And PS, my pants are still in the back yard...

I'm sorry for neglecting you... I've been so busy the last few weeks, and I honestly haven't felt inspired to write. Until tonight.... When I made such a fool of myself in my backyard (well, Charlie was the only witness, really, but still....) that I just had to share....

Remember the roaches from the last apartment that we lived in? (my infestation of TWO roaches, hahahaha.) I haven't had any of those friends in this new house. Thank God! We have a small ant problem, but I would take a total ant infestation over one roach, any day.

Well, tonight, I went outside to the back of the house where we have a small covered porch that houses the washer, dryer, and pila. There is a motion detector light back there. Usually, I make Charlie go ahead of me to scare away any little critters, and trip the motion detector so the light will come on for me. I think he's started to catch onto my reason for sending him ahead of me, and being the scaredy-dog that he is, he won't walk ahead of me anymore. He stays behind me until the light comes on.

So tonight, I walked around the corner (in the dark) and waved the laundry bag around in the air to trip the light. It didn't work. So I took another step and tried it again. After 3 more steps it finally came on, and there was a giant......ROACH staring at me from the wall right above the washing machine. I screamed, and probably woke all of the neighbors up.

I wanted to go upstairs and get Jose to kill it, or scare it away, but he was already asleep and I knew that he would not be happy if I woke him up for something like this, haha. So I took a deep breath, and tried to summon the courage to scare the thing away. I grabbed a broom, and stood there for a good 5 minutes just staring at it, imagining all of the ways it could jump on me and bite me (wait, do they even bite??) from the wall, and trying to come up with a good strategy to prevent that from happening.

I had a conversation with myself, out loud, that went something like this....
"Ugh, just do it Hannah!"
"Eeeeeek, but it's going to jump on me!"
"Charlie-dog, come get this thing!"
"Ugh, ok, just do it!"

Finally, I summoned the courage, closed my eyes, and took a swat. I missed, it fell onto the washing machine, and I screamed again. I was terrified it would crawl inside on my clean laundry. But I lucked out, and it ran around the side of the washer instead.

"Ok, deep breath, work fast, and get outta here before it comes back," I thought.

I threw the laundry from the washer into the dryer, keeping my eye on the spot where it had gone to hide. After everything was started, I went to reach for the basket of clean laundry on the ground. And guess who's there? The roach!!!! Right next to my clean laundry, plotting a way inside the basket.

I screamed, again....wishing that Jose would just wake up and come see what was wrong.

Then I started to feel like they were everywhere. You know how you hear a story about someone having lice, and then your head starts to itch? I started jumping up and down just in case one had run up the back of my pants without me knowing. (I mean, can you imagine going back inside the house with a roach on your back without knowing that it's there, and then seeing it run across the floor when you change clothes or something?!? Ha! These are the phobia-like visions that I have when I find a roach!)

Then I felt like one was in my pants, and, I kid you not, I took off my pants in the middle of my back yard and started running around like a crazy person. I had a surge of fearlessness, grabbed the broom, smashed the roach next to the laundry basket, grabbed the laundry, and RAN into the house, all in about 10 seconds.

I'm pretty confident that this is not a normal reaction to roaches. I think I should be happy that at least they aren't INSIDE the house. HA! I'm pretty sure I need professional help.