Experience You Don't Need: Infestations

I had this experience shortly after my family and I moved to Tulsa. My husband's school put us in a two bedroom apartment at a decent price - the same place they put a lot of their students with families who refuse to live in the dorms. At first glance, the complex was not bad. It was not great, but it certainly looked livable.

   My husband is an impeccably neat person. Me . . . not so much, but I'm not a terrible slob. I vacuum, dust, throw garbage away, clean the bathroom, wipe down counters and sweep. The one thing I have a problem with is organization. I'm not an organized person. I really try to be. I will tackle one area of my house to get that all neat and orderly and then I move the leftover junk to another location. (I know. I need to throw stuff away!)
   Anyway, Tony had been living in the apartment for about two months before Kiera and I got to Tulsa. We had been visiting my family in South Dakota. The apartment was spotless. He really did an amazing job. However, that first night he told me there was a problem - roaches. EWWWW!!!!! I had never had a problem with cockroaches in my entire life!
   At first, it was only one to three every day. But, sure enough, where there is one roach, there are more. I complained to the office about it and they said they would go through and spray the building our apartment was in. They did. No roaches for four days. Then, they started showing up again. I complained again and I was told they had to wait two weeks before spraying again. The situation got worse. The roaches kept coming and in greater numbers. Two weeks later, I talked to the office and they said they would inspect the building. Turns out, one of my neighbors had two nests of roaches in their apartment - big nests. And management said they got rid of them.
   That's when things turned into something out of my nightmares. I couldn't cook a meal for my family without standing guard over it. I once left a pot of soup on the stove so I could do as nature intended. I did not put a cover on it. When I came back, a roach was sitting on top of one of my sliced onions floating in the broth. I couldn't use my slow cooker because roaches would circle the cover, trying to get to the goodness inside and cook to death.
   I was too embarrassed to have anyone over. My daughter had a friend over and one of the roaches crawling on the ceiling (they were everywhere) fell on her head. GROSS!
   By this time, management was spraying my apartment every two weeks. I made sure of it. And the little buggers kept on coming. After a while, the spray did nothing to deter them. The office told me I had to move my furniture around every two weeks to keep the numbers down. I told my husband that we needed to find another place to live after that. We started casually looking for another apartment at the same price.
   One morning, I got up to get ready for work. I walked into the bathroom and went to the sink. I looked at the plain white porcelain before I checked my toothbrush for any roaches. That was clean. I turned the water on. BABY ROACHES FLOODED MY SINK! THEY WERE POURING OUT OF MY BATHROOM SINK! I literally screamed and told Tony that we were moving immediately!
   It took us another two months to move out. We found another apartment at a cheaper price. But, it was a smaller complex and it was a lot nicer. In fact, we are still here. And the best thing - we have not had a single roach since living here! We've had three spiders in the two years we've been here.
   Unless you're an entomologist, keep the infestations out of your life. They're creepy and gross. You don't have to experience that to experience life. Unless you really want to just for a story to tell people in the future.
   If you suspect an infestation, nip it in the bud as fast as you can! It's a nightmare when it's full-blown! Bugs belong outside! Not in your house!