrapped myself up in a blanket and indulged in my book Eclipse. The third installation of the Twilight series. (I'm loving this whole vampire romance crap!) So I'm reading my book when I see something out of the corner of my eye. What is that?? So I got up and got closer....Oh.My.God it's a friggin' roach!!! I have lived in this apartment for exactly one year and four months and have never ever had roaches. Che scifo! Que asco! Horrified, I grabbed the nearest thing, which happened to be a library book, (sorry Multnomah county library, but it had to be done) threw it on top of the roach and jumped up and down on the book. Then I carefully picked up the book expecting to see guts all over the book and carpet, but no. This little bastard is a survivor. His legs were still moving. So I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a papertowel and picked up the little bastard. I had a closer look to make sure it was in fact a roach and much to my chagrin, it was indeed. I flushed that little monster down the toilet and looked everywhere for more. Nothing so far. Where did it come from??? I am anal about cleaning up the kitchen and any crumbs that might fall. I'm a clean person, so why did this little bastard invade my home?? I even had nightmares last night about having a giant roach infestation in my apartment.

Today when I called the Italian I told him, "Baby, I'm scared" to which he replied in his adorable Italian accent, "What's happened?" "I killed a roach in the apartment last night". He started laughing! He said, "Oh, I was thinking you were going to say you were scared about the financial crisis going on in the U.S. It's just a little creature. Poor guy. Don't kill it" WHAT????? I was expecting a little more sympathy. He said I should never go to Southern Italy or Africa. Growing up, my house was immaculate. My Mom cleaned everyday. She always told me that roaches came from filth. I've been traumatized since I was a child about roaches. Here are my reasons why:

1. When I was a little girl, I used to spend my summers in Mexico. There are flying cockroaches in Mexico and some are as big as my foot. No joke. While having dinner at my uncles house I felt something land on my shoulder. Yep, it was a flying cockroach. EW!!! OMG!! I screamed and my cousin flicked it off me. I was so grossed out I couldn't even finish my dinner. Everyone else just shrugged it off.

2. When I was about 12 years old my friend invited me to the movies to see The Karate Kid. I took the bus to her place, which happened to be in the projects. I grew up in the hood so this didn't bother me. Her Mom told us to go wait for her in the car, so we were in there for about 5 minutes when I felt something tickling my leg(I was wearing jeans) so I patted my leg and it stopped. A few minutes later I felt it again, so I slapped my leg, then out comes this roach from the bottom of my jeans. OMG!! I screamed again. My friend said to me, "You're in the projects, everybody has roaches". When I went home and told my Mom she was horrified! She said, "I hope you didn't bring any home with you".

3. When I first moved to New York I stayed at a friends house in the Bronx and there were roaches everywhere. These roaches could move furniture. I remember going to a restaurant in Times Square and there was a roach crawling around in the booth we were sitting in. I got up and said, "I'm not eating here!" When I finally got my own apartment I asked the landlady if there were any roaches because I did not want to move into a place knowing there were roaches. She laughed and said no, there are no roaches here. I lived there for two and a half years and only saw one roach the whole time I lived there. I did however have a mouse towards the end of my stay there and it was enough to make me stark raving mad! Luckily, my landlady acted fast on these things and got pest control to come out right away.

4. Claire Danes was chastised for saying that the Philippines was infested with roaches. She was even declared persona non grata. See her wikipedia page under "controversy". Well, I'm sorry to say that she is absolutely, 100% correct. I spent a month there and not a day went by that I didn't see at least 20 of them, and they fly there too. Don't get me wrong, outside of Manila, the Philippines is a tropical paradise with some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and the people are so nice and welcoming. But the fact is that it is a tropical place and there are tons of roaches. I did not sleep comfortably the whole time I was there. I saw them crawling up the sides of the bed I slept in and I had my suitcase open one night and before I could close it, one ran into it. Argh! I was so paranoid that I was going to bring one back home with me.

And now this! Mamma mia, I will never learn to live with these little bastards. I hate them. When I got home from school today, I took all the cushions off my couch and vacuumed between every crevice. I moved my couch and ottoman and vacuumed every corner for fear that there might be a crumb lurking somewhere. I have friends with kids and when they visit, it's inevitable that there will be crumbs left from their snacks. It looks like someone moved out recently. Maybe it came from their apartment. I don't know but if I see another one, I'm going to have to tell the manager. He's new to the property and I don't think he likes me because we sort of got off on the wrong foot, but I'll save that for another post. The previous manager was so cool. I miss her! Should I buy some of those little roach motels?? I'm embarassed to do so because people might think that I'm dirty! Ew!

Did anyone ever see the commercial that started out with the roaches crawling all over the screen? When this commercial first aired, people were actually throwing things at their tv's and breaking them! I searched for the commercial on youtube.com but had no luck. I did find this article about it.

My apartment is on the ground floor so I do get spiders and other creepy crawlies. I did have an ant invasion last year for which I damn near lost my mind and my poor Italian bore the brunt of that. He ran to the grocery store to get some Raid while I searched for the entry point. Anyhow, I hope to never see one of those little bastards in here again, in the mean time I am going to live in a paranoid state. This may be a job for the Verminators.