Kitchen Confession

I have a confession, dear reader.

Okay, fine, I probably have more than one. Basically my whole life is a lie but if I start to peel off the outer layers of pretense that keep me propped up it could get real ugly, real fast. And besides, I’m tired and I want to keep this short. So just the one confession for today, a kitchen confession.

We have roaches, cockroaches that is. I haven’t held onto the end of a joint since that one time in high school when — right, sorry. One confession at a time. So we have recently developed a cockroach problem and I’ve been keeping it to myself. It’s quite strange, really, since I have no problem at all shouting from the rooftops about my dead sink mouse, but the cockroaches must be not be mentioned. It will be our little secret.

But then I had to spend the better part of two days prepping our house for a pest control company and I didn’t write a single word for days and I was so completely and utterly consumed by cockroach madness (like March Madness but without the brackets and there are no winners), that I thought to myself, “Fuckit.”

Fuckit.

We bought this semi-detached house three years ago and have been waging a losing war against the mice ever since. But the cockroaches only started to show their disgusting little faces a couple months ago. The house that’s attached to ours and further sub-divided into three separate units sold last year and, presumably, some cockroaches moved in with the new neighbours.

I think I did the thing everyone does when they first see one. Pretend like you didn’t see it. Was that … uh … some sort of beetle? Perhaps a really big, creepy looking and incredibly fast-moving ant? It’s really hard to say, better sit tight and do nothing. YOU KNOW DAMN WELL IT WAS A COCKROACH but you just can’t bring yourself to face the truth so you lie to yourself.

Then, some number of weeks go by and I saw another and then another. NOOOO!! Years and years ago we had an apartment with roaches that we got rid of by treating for them, moving into another apartment,  and then treating again in the new place as a preventative measure. You can’t mess around with roaches. I had only just started to get over the jumping reflex whenever a shadow or other dark spot moved across a surface. Now I will never get over it.

I called the new owners of the house next door and — HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! — they agreed to combine forces and hire a professional to treat the entire building, my house and all three of their units, for both cockroaches and mice. The old owner just liked to insist he didn’t have a mouse problem when I suggested that. Yeah right.

It still took a couple weeks to orchestrate the timing for the grand extermination and in the meantime I did what any of you would have done. I took to the internet and mixed up a home batch of borax, flour and hot chocolate powder to sprinkle in places where my kids couldn’t reach it. (Borax is seriously not safe for kids. Use with caution.) It kinda worked in that I saw a few dead guys and it probably kept the population in check but I don’t think it would have eradicated the problem on its own.

And then, last week, I had to take everything out of every kitchen and bathroom cupboard and drawer and wash out all the surfaces (just because you can’t wash them after they place the gel bait) and OMG if you ever wish you had a bigger kitchen then this is the job for you. My kitchen was instantly transformed from “I literally have no storage in this room,” to “Another freaking cupboard?! You have got to be kidding me!” No, seriously. I had entire drawers and cupboards that I didn’t even use because the prospect of looking inside was too scary. Of course, now that they’ve been cleaned out I can finally buy that juicer/blender/mixer/toaster oven/mother-loving dehydrator I didn’t think I had room for! No I can’t.

Not even half of everything in my kitchen. Not even half.

The good news is that I did manage to empty, clean and somewhat re-organize my entire kitchen.

And just in time to pack my entire family of five for a four day trip to a cottage! This is my life. Try not to be jealous.