la cucarocha

This morning, I woke up at 9am. I've been having some trouble waking up at decent hours lately. In fact, I've had trouble waking up at all. I'm going through a serious sleepyhead phase (some call it depression), where nothing is better than my incredible bed. Maybe it's not just a phase. Maybe I've just fallen in love with TempurPedic. I don't even need to leave it... I can set my wine right next to me and it won't even spill over. I can jump up and down, knit, pretend to exercise, anything that I want and my wine is not affected. At least not until la cucarocha comes and knocks it over.

I wake up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, gay and ready to face the day, and I take a shower. Yes, I take showers. After I'm out of the shower, heading over to my drawer to pick out some undies, I notice a little cockroach. And by little, I mean fucking huge. Like United States budget's deficit huge. I would say J.Lo-ass huge, but c'mon - J.Lo? In 2009?

Bugs don't usually freak me out. I can probably even pick one up. Not really sure, cause I've never tried, but the thought doesn't make me gag. Now, snakes on the other hand, Ann Coulter, them scary as HAYEL! (That's Hell with an extra Southern syllable.) But these were bugs in my bed. My haven. My home. My roommate is out of town, which probably gave me license to do what I was about to do next: drop my towel, scream like a woman, search desperately, naked as HAYEL for something large and heavy - larger and heavier than this cockroach for what seemed like forever. Let's just say I was short of breath when I got done freaking out. I'm guessing my incredible keepin-it-together-in-a-crisis-ness skillz scared the poor fella away...

Away...

To somewhere in my bed!

So, here's where it gets bad. You're thinking "Um, it's already pretty bad." I'm thinking "I know, right?" I have this thing, where I can be either super responsible or super irresponsible. I decided that this morning, I was not going to deal with some insect. I woke up at 9am, goddamnit! I decided to see what a full day was like!! And this is what it's all about?! Oh, HAYEL no!

This is just going to have to be another one of those super irresponsible moments. I leave it. I figure that my private parts flopping around was enough to scare la cucarocha all the way back to Guatemala or whatever Hispanic country it came from. What? I'm not being racist. I have a friend who's a cockroach.

I go about my business, and I'm most likely humming to myself because I'm choosing to be that oblivious to the insect infestation happening in my bed and that's what oblivious folks do - they hum. As I'm humming, I do the 'triple Really?' in my head (Really?! Really? Really.) I start to wonder if this a sign that I'm not getting any. Somehow, everything in my life comes back to that. But let's face it - insects are festering in my bed. Insects like to hang out in walls, underground, places where activity is low or nonexistent. Such as my bed. It's a low-key place to lay your eggs, you know? Destination 2009 in Insect magazine? My bed?

I go to work, tend some bar (I'm a bartender now, by the way, I'll tell you more about that when I don't have cockroaches eating the potato chip crumbs gathered by my pillow.), and come home. And before you start flipping out, yes, I've already decided to spend the night on the couch.

When I come in my room and turn on my light - No. Fucking. Joke. - the cockroach is sitting on my bed. This time, I only react with my eyes, which bulge out so far you'd think I had that weird eye-bulging disease (how unfortunate), and I slowly take off my shoe. My shoe is a Vans. At this moment, I'm really wishing it was 1994 and I was rocking some Doc Martens. But I'm not. I'm in baby blue Vans. This'll have to do, I think, as I karate chop the damn cockroach all to HAYEL and kill it. And just like that, my cockroach problem is over. I hope.

To all the insect rights activists out there, I'm sorry, but it was self-defense.

I'm just going to pray to the God I don't believe in that this was all just some fluke and that was the same happy cockroach who was in my bed this morning and that he's not some cockroach deadbeat dad with 538 children. Still sleeping on the couch, though. For a very long time.