This is Africa. There are bugs.

(Roach drawn to actual size.)

"This is Africa. There are bugs." says a sign posted in our apartment warning us not to leave food out. Well, we haven't left food out. A and I love eating in bed and watching TV (we once ate baked ziti straight out of the pan in bed--is this making us more attractive?--to be fair, we'd had a bad day), but we've been very good about not bringing food into our bedroom here.

So it was sort of surprising (I screamed) to see a "novelty-sized" (A's words) cockroach in our bedroom, right up where the wall meets the ceiling. I've killed about one mosquito per day in our bedroom, we've got a bit of ant problem (and a bigger ant poison problem) in the kitchen, and I've seen a few small, discreet New York-sized roaches in the bathroom. Also there are flies. But this thing was enormous--bigger than a Texas-sized roach.

So I screamed and ran out of the room with my hands over my head, and told A, who was in the bath, to kill it. A, ignoring the fact that obviously the only reason I'm marrying him or anyone is so that they will take care of bugs--I love sexism when it benefits me, like when women aren't obligated to go to services or carry heavy things--finished his bath.

When he got out, he made P kill it. P did an excellent job, and I made sure the thing actually went down the toilet, as I recalled that in Texas, roaches were sometimes revived by an electrical shock when they hit the water (someone please challenge flag me on this--I have no idea if I made it up).