I sent my old personal trainer back in Boston a message telling her how cute her niece was, and mentioned that I’d be back in Beantown in August. I told her I missed my lovely all-women gym and had canceled my gym membership down here because Gold's Gym was disgusting and dirty. So she wrote me back and said I'd get a pass when I was up there and visit her at the gym. Great... I mean, Phyllis once had me in the best shape of my life, and I love Healthworks and working out with her, but she used to make me run stairs, and I don't want to think about what I'd look like trying to run stairs now - I'm pretty sure crawling doesn't look like running. There are lots of excuses, until recently there hasn't been a gym near my home and I hated the gym near my work. I am busy and often out in the evenings, and when I am home, I'm tired. It is too damn hot to breathe outside here in the swampland that is DC. But it all comes down to this - I don't want Phyllis to see me trying to work out in the shape I'm in (or not in) right now. So knowing that I will work out with her at the end of August has me motivated - I've got exercise tubing and it's light outside when I get home and my apartment building has stairs, five flights of them. So I'm going to start working out to prepare for working out - how's that, Phyl? You think I'm kidding, but I stopped at Target on the way home to get an exercise ball so that I could do those ridiculously hard pikes and push-ups and maybe even some ab work. (Actually, I bought two balls - one is about to become my chair at work, so I can do my core work at my desk! And I can't wait to practice feet up balancing as a quick break at the office!)
So the trip to Target actually resulted in a whole new reason to post - bugs. Specifically giant creatures that live in warehouses in then hide in cardboard boxes. I've had a few cockroaches in the kitchen, and it's hard knowing that it's not about wiping down the counter tops more often, but more about the fact that Washington DC was built on a swamp! I've got bay leaves scattered in every cabinet and for the most part, we're ok. But the apartment building has a problem with your average run-of-the-mill bugs. This evening I unpacked the home exercise ball, and then went into the kitchen to make sausage balls for a potluck lunch at work tomorrow. I came out to listen to something Rachel Maddow was saying on Countdown (PS - I don't like when she's substituting for Keith Olbermann) when a scurry by my foot made me scream bloody murder. On a side note, if ever killed in my apartment, my neighbors won't call the cops, they'll just go about their business. If that's not enough to trigger a Bridget Jones-eque fear of dying at home with no one to notice but the pack of wild dogs, I don't know what is. Back to the scurry. The biggest cockroach I have ever seen was scuttling around my floor. While I screamed it made it's way down the hall, tucking along the wall so I couldn't quite tell (it was moving fast) if it ducked into my giant storage closet or went into my bedroom. I knew there would be a night spent with every light in the apartment on if I didn't commence the hunt right then. I knew this because in Arizona the appearance of a palmetto bug (think forearm sized remnant of the Jurassic period), followed by the inexplicable disappearance when I went to get a bowl or pot to throw over the creature, once chased me out into the night and over to a boy's house. Say what you will about my slutty behavior, that monster was scary. So tonight, with no escape plan and a scared kittay, I gathered up the Glamour magazine that has mysteriously begun showing up in my mail and headed down the hall. Luckily, my entrance into the bedroom dislodged the roach from its spot by the door and it started to head for under the bed - time to act, as I was not up to getting down on my knees to reach under the bed to try to swat this thing. I landed a solid blow with the magazine and hoped I hit the target. I did - hurrah! I prematurely threw the magazine away and got a broom and dustpan to scoop the roach into the toilet. It twitched and while on its back tried to move away from me, so a couple of hits with the broom were necessary, but at last, the bug was dead and flushed down the toilet. However, this thing was bigger than my thumb, and the final deathblows required a closer examination of the thing than I would have liked. Result, I won't be eating grasshoppers again, watching the leg twitch was too much. I took all offending packaging from the exercise ball immediately down to the recycling room in the basement. I also took the Target shopping bag that still contained the ball for the office. I opened that box and discarded it down there in the basement. I'm not saying every Target box contains a giant bug, but I wasn't taking any chances. Also, there are fewer bugs in Boston.
No comments:
Post a Comment