I'm not quite sure whether to laugh or cry today.  I don't even know where to start.....

A few weeks ago, we received some unwelcome guests: an army of roaches.  At first we tried to be reasonable: a non-toxic natural remedy of peppermint spray.  A can of spray later, the roaches were still going strong, but my desire for BYU's mint brownies is forever gone.  We decided to get serious and got some little roach poison pods and stuck them all over the kitchen.  No success.

Last week an eager Mormon boy from Utah knocked on our door.  Surprisingly, not the missionary variety, but the recently returned missionary selling extermination services door to door.  I showed him our roach situation, only to discover that one of our two breeds of roach is almost impossible to get rid of. The result?  The extermination fee was 4 times the normal fee!  4 times!  4 times!  We politely thanked him, and decided to go to extreme measures to rid ourselves of the roaches.

This weekend we emptied out our kitchen, and sprayed an entire GALLON of Raid bug killer/barrier.  Thank you, Costco, for selling it in crisis-size.  We moved the refrigerator, finding a nest of roaches that were truly vomit worthy!  We sprayed and sprayed.  We ran the dishwasher continually, washing everything in the kitchen.  The result of our efforts?  Tonight, as I was navigating the nearly empty kitchen and the chaotic dining room to make a break-the-fast dinner, twenty roaches ran out from behind the stove.  I quickly grabbed the can of Raid and chased them down.  Of course, as I was jumping out of the reach of an angry roach, I managed to knock over a stack of pans.  Without thinking, I sprayed within inches of our dinner.

Now we have a disgusting roach epidemic that won't go away, a kitchen in complete chaos, and the smell of bug spray STRONG in the air.  In fact, it is so strong that we turned off the air opened all the windows yesterday.  Unbeknownst to me, my children also opened the SCREEN in my bedroom.  This morning I woke up covered in mosquito bites.  We have spent the day killing not only roaches but flies as well.

So tonight, as I was cleaning out the dishwasher for the fourth time, I realized we had left all the dining room chairs outside after our dinner.  I asked Jared to bring them in.  He looked at the sliding glass door and said "I really, really don't want to open this door."  We counted 7 flies, moths or mosquitoes on it.  Lacking any options, he opened the doors anyway and went to retrieve the chairs.  He was only out there for a minute before he called me "Candice!  You have to come!"  I ran outside, afraid of what I would find.  He pointed to the chairs, all of which were absolutely covered with slugs.  I started to laugh, and laughed all the way into the house, until I went to start the dishwasher and discovered a dead roach on the start button.  Yes, I discovered that one with my finger!

Jared, being a trooper, dutifully brushed off the slugs and brought the chairs in.  However, it was dark outside, and one chair alone had two slugs on the legs and had to be taken back outside.   Another chair had a slug on the seat and also had to be removed.  I stood in the kitchen watching this, bemused, until I looked at my arm.

My arm is a sad reminder of the many problems we currently face.  Our backyard is tiny, more of a fenced in patio.  Someone recently nicely referred to it as our "courtyard."  The yard is all pave-stones, with very little in the way of live growth.  That is, except for poison ivy.  The irony of this is the poison ivy doesn't even grow in our yard - it comes through the fence from the neighbor.  So a few weeks ago, I decided to take care of it before Jared went outside.  He is exceptionally sensitive to it, and will get the rash from being anywhere close.  I took care of it all right, and managed to get poison ivy all over the bottom half of my right arm.....  It has been two weeks, and I still have a rather nasty rash!

So now, covered in mosquito bites and poison ivy, I am at a loss for what to do.  Tonight I was washing my hands in the bathroom when I looked down and saw a roach on my shoulder.  Normally, this would annoy me, but I wouldn't get rattled.  However, after weeks of finding roaches EVERYWHERE, I am more on the rattled side, and I let out a little shriek.  I felt exceptionally wimpy when I realized it wasn't even a roach, it was the ends of my hair!

Tomorrow I am calling an exterminator.  They can charge me 4x the normal price of extermination.  I don't care anymore!!!!!