Last night, while my mother was preoccupied with checking her e-mail on my laptop, I walked into the kitchen. Something made me turn my head to look at the far wall, near the microwave.
There was a really big roach crawling up the wall.
I tried to move calmly, going to the sink & getting the can of Raid. My heart was pounding with an adrenalin surge, though. I sprayed & sprayed that sucker, but it ran across the wall & into the crevice between the fridge & the wall.
Then I had to walk into the living room & tell my mother that it wasn't a good idea to leave the cat food out all night. (She brought her cat with her on this visit.) And then explain why.
I thought she'd tell me what a lousy housekeeper I am, but she didn't. Perhaps even she realizes that down here, living in apartments, you can be clean & neat as possible, but you will still get roaches if they move into the building, into the trash room or into anyone else's apartment.
Meantime, I feel awful about this. I lived with roaches down in the West Village years ago in a summer sublet & they were impossible to completely eradicate & they kept me from going into the kitchen after dark, ever.
Okay, so now it starts. More Raid. Boric acid. Cleaning the cabinets. And a call to an exterminator & also to the building super.
saef, I live in Fla. where roaches are part of the wildlife. I use the roach traps--that is, the bait stations, like Combat brand. Boric acid works but it is dangerous to pets (and humans), and I don't like the spray insecticides or the exterminator poisons. No matter what they say, those chemicals aren't good for people or pets to be around.
The stations do a good job. I'll find a dead roach now and then, but they aren't running up the walls, and I don't have to worry about going into the kitchen at night. If you decide to use the traps, make sure you get enough to put wherever the roaches might be (around pipes under the sink, near the garbage, near pipes in the bathroom, inside cupboards, etc.).
saef maybe mom's kitty could supplement her diet with some er, fresh protein? EWWW!
Sorry, I'm in a weird mood. It's the kooky Christmas music warping my brain. Lou Rawls doing a swingin' version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and a soulful Auld Lang Syne, Jose Feliciano doing Felice Navidad (to which I was salsaing around the kitchen as I prepped dinner), and Molly Johnston doing a wailing version of Silent Night (complete with cranging electric guitar).
Dagmar, I'm still in the bag of chips phase, but for me it's sweets.
Kaw, no special dinner for us. Setting out meats, cheeses, etc. after we go to the movies.
Megan, that green bean recipe sounds great.
Allison, we're having a hard time with our cat, although it's more that she eats the needles and then throws up. We haven't put up decorations yet, but she'll go after those, too, so we put unbreakable ones on the bottom. And she's almost 13 years old!
A bout of food poisoning for me, too. What's happening here? You know it's love, though, when your sweetie cleans up you and your clothing. Plus he cleaned the floor, did the shopping and everything else I was going to do Monday while I was flat on my back feeling like a wrung-out dish rag.
Felt better today, managed 45 min. on the elliptical, but just opened up a sealed box of raisins purchased yesterday and discovered a maggot crawling on top. That started a great wave of nausea.
I feel better today, having tackled this problem head on. Thanks to JayEll's good advice, I bought roach traps. I also called the super, who made an appointment for the exterminator to come by the following morning. An exterminator comes to our complex every few days, it seems, mostly doing preventive stuff in the old stone basements of these buildings. He advised against my small collection of flattened Trader Joe's paper bags stashed in the crevice between the fridge & the wall. (Handy for collecting the Times in & taking to the recycling bin.) Said it was prime territory. I was sad to see these bags go, but they're not worth the risk.
Sheila, yeah, there is that issue occasionally with dried fruit. I've also seen a little white worm protruding from a natural almond, once. This was bought from the bulk bin at our local mom-and-pop natural food store & unfortunately made me rethink my bulk-food-buying policies.
We're in an absolute deluge of rain here. I think it rained all night and they say the worst is yet to come. I'm terribly worried about DD who went to San Francisco to visit a friend. She's driving back today. I'd almost rather she stay in San Francisco until after Christmas just because I worry about the drive. She's planning on going back to Fullerton today and then driving here tomorrow.
Bugs in food. Ugh. I remember pouring a bowl of cereal once--it was a raisin bran type--and starting to eat it when I realized that the little black things floating in the milk were not part of the cereal. Blech.
Thankfully we haven't had much of a bug problem in our new house. Ants have invaded a couple of times but no roaches. Our old house was horrible with roaches--the huge American cockroaches which inhabit the desert where I live. One day one of our trees fell over and the gardner who came to haul it away said the inside of the trunk had been completely destroyed by roaches. No wonder we had such a problem! It did ease a bit after that tree was gone, but they still invaded.
Well, I'm off to work. Everyone have a wonderful day!
: 
bargoo! 
ew, gross!
Eww!
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