11.21.98

    During the summer for awhile T. and I had a rather grotesque problem with roaches. We even had a bug guy come in and spray but that only kept them away for something like a week. For a few days after the spray I was finding stunned roaches sitting out on the open. I only had to lightly bonk them on the head with a newspaper and they'd give up the ghost.

    I have major issues with roaches. It stems from living in Mississippi, Biloxi to be exact, where roaches come in all sizes — mostly rat size. These roaches are huge, black creatures, with hairy legs that sometimes fly. It gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. Bugs are so big in the south. This is the reason why I don't ever want to live there again. You could never lay in the grass without getting bites from ants, mosquitos and other creepy crawlies. I was so happy when we moved away from Mississippi to England where the only thing to fear are giant spiders.

    I nurtured a talent while living in Mississippi (Biloxi and Columbus for a six-year total). It started one night on the back porch of my house, watching mosquito hawks which look like large mosquitos but actually prey on them. They are kind of lazy and have long wings. I could easily put these in my sights and launch a rubber band at them killing them dead. Pretty soon I was able to do it with mosquitoes and this turned into an evening walk with my friend Jennifer in which I would snap 'squiters left and right. I got really good at it.

    Jennifer and I also used to go on roach rampages. As night fell these dark creatures would congregated in the street in the pools of lamp light. Jennifer and I would run into the thick of them, stomp as many as we could while screaming our heads off and then run off to compare gross-out notes. Before it got dark enough for the roaches to come out we'd have long talks about boys and love and the meaning of life while I snap-snapped the bloodsuckers with the greatest of ease. This is probably less a testimony of my skill and more a reflection of their size.

    But, once again, I digress.

    Sometime this fall, right around the middle of September I suppose, all of the roaches disappeared. I should perhaps clarify that these are not the big, black behemoths of Mississippi but smallish, tan things no longer than an inch though usually smaller and with long legs. I think it's the long legs that are getting to me this time. So, they're not quite as awful but that's really splitting hairs when were speaking of roaches, isn't it? *blech*

    When the roaches were here they seemed really attracted by my computer. I've heard that monitors can put out some really funky signals and attract insects so maybe that's what was going on. But, every now and then one would go creeping across my desk or slouching around my Zip drive. I'd scream at the little buggers, "The dirty dishes are in the kitchen — the kitchen! Go in there! Get away from my machine!!" Then, I'd squish them. It reminds me of this Bloom County cartoon where the roaches are holding the evil overlord hostage in his own home. There was one scene where the man that lives in the house opens his refrigerator and sees a roach in there. He grabs a newspaper and the roach says, "One more step and I lick the pot roast."

    So, just yesterday, I'm sitting at my computer with a cup of coffee by my side and munching on some Apple Jacks when out of the corner of my eye I see a roach. He's just sitting on my CPU like there's nothing he'd rather do. I grab a magazine, roll it up and *thwack* nail him. Only there's a problem. The roach is most decidedly dead. There's a little spot of goo on my CPU where he shuffled off his mortal coil but the body is gone. It's not stuck to the magazine. It's not on the CPU. I start doing the I've-walked-into-a-spiderweb dance in the fear that the body is somewhere on my person, maybe in my hair. (This is why I don't have a web cam, by the way.) I look on the floor around the CPU. Nothing.

Cue scary, suspense music.

The music swells as the camera pans slowly across the carpet to the desk leg. Up the desk leg and across the bowl of cereal to the cup of coffee still steaming.

The camera halts on the cup of coffee as our heroine screams, "Noooooooo!"

Quickly the camera sweeps to a dramatic arial view of the cup of coffee to see, floating on its surface....

Nothing.

Not one to take chance our heroine dumps both the coffee and the cereal and heads for the shower.

    Perhaps the force of the blow sent the roach into an alternate universe or reduced him to dust. Perhaps it's time for some power vacuuming. *Blech* Little, evil triumphs of evolution. Die, die, die!

    The dog walking is still going well but I need to start stretching in the morning. I stretch a little bit but it's painfully obvious that I need more. My knees and ankles are killing me. I have such a hard time getting up in the morning though. Somehow I need to get up earlier so I can save my body from unneeded damage.

    A few of you have asked if I'm only walking dogs of the rich rather than the famous. Well, truth be told it's mostly just the rich but I'm sure some of these people are famous in their own circles. It's also possible that I'm walking a dog of the rich without ever knowing. I almost never see the actual owners of these dogs. Usually, I only deal with house keepers and guards and butlers, that sort of thing. We do have two famous clients as far as I know.

    One is Charles Grodin and the other is Ving Rhames. I think the dogs we walk for Grodin are actually his brother's dogs but his brother lives with him, I think. Anyway, I haven't been up to his house yet. This week, I did get to walk Ving Rhames' dogs, though. They are just the sort of dogs you would expect him to have — two giant Rottweilers.

    And, when I say "giant" that is no exaggeration. There is a male and a female and the male is easily much larger that I am. His head is bigger than a basketball. When he wants you to pet him he'll lean against you and press his head to your hip. The first time he did this he nearly knocked me over. The female is a little smaller and not as muscular but still a big dog. If you follow that link above there's a picture of a Rottweiler who looks about half the size of the male dog.

    You definitely want to be on the good side of these dogs. While they really are sweet animals they are just huge and could take a sizeable chunk out of any animal. I got to meet Mrs. Rhames as well who seems like a really cool person. Usually, the owners would rather not even know we're there but she came out and chatted with us and told us how the dogs were doing lately. It's nice when people actually care about their animals. I'll let you know if I ever meet Ving.