Tuesday, December 15, 2009

La Cucaracha

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but though creepy-crawlies in general don't disturb me in the least, I'm quite phobic when it comes to the dreaded, disgusting, disease-bearing COCKROACH.

I was preparing for a Diamond massage the other day, which is our most exclusive, expensive service. It involves a full-body scrub (exfoliation), plus a massage incorporating Swedish, deep tissue, and hot stone modalities.

I opened one of my cupboards to check how many sheets I had, and froze...as did the heinous cockroach sitting on the topmost sheet in the stack.

Now, when I say "phobic", I mean that I've mostly overcome the severe phobia I had as a child. I don't scream anymore, or gag, or jump on top of the nearest chair, table, bed, etc. Nor do I run away and cower in a corner, whimpering pathetically. (All behaviors which I have displayed in the past.)

Instead, as I felt my heart rate ratchet up while I started hyperventilating, I sprang into action. I HAD to kill this motherfucker, before the service started, and without alerting the guests on the other side of the door that anything at all was amiss. I slowly backed away, even as the noisome critter impudently twitched its antennae at me.

Bugspray! Where was the bugspray? Did we even HAVE any bugspray? Apparently not, I decided after frantically searching the storeroom. Foiled, I decided to return to the scene of the insectoid crime and dispatch the miscreant using more forceful measures...i.e. my shoe.

I pushed the table aside, so the bug couldn't run underneath, then, holding one of my shoes aloft, I started wildly pulling sheets out of the cupboard and onto the floor. Hey, they were soiled already, so who cares?

There it went! Unfortunately, it scurried into the next cabinet over, where all the towels and face cradle covers were neatly stacked. Great, now I'd have to replace all of those, too.

All this time, the clock was ticking down, every second bringing me closer to the moment when I'd have to collect my client from the lounge area.

I finally gave up, after emptying the towel cabinet, too. The vile critter had obviously scurried back into whatever hell spawned it, leaving behind droppings as evidence of its miserable existence. Droppings *I* would now have to clean up. Blech.

After hastily disposing of the soiled sheets and towels (and the poop, never forget the poop), I went and got my client and started the service. This was the longest hour and a half of my life, if you disregard the times I was in labor, of course.

The whole time I was massaging and scrubbing the nice lady who'd forked over a small fortune for this privilege, I kept seeing shadows scurrying out of the corner of my eye. You have to remember that the room is extremely dark, as well...this contributes to the client's relaxation. It was doing NOTHING for my blood pressure, though. Any time my ankle brushed against one of the dangling edges of a sheet, I imagined the skittering legs of the roach depositing germs in their wake. It was all I could do to at least maintain the semblance of calm. I had nightmare visions of the cockroach crawling ON MY CLIENT during the service.

I wanted to cry.

Finally, after about three eternities, we were through. I couldn't hustle the client out of the room fast enough!

I looked around my treatment room carefully: No roach.

I restocked my cupboards and went about my business, albeit with one eye always scanning the floors and walls carefully, wanting to make sure my nemesis didn't take me by surprise again.

It wasn't until the next day the villain showed its ugly face again, cheekily sitting on top of the clean sheets in the cupboard, causing me to experience serious deja vu.

Luckily, on this day I could employ my secret weapon: my favorite spa attendant, Maura! She who has no fear of cockroaches, and was blase about smashing it with MY shoe (hey, it was the least I could do, since she was willing to kill it, to let her borrow my shoe to do so), after I had rendered it a bit incapacitated but not dead by judiciously employing Lysol spray in an attempt to kill the damn thing.

My foe finally vanquished, I tidied up my room, new sheets AGAIN, and prayed I'd not have another encounter with an evil cucaracha.

You hear that, Cockroaches? Stay away from Christina LMT!

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

FUCKING ROACH.

...you can tell that I have a huge phobia of roaches, too. xD Except that, unlike Mom, I my reaction involves a lot of screaming and running away.

Mudruck said...

UGH! If there is one bug that I can't stand... it's THAT ONE! The last apartment complex that I lived in got a bad case of them and when I moved out of that infested hellhole, I just left everything right where it was. Furniture, household goods, everything got left behind as I wasn't about to take any of them of their kin with me.

ICK! A plague on them I say!

Farmmom said...

Oh I can empathize with you! Cockroaches are just nasty! I have absolutely no problem killing the little buggers.

As far as phobias are concerned mine is snakes. I have gotten better over the years. I don't lift my feet when I drive over them.

dick said...

Oh... Just wait. You're about to enter a place where the cockroaches can grow to the size of puppies.

Christina RN LMT said...

Silver, I tried SO HARD not to show any fear of them in front of you. Maybe it *is* genetic?

Mudruck, living in a place like that is one of my worst nightmares. I think I'd die.

Farmmom! That's so funny, because I absolutely LOVE snakes. I've always wanted snakes as pets, but my mom was as phobic as you. Then Silver's Dad, too. Maybe someday...:-D

Dick, I've lived in Florida, Hawaii, and Okinawa. All home of GIGANTIC ROACHES of DOOM™. Size really doesn't matter. ;)

Anonymous said...

Silver - Same here. I can't STAND roaches. Or bees. Especially bees. I was in a train going back home. I very rarely wear a gold cross I got so long ago. But when I have it one, I usually mess around with it. It's a habit of mine to play with my cross. Only there was no cross. I pushed down where my cross usually was, instead it was a bee, which I don't know how it got there. Only it wasn't a honey bee. I think it was a yellow jacket. It stung me and it hurt like hell for a couple of days. This happened on August of this year. Sorry for the long story.

Anonymous said...

"But when I have it 'one'..." It's supposed to be 'on'.

Buck said...

Heh. I hate the lil buggers, too. I got thrown out of a bar... well, a low-life beer joint, to be accurate... in Biloxi, MS one time for smacking roaches as they ran across the bar and sweeping them into a little pile in front of me. The bartender failed to see the humor in that activity and asked me to leave when he noticed I had accumulated about six carcasses. I didn't mind being "disinvited," as it was about the third or fourth bar of the night and I was on my first beer... drinking from the bottle... I wasn't about to use a glass in a place like that.

Mississippi is the WORST place I've ever seen when it comes to roaches.

OrangeNeck said...

Was it a big old American cockroach or one of them puny Gerrman roaches (aka Croton bug)? I absolutely hate the former. They're faster than greased lightning and uglier than Nancy Pelosi. Ugh!!

You know what they say, "Where you see one, there's a hundred more you don't see."

Anonymous said...

Hairspray also works. It suffocates them.

You can also use the hairspray/lighter combo, but that's not really a good idea indoors.

Sevesteen said...

I lived in Biloxi for a year in the Air Force. Worst roaches anyplace I've ever lived--I would periodically have to take my tape deck and turntable apart and remove their dead carcases that were jamming up the works.

Boric acid is slow, but effective. I passed it out to everyone in my wing, and eventually the roaches were nearly eliminated.

Holly said...

When we were moving into our house, I bombed the duplex we were in with roach killer. Once everything was boxed up I bombed again. THEN I bombed the new, empty house.
So far, 5 years later, no roaches. Knock wood!

Old NFO said...

How in the hell did you handle Okinawa? There are roaches EVERYWHERE over there... Glad you did "vansquish" that one. :-)

Christina RN LMT said...

TallyAngel, I'm so sorry you were stung! That truly sucks. :(

Buck, you actually smashed them, with your HAND? *shudders* No way in hell I could do that.

Wai, it was medium sized. But ugly as sin!

William! You're brilliant! I'd love to incinerate them using the blowtorch method...that would be so much FUN!

Sevesteen...I can only imagine. Like I told Mudruck, I think I'd die.

Holly, I remember having to bomb our house in Hawaii for FLEAS. They'd live in the carpets and furniture. The Air Force took care of spraying for roaches. :D
This was before all that Frontline stuff. Sounds like you were extremely thorough, which is a good thing!

Old NFO...we had plenty of house geckos! I love those little critters. :)

Buck said...

Yep... with my hand. I was very "happy" at the time... and it was an eye-hand coordination test, of sorts.

re: we had plenty of house geckos! I love those little critters. :)

Are those like the famous and way-cool "Fucyew" lizards in Thailand? ;-)

About which: I once had one of those lizards drop off a girl friend's ceiling in the middle of the night, right on to my bare belly; a BIG one (about a pound or so), too. Much hilarity ensued... in retrospect. It wasn't so danged funny at the time, lemmee tell ya.

Christina RN LMT said...

Buck...GAH!
I can only imagine...