Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Cockroaches

 



My hate for bugs is boundless.  Most people who know me learn this quickly.  I hate everything about them.  They have no respect for private property and invade homes.


My relationship with cockroaches especially has had a checkered past - but let's be honest, has anyone had a good relationship with a cockroach?

The first thing I hate about cockroaches is how juicy they are when squished.  I hate it so much that when I kill one, I don't even bother looking under the pile of books or shoes I killed it with.  Nope, I leave it for my exceptionally understanding husband or I bribe friends/roommates with a cheap mexican dinner to do it for me.  Judge me all you want.  I don't care.  It's not going to change.

My husband's favorite story to tell is when I killed one with a pile of phone books while I was on the phone with him.  This was before we were married and in a long-distance relationship.  The phone call was on a Monday.  The pile of books was waiting for him in the middle of the floor when he came to visit that Friday.  My hero.

There are two particular incidents so far in my life that has scarred me and my outlook towards these creatures.

The Screaming Cockroach of '08

I'm going to share a little something about myself that may seem weird:  When I sleep at home by myself, I sleep with a light on.  I know.  But it's something else I don't plan on changing.

This is very handy for situations like the screaming cockroach of '08.

It was summer and I was living in Georgia in the second story of a house with two roommates and it was pretty hot up there in the summer.

One particular night I did my usual routine where I slept with the light on, waking up now and again to look around for anything that might be crawling on the walls or ceiling (the year before my apartment was crawling with earwigs - which, of course, added to my paranoia).

Low and behold, 3:00a.m.  I wake up and see a cockroach on the wall across from my bed.  I get out of bed antsy and angry and find a shoe.  Strangely, the bug didn't move, but whatever.  At least I didn't have to hunt for it, right?

I do my "gross-bug-jig" and then walk up to it and swing.

Half a second before the shoe hit the bug (well past the point of no return), I swear to God, IT SCREAMED.

After doing a more intense "jig" and cursing, I decided I had to call someone and talk this out.  My husband and I were on friend terms and talking every once in a while on the phone, and I figured he would be the only one who wouldn't get mad at me for waking him up with this at 3:00a.m. (2:00 his time).

Yeah, he laughed at me.  I still don't know that he or anyone believes me.  But I swear it screamed.  It was a high-pitched, shrill scream.  I'll never forget it and it's part of the reason they all freak me out.

The Beach Incident of '13

Can you tell this one was recent?  VERY recent.

My husband and I took our 8-month old daughter to the beach with my family this year for the first time.  It was great!  Lots of fun.

We had a room for us with two beds and enough room to set up our daughter's pack 'n play for her to sleep in.  One bed was a full bed and the other was a twin.  My ever-chilvalrous husband let me have the full and he slept in the twin up against the wall.

He had to leave a day early to go back to work, so when he left, we piled a bunch of baby girl's stuff on his bed for packing.  The second night he was gone was the last night we were there.

Well, baby girl was getting fussy and having a hard time sleeping that night, so after several times of calming her and her waking back up again, I decided she would just sleep with me in my bed.

Unfortunately, the window AC unit was blowing right on her, so I decided to move into Scott's old bed.  She was already awake, so I didn't mind making lots of noise moving everything off of his bed to put it on mine.

We laid there for several minutes - baby girl is asleep and I'm fading fast.

I felt a little tickle on my hand, but figure it's just the blanket folding over and brushing against my hand.  So I move and it stops.

A little bit later, I feel a little tickle on the small hairs at the bottom of my ponytail and decide I'm still catching a little bit of wind from the AC unit.

Baby girl was dead asleep at this point and I decided to put her back in her crib.  Luckily, she stayed asleep this time (YAY!).

I turned around to get back into my bed (the full-size bed) and realize all the baby stuff is on it and I didn't want to risk waking her up.  So I turn to get back into Scott's bed.

And there, on the middle of the pillow, was THIS



Ok.  Not that, but what I did see was the biggest friggin' cockroach EVER.

I did my nasty-bug-jig while screaming silently and grabbing my hair, and ran outside in the hall to collect myself.  Once I realized there were no other bugs on me and that it hadn't laid eggs in my hair or anything (because that's where my logic takes me every time), I went back in and grabbed a shoe.

The bug had moved to the side of the bed at this point, and I swear when I walked closer it lifted its head and looked around.

BLUHHHHH.

This made me hesitate enough for it to get away.  I mean...what if it screamed at me?!?!?!

Well, I can't sleep in a room with a cockroach running rampant.....soooo...I moved to the upstairs couch.

I felt so bad about leaving baby girl down there to defend herself. I even woke up my mom to make sure she'd be ok.  Stupid, now that I think about it, but who really acts rationally at 2:00 am?

So I watched her monitor for a couple of hours straight until I decided to participate in some candy crush saga therapy and eventually fell asleep.

I'm pretty sure that during the 3-ish hours I slept, nothing happened.

The next morning I was told that it could have been a Palmetto bug.  I haven't mustered enough courage to google it to find out the differences between it and a cockroach.

On top of everything, I was convinced the bug crawled into our luggage.  So I left it to my husband to unpack everything.  And he was amazing enough to do it, because he knows me.



**For mommy points, I'd like to point out that I had broken my nightlight rule for those last two nights at the beach to make sure baby girl got her sleep.  See what happens?!?!?!

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Ways College Prepared Me for Parenthood

Aside from those who go to college purely to meet their significant others, most of us don't realize how much college prepares us for parenthood.

I'm definitely not talking about classes.  What little I remember about my child development class, didn't really help me with bringing home a newborn.  This may be different for others with different majors, but I wouldn't know.

It's the real life situations from college that prepared me.  Here are the ones I found most relevant:

5.  How to cram a lot of junk into a tiny space.  We've all had that hellaciously small dorm room for at least our freshmen year, sleeping on a bunk bed with our knees to our chest.  Then, 10 years later you get pregnant and are blessed to get tons of big items you can't use for months.  What do you do with it?  You learn how to stack and stack high.

You also make a visit to IKEA, which was a huge eye-opener a few years too late.  Great examples for later, though.

Not only does it teach you how to cram, but it also teaches you how to live with less and really narrow down your bare necessities, which leads me into the next item....

4. How to live on a tight budget. Who knew brussell sprouts went well with bananas?  You do - because of that last week of the semester cramming for finals on your last dime, knowing all you had to do was survive with enough money for gas to get home (and yet you still had enough for a cheap mexican dinner).  You also now know that Angel Soft may not be Charmin, but it still gets the job done.  Truth is, you wouldn't have experimented with nearly as many products in the grocery store if you weren't on such a tight budget.

And now you know how to do the same for your kid.  They don't know that no one else mixes vegetable beef with prunes, and they certainly don't care.  Oh, and by the way, does that cheap formula do just a good a job as that expensive name brand of supplying nutrients?  Why yes - now that I can quickly scan the nutrition facts - yes it does.  (E-mailing skills also helped secure a money-back guarantee if baby C didn't find the taste agreeable.  Skills that were honed in college.)

3.  Being messy is ok.  I honestly owe this one to my experience as a camp counselor during my summers in college.   

Baby spits peas in your hair?  Eh, I've had worse.  Baby sneezes banana through her nose?  I've seen a camper put long strand of carrot in his nose and pull it out his mouth - I can handle this.  Baby poops a multi-colored rainbow?  There was much worse done in the dorm's community bathroom.

This also goes hand-in-hand with a new mom's new shower schedule.  Been a couple of days since your last shower?  I've gone a week, and we were outside hiking a lot.  I'm not proud of it, but it gave me some perspective.  It's definitely gross to go a few days, but I'll always know that could be so much worse.

2. The more clothes you have, the less laundry you have to do.  Out of clean underwear with no time or energy to wash?  Go buy some new ones.  Or in this case, how many onesies can she wear in a week before we have to do a load of laundry?  At one point, we could go almost 2 weeks before we had to laundry for baby girl.  Then we had to start using bibs.  I'm currently considering buying a new chunk to extend our laundry capabilities.  Those things go quick with 2-3 meals a day, although she's luckily keeping drool during playtime to a minimum.  Our new idea is just to feed her in just her diaper.

We owe much of the excess clothes situation to grandparents and friends. To date, we've only bought 2 outfits for her. The rest are from others, which has been awesome. Thanks everyone!

1.  Coping with sleep-deprivation.  The parenting class said to not be surprised if you only get a few hours of sleep a night, and they made it sound scary.  I imagined accidentally falling asleep while holding her, or nodding off while bathing her.  Because that's when it would happen, of course.  During some incredibly vulnerable or high-risk situation.

Well, turns out it's nothing compared to the little to the completely sleepless nights spent in college doing whatever kind of tom-foolery we were up to (mostly Phase 10).  And sleeping when baby girl slept made me even livelier than I was in college.  I felt pretty well-rested, comparatively speaking.  Don't get me wrong, I was tired, but not near as tired as I was pulling all-nighters writing papers or finishing projects at the last minute.

So here's to college - a place where you push yourself to your limits and come out having learned something either about yourself, or your major, or both.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Date Night


Most have us have been there before.

Wrapping up work on a Friday night so you can get home, unwind and then blow off your nightly chores and routines to get out of the house with your significant other for some fun.  There's something about stepping out of the front door without dragging along the 100 lb. carseat and a 50 lb. diaper bag that makes you feel young and free.

And, if you're like us, you get out the door and have to decide between taking your sportage or the minivan.

NOT our van...but what if....



It's become an understood rule for me and my husband that on date nights, we take the sportage.  These are our nights to feel young, sleek, and sexy.  Just to give you an idea of how much we associate personalities with cars, you should know that the red sportage is named "Fiona" and our Honda Odyssey (the minivan) is named "Homer" (get it? Homer?).



Back to date night - we're already smiling at each other and making jokes as we get to the sportage.  My ever-chivalrous husband opens my door for me.  I sit and wait for him to join me on the other side, admiring how much moisture God can physically pack into a molecule of oxygen in such ridiculous heat.

He gets in and cranks on the car and we both turn to each other and remember that the car needs more freon for the air conditioning to work.  This means that in order to keep from looking like a hot and sweaty mess on our date......we would have to take the minivan.

WISH we had this excuse.





True story:  We recently bought this tough-mother of a van after Scott wrecked his car a few months ago.  Minivans were the best deals we could find for the amount of space - and after cramming an entire nursery into two cars last Thanksgiving, it made total sense.

We bought the minivan, and of course, my response is, "What the hell happened to my life?"
While my husband is thinking, "This. Is. AWESOME!"



How do I know he's thinking this?  Because #1.  He volunteers to drive it all the time (before the AC in the other car ran out of freon).  And #2.  He bought a little stick-figure family to put on the back of it.  He has obviously embraced the minivan stereotype.  I'm still working up to it, though the AC situation is helping.



So we look at each other, both knowing our only option.

I'm telling you, nothing sucks the fun out of the date night than driving everywhere you go in your family's workhorse vehicle.  I mean seriously, we could hear the stroller banging around in the back and we kept finding rogue diaper bag items roaming everywhere.

And of course, instead of ignoring all these things and pretending we're in some sort of hot rod, we make comments and joke about it the whole time:

"Well, this feels sexy"
"Wanna take a 'stroll'?"

I might as well have just gone out wearing sweat pants and a pony tail.

Even more disappointing was coming out of watching Iron Man 3 to find the minivan (with the stick people family on the back) in the parking lot.  Aw yeah....'cause we're cool like that.




Ultimately, I would not recommend this for a date night, simply because you still don't feel like you're getting away for a few hours.  However, if you're like us, you make the most of it and have fun anyways.

So I say to you, future-date-night-disasters....bring it.