Let me just preface this by saying that my boyfriend and I do not live in filth. We have a nice home and are both very tidy, albeit somewhat disorganized in busier weeks. But then again, who isn't? At any rate ...
You know how sometimes when you're asleep, there are things that can be going on around you that your mind subconsciously incorporates into your dreams? (If you're a light sleeper, that is.) For example, maybe you awake to discover that your high school gym teacher's shouting was not, in fact, morphing into a screeching bird voice, but rather, your alarm clock was going off.
I experienced a variation on that phenomenon Wednesday night/early morning. It all began when I felt something skittle across my hand under the covers. "That's weird," my dream self thought. "But totally not anything worth panicking over."
And then the something skurried up the back of my tank top (I was lying on my side), bringing me a little closer to being awake. Now my dream self was fading as the real me swished at my back with one hand.
And then the something scuttled across my stomach, which is precisely the moment my dream self drop-kicked me into being awake. I shot straight up in the air and somehow ended in a crouch position on top of my pillow in about half a second. My boyfriend, roused from a dead sleep, immediately sat straight up and just kept saying "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" in an attempt to get me to stop flailing my arms and beating the sheets in front of me like a woman possessed.
Now, I don't wear my contacts when I sleep, and that night I had forgotten to place my glasses on my nightstand, so I couldn't see a darn thing. But I would swear in a court of law that upon first rising up into my "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" attack mode pose, I am very certain I saw something black about the side of a quarter at the edge of the fitted sheet right before one of my flailing arms swept that little #$%^&*@#*$&# right off the bed.
Of course, my boyfriend thought I was crazy. Because, as well all know, that is one of the areas that almost every boyfriend is capable of excelling in, the ability to believe his girlfriend is in a constant state of crazy.
"Ifeltsomethingscurryovermyhandandthenupthebackofmyshirtandthenovermystomach!" I warbled in terror.
"I know, I know," he said, patting my shoulder a little, trying to console me. He was already starting to lie back down at that point.
"No seriously! I don't have my glasses on, but I saw it! When I flipped the covers up, there was something black
right there."
He sat back up in a hurry. "Really? Right where?" Oh sure,
then he was interested.
But ultimately, he couldn't find anything, peering with his 20/20 vision over the comforter and the side of the bed, and so he told me to go back to bed.
Go back to bed? Are you kidding me? Having some sort of creepy-crawly scurry over her in her sleep is one of the top 10 scenarios on every woman's "Most Traumatizing Things That Could Ever Happen To Me In My Own Home" list. There is no way I was going to be able to go back to sleep. Or even get back under those sheets.
So as my boyfriend started to softly snore again, there I lie, cold and traumatized, wondering how many more hours until our alarm clocks would be going off and I could stop thinking about how I wasn't sleeping and why I wasn't sleeping.
About 40 minutes later, the alarm clock sounded and I, definitely not asleep, jumped up, flipped on the light and proceeded to check the floor before setting my feet down. After a few more minutes of surveying the room ...
"I found it," I said.
"Found what?" my boyfriend mumbled.
"What was scurrying around last night."
"You did? Where? What is it?"
"It's a cockroach," I said, disgusted, and pointed toward the carpet next to his nightstand.
Suffice to say there was an insect death that occurred in our home around 5:30 a.m. Arizona Mountain Time, and that the corpse was honored in a manner fitting with how the specimen chose to live its life: We flushed it.
Sheets have been washed, traps have been set, and my boyfriend has already had to endure my recount of the events involved in my near-death experience at least a dozen times.
But the really, truly tragic thing is that as the little body was swirling down into the underworld where all bad bugs (and even the good ones, too, I imagine) go, I found myself thinking: "There can't be cockroaches here! This is
Scottsdale!"
I think this place is finally affecting me.
