2002-06-04 - 10:29 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Elijah Rock", some gospel-ish song.

I learned this song in music class in grade school. I remember at the time I thought it was hopelessly stupid and repetitive. The song was grossly butchered then because it was being sung by a bunch of white middle-class kids, and the boys still had their baby voices.

After having been exposed to real gospel music and understanding what it's all about, in my head now the song is being sung by adults with rich voices. Damn if it isn't a pretty good song.

So, I had my first enounter with a big-city roach yesterday. I'm still recovering.

Now, when I lived in my first apartment, I occasionally encountered small roaches looking for food in my silverware drawer (?? smart roaches, eh?). They were less than a quarter-inch wide and less than half an inch long. I wasn't afraid of them.

Yesterday's big fucker, on the other hand. Jesus god. It was over an inch long and half an inch wide. I could see DETAILS. I'm getting goosebumps again as I write this.

It was in the back corner of the bathroom by the toilet. Not a good place for trying to get at it.

I confess, I was too chicken to stomp on it. I was barefoot, for starters, and I didn't want squashed roach on the bottom of any of my shoes. And I didn't want a big squishy roach mess on the floor that I'd have to clean up. My brilliant plan was to try to trap it under a heavy bowl-like object and let Poindexter deal with it when he got home. My big brave man and all that.

So I'm trying to just get CLOSE to the fuckin thing, which is hiding behind the toilet, and every time I'd get near it it would skitter somewhere else. It skittered behind the wastebasket. When I moved it, it skittered under a tissue that had fallen out of the wastebasket. When I gingerly moved the tissue, it skittered in the direction of my bare feet.

At this point, folks, I shrieked. Probably more than once. And it skittered under a flannel shirt lying on the floor. (Yes, I am a slob.) It sat there, under the sleeve, antennae poking out.

I lifted the shirt, and it skittered OUT INTO THE HALLWAY AND INTO THE CLOSET. Where it is now nesting happily amongst my shoes and my $200 boots, if it hasn't moved. I pray it has moved. I don't want to discover it when I go to put shoes on someday. It has to have moved. There's no water in the closet, and water was what it was after.

I did a lot of roach research after that, and found that although they can live for months with no food, they need water on a daily basis. I also found that leaving dishes in the sink is a very, very bad idea, so my new hobby is frantically washing every goddamn dish as soon as it gets dirtied, as opposed to washing dishes approximately once a day.

Shiver Every time I feel a little tickle (a thread or my own hair tickling me) I think it's a roach crawling on me. I gotta get over this.

So, what else. Well, Poindexter left his work shoes at his mom's house this weekend. Ha! Under the bed. He wasn't too happy when he was getting dressed for work and couldn't find the shoes in his bag.

His only other shoe options for work were fancy shoes and some kind of Docksiders derivation that he usually wears with shorts. He wore the latter yesterday, but wanted to go shoe shopping in case he could find something better to shod himself in until his work shoes arrive from Florida. He's got black work shoes; now he wants some brown work shoes.

He found a pair of brown nubuck Ecco Citywalkers that he liked, but they didn't have his size. He's extremely picky. We went into something like five stores and he didn't see anything else he even wanted to try on.

We stopped in at the Shops at Liberty Place, a sort of mall, where they are having some beach party thing on Wednesday. I was not impressed with the idea, but then when we got to the open area in the middle of the mall, I stopped short and my jaw dropped.

They're building sandcastles in there. The theme is a patriotic/hero kinda thing, and they had a completed Liberty Bell and one of the WTC towers, and they were hard at work on the rest. They're using a foam base, but the outside is REAL SAND. There's sand EVERYWHERE. The detail of the bell and the tower was etched in SAND. I'll be going back to get photos of it all. Wow.

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