Adventures in Misarthropody

tuesday night, i visited the bathroom at one point, as one does, especially when one imbibes coffee all day long to stay conscious. when i entered the bathroom, i saw, reflected in the mirror behind me, an ominous dark mark on the ceiling. i whirled around, hoping that it was a manifestation of my paranoia. it was not.

IT WAS A TWO INCH LONG INSECT.

under not-too-close inspection, i realized that it was a cockroach with antennae that were twice as long as its body. that detail is so you can imagine this intruder in its full, horrible glory. i reeled back, trapped in the bathroom, then a burst of adrenaline inspired me to run underneath it and into the living room. i grabbed my can of extra-strength, ovary pruning, internal-organ-crystallizing RAID, which has this amazing little nozzle on it that allows you to point and shoot at a single spot instead of a large area. i aimed. i fired.

this &$%#&$*&#@ bug FLEW ACROSS THE ROOM. it hit the mirror and flew to the other end of the room. that's when the Raid must have started to take effect, because it hit the ground, flew into the wall two more times, and then tried to run under my shower curtain. here's where i have to admit that the entire time this was happening, an utterly inhuman scream was coming out of my mouth. it was the sound a monkey might make if you lit it on fire. i pulled back the shower curtain to find this thing sitting on the floor, watching me, watching me. i sprayed it again and ran out of the room.

when i came back it was crumpled on its back, dead dead dead. i put a kleenex over it and exhumed its body with my hand-vac. i am dreading the day that i am forced to empty that hand-vac. after that, i took my raid and sprayed every externally facing baseboard in my apartment-- these flying cockroaches/palmetto bugs apparently live in the trees around my apartment (the anoles and squirrels that i love so much eat them!) and probably don't have breeding populations inside. PLEASE DO NOT CORRECT ME IF THAT IS NOT TRUE. anyway, my point is that it probably got in when i had my windows open this weekend or when i was doing laundry/recycling that caused me to go in and out and in all day.

but guess what, people? now i can do anything. i feel empowered and nauseous, like a pregnant ayn rand. i feel the exhilaration that sarah palin must feel when she hunts elk/polar bears/pandas/people who have sex using condoms-- only i feel even MORE QUALIFIED than palin because i did all this WITHOUT wearing an entire tube of lipstick artfully smeared on my over-lined lips. WITHOUT A POWER SUIT, Hillary Clinton! i did it in my new Puma ballet flats, half naked, with chocolate chip oatmeal cookies in the oven.