Buggin'

Ya know... I was never a bug person. The first time I moved to Mexico, people said to me, Jeez, Joyce. Are you SURE? I mean, you've SEEN the cockroaches down there. And I said, well, you know, sometimes you have to go against the grain. Maybe the experience will help me get over my phobia.

You can ask Laura what happened the first time I saw something moving underneath my shoe pile.

And the next time, when 2 gigantic cockroaches chased me out of my bedroom in the middle of the night (I don't care what you say, that's my story and I am sticking to it). And then there was the night at Over 30 that the cockroach LANDED ON MY SHOULDER (I blogged about it, it may have been July or August 2006, I'm too lazy to go looking for something to link to).

Since I'm back, and living in the hotel zone, I have had limited issues with buggins. There was that one in the hallway going up to the smoking porch when I first got here, but it was pretty much dead. And I have seen some carci (that would be plural for "carcass" in my world, not sure if it is really a word or not) in the restaurant (no getting around that, but we have a bug guy come in every 2 weeks and it's not like it's in the food or anything). It hasn't been too bad. But then the rains started.

The other day I noticed that the door to the smoking porch was left open, not sure by whom, overnight. When it rains it's like a flipping ice skating rink up there with me and my no traction Eddie Bauer flip flops, so I don't smoke up there when it is raining. So I am on my way up in the morning, I guess this was only yesterday, so much has happened in the rest of my world since then, and as I am rounding the bend to go up the next small flight of stairs to the actual porch, I notice the bended leg of a grasshopper-y like beast. To my recollection, it was the size of a golf bag, and frankly, I didn't stick around long enough to inspect it. All I know is that this thing that could ONLY be called a locust from the plague years was on the riser of the stair, bigger than my hand, in my way, and forever imprinted in my memory.

I haven't been up there since.

Friday morning Joe and I had an appointment with a sales gal over at Basic for some reciprocal advertising opportunities, and so we pulled up to the parking lot there and waited as a taxista moved his car. While waiting, windows down, I spot this huge flying Good-God-What-in-the-Hell-is-THAT sort of thing flitting around (as much as it could "flit", for the love of Christ it had to weigh 15 lbs) from car to car. Of course (of COURSE) it went toward my open window (at least with manual windows you can control how fast the fucking window goes up), but when it couldn't get in, it lit on the windshield. It was huge. It was big, black and shiny with like yellow and red stripes on it, and big long antennae. Of course something like that would have to be able to fly. So we park the car, and I get out, and as I am walking something inspired me to brush the front of my shirt, and of course, I hit something heavy that fell off, and of course I freaked a little bit, and I will, of course, go to my grave saying that the bastard was ON me, even though Joe didn't believe me. Because why WOULDN'T it be on me? I tried Google to try to identify it, but most of the bug identification sites don't show flying beetles spawned from Hell, so I was unsuccessful. But if this thing wasn't 3 inches long not including the antennae, I'll eat my hat.

So this morning, not knowing if the door up there has ever been closed again, I trundle down the steps with my laundry bag, just like every Saturday morning. At the bottom of my steps is a door that I close every night - I don't have to, I just do. It's not like added security or anything, I just do it. Well this morning, all my shit in my hands, bounding down the stairs like a puppy, I obviously startled yet another beast (I am thinking moth at this point, but I don't care, it flew, it was big and it had no where to go but around my general head area). It couldn't go out the door as the door was not yet open, and I am quite sure that it was thinking to itself, Motherfuck! What the hell is THAT?! Just like I was. If it was screaming, just like I was, then I didn't hear it over my own. To top it all off, there were people in the main hallway, so when I grabbed the door handle and yanked it, and lost sight of whatever the hell it was, I had to immediately straighten up (I tend to go fetal in unpleasant situations), clear the look of horror from my face, and act like somebody else was screaming and doing the freaky deaky on the other side of a closed door. Act all cool, don't let them see your legs shaking, walk to the elevator, go to the lavandaria. By the time I got back upstairs I was a basket case.

So yeah, that's been my experience with bugs, the crawling and flying kind, the last couple of days. I have had plenty more experience with the stand up, walking around on two legs variety, too, but I will save that for another day. You don't want to hear it yet. Or maybe I don't want to type it. Yet.