THERE IS A COCKROACH IN MY CAR

 And it is HUGE.   Which according to anyone who is born and raised in Florida it is NOT a cockroach !  It is a PALMETTO bug.   To which I say, " Donkey poop! That sucker is a ROACH !"  Having been born and a raised in NYC I know a cockroach when I see one and that sucker in my car is the mother of all. roaches!!!!! 

Call it what ever you want I just want it OUT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!  of my car !!  

I discovered The Beast last Saturday when I got home from the grocery store.  At first I thought I had brought it in on some of the produce I had purchased,.( I hope it wasn't a BOGO). But I think I actually invited it into my car when I removed the windshield cover and threw that into the back seat.  Monsieur  Le Cocka Roacha was probably tucked into the cover only to find himself being flung in to a totally new habitat.  When I went out earlier that day I had taken the outside cover off my car windshield and threw it into the back seat. (The reason I have a cover on my car is that my parking spot is under a tree that is home to many birds.  Florida has many, many birds and they all love to sit in the trees and poop!   I got tired of having to go to the car wash every time I went out just so I could see where I was going.)   When I got home and pulled the cover out of the backseat the BUG  decided he liked living in a high rent neighborhood where he did not have to be lunch for some bird so he did not depart the premises.  

Up to this point I was totally unaware that I had a stowaway.  If the dumb creature had just stayed hidden all would have been well. But like most men he HAD to let me know he was there.  As I went to shut the back door of my car I caught my first glimpse of THE CREATURE.  He was sitting on the door frame looking right at me with a smirk on his buggy face just daring me to challenge him.  He obviously did NOT know who he was dealing with !  I suppose he expected. me to scream, faint, go running into my house waving my arms. I surprised him when I grabbed the car door and SLAMMED it as hard as I could figuring nothing was going to survive that.  WRONG !!!  I looked up at the closed door and there were 2 big, black antenna waving at me.  Not believing that it was  at all possible that the bug could survive getting squished like that I opened the car door.    Not only was this creature not dead he was up and running right back IN TO my car.  

Could the nasty thing have jumped OUT of my car?  Of course he could. But where's the fun in that ?   

I have no idea where it ran and hid. All I know is it is still IN MY CAR and I am not driving anywhere until I find a dead body !!  I am having visions of me driving down I 95 at the snails pace of 85MPH when this thing JUMPS out and lands on my face.  It would not go well from there. I KNOW the cockroach would survive the crash but I doubt if I would.  And so to rid my car of unwanted hitch hikers My ingenious thought was, "I'll just leave the car locked up sitting in the Florida summer sun and Mr. Roach will fry baby fry.   Then someone reminded me that cockroaches will survive an atomic bomb so to a roach a hot car is like summer in the Bahamas.  

Next step . . .   buy a bunch of "ROACH MOTELS".   Remember the motto from the "Raid" company?  "Roaches check in but they don't check out".  Here's hoping that is true because otherwise I may have to resort to selling my car and getting a new one.

Today I will venture out to the car and open ALL the doors while I search for a body.  Dead or alive that thing has got to go. 

RUNNING OUT OF STEAM

 I woke up this morning in the middle of a dream.  I was dreaming that I was a freshman in a college that's campus was so large I had gotten lost and could not find my way back to my dorm.  Along my panicked way I met a girl that I had gone to high school with. We were "best" friends for a while until life took us in different directions.  I also dreamed I met my younger cousin who passed away about 3 years ago. In the dream she told me to follow her and she would take me back to my dorm but some how I lost her along the way.  I kept asking people for a map of the campus so I could find my dorm but no one had a map.  I was getting so frustrated and then I woke up.  It took me a while to collect my thoughts and realize it was only a dream. But it was one of those dreams that was so realistic it just wouldn't leave my head.

I love to dream and then analyze what it all meant.  I can track various things that happened through my day yesterday that probably triggered the events and people in my dream but this one made me uncomfortable.  The fact that I have been more focused on my mortality recently is one of the reasons this particular series of events and people bothered me.  Now I can really get all Freudian and tell you that since my cousin is dead and in my dream she is going to lead me "home" I may die soon.  Except that in the dream I lost her so I guess I am not going to die soon.  Or the whole thing about the map that I cannot find tells me I am wandering around senselessly in my life right now.  But considering I have ZERO training in psychology I doubt any of this is true.

By now I have totally freaked myself out so I finally get up out of bed to face the day.  I had no plans for the day what so ever. It has been VERY hot down here in South Florida so I knew whatever I was going to do today would be indoors.  My garden needs tending and the lanai is getting cluttered. I did not put the recycling or garbage out last night because it was just too darn hot. All of that can wait till Saturday or next week's garbage collection. (Living alone does not generate a great deal of refuse in a weeks time.). I am excited to spend a day inside because it is always an adventure.  Especially when I have nothing that NEEDS to be done.    I just walk into a room and WHAM ! something grabs my attention and that's it for the day.  UNTIL I run out of steam.   That is what I am facing right now as I sit here writing.  

After I got up I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth and comb my hair.  This is usually a safe routine except that today I opened the bathroom cabinet looking for some lotion and got sucked in. Just like the Twilight Zone I found myself surrounded by a multitude of products which I seem to accumulate and never use.  For what ever reason TODAY was the day that I "needed" to go through them and throw away and reorganize all 3 shelves of this built in cabinet. This is not a job for the faint hearted. Believe me!  I started pulling things out, tossing some but keeping most. ( I had looked in this cabinet about 2 days ago and thought I REALLY needed to get into it to see what was there but I had managed to ignore the urge. )     An hour later the counter top was covered in bottles, jars, boxes and whatnot.  So now I not only have a messy cabinet that I could just close the door on, I now have a total and complete mess all over the bathroom!  What happens next is up to me. 

I decided I needed breakfast and a rest because I had run out of steam.  So here I sit writing a blog.  I will probably have to pee my pants at some point because I do NOT want to go back into the bathroom and deal with the mess in there.  I'm sure that if I fall asleep in this chair I will dream of an earthquake, tornado  and volcanic eruption where I find myself unable to climb out of the rubble.  So I better not fall asleep. In order to stay awake I will head into the kitchen to make some lunch and end up pulling everything out of the fridge because I can't find the cheese.  Everything will end up out on the kitchen counter and I will once again run out of steam.