A very important rule.

Everyone should know how to properly pluralize their own last name. This also includes plural possessives. Nothing irks me more than seeing something like Merry Christmas from the Smith's.

On surviving the ice age.

You know that I have a history of cockroach run-ins, from the abjectly disgusting (toothbrush) to the "I want to cut off my own leg" (cockroach on my shorts, touching my bare leg) to the garden variety "insect roommate" (Rembert St. house in Memphis). There's a Simpsons when Homer looks at Bart and asks what he's doing, and the next frame is Bart covered head-to-toe in a living suit of bees. "They chose me," Bart says.

I can relate.

Chris came over again last night and we hung out and watched Arrested Development. (Which he has never seen, and which is also a secret test of his humor: he passes.) And what do you want to discover when your fella is at your house? A cockroach. Don't worry, George (Michael) of the Jungle had already killed it, but still. It's a little embarrassing, like an indictment on your housekeeping skills.

So I suppose it's a good thing he wasn't around this morning when I found ANOTHER one in the dining room. Again, GM had already literally torn it limb from limb, and it was the big kind, which means it came in from outside looking for water (as opposed to the tiny, your-house-is-infested kind). Which I suppose should be comforting, but it's just not. Just: ew. I do not want to live this way.

And then GM barfed. Apparently he doesn't want to live this way either.

Because I can't resist. And I have access to my parents' photo albums.

Talking points:

1. Triangular hair.
2. Sally Jessie Raphael.
3. Baby evangelist.

4. White pumps.

Kafkaesque

There's a cricket armageddon going down in my office building. They are everywhere, blending into the corporate-patterned carpet just enough so that you're constantly almost stepping on them. In the break room, in the bathroom, in the cubes. My main concern is that one will jump on me (you know how wily insects are) or crawl up my pant leg, whereupon I will absolutely freak.

But there have been worse things. I once had a run-in with cockroach that made me get religion.

About two and half years ago, when I was living in my one-bedroom apartment on S. Lamar, I woke up in the middle of the night with a distinct feeling that something was on my bed. (I had this feeling once before, and clicked on the light to find a cave cricket cozied up on my pillow. I had no idea what it was--I thought it was some unholy union of cricket and roach, and I was torn between wanting to faint, wanting to take a scalding shower and never get out, and capturing this creature for science to discover.)

Anyway, call is sixth sense. I turned on the light to find a giant cockroach perched on the edge of my bed. And yes it's cliche, but that thing was Texas size: four inches if it was a centimeter. Not even being hyperbolic. I knew I had to stop it before it crawled under my covers (no one should ever have to make that contingency), so I batted it with my bare hand (blech!) off the bed. And I lost it: I didn't see where it landed or where it went. I stalked it for 20 minutes, wearing tennis shoes and with my finger poised on the Raid can. But it was gone. For sanity's sake, I told myself it shimmied back out the door, and went back to sleep.

The next morning I opened my medicine cabinet and found it perched on the my toothbrush.

You know those scenes in the movies where a bomb goes off, and for a moment everything is silence and slow motion? It was like that. My toothbrush! Is there anything more sacred or personal than someone's toothbrush? I really can't think of anywhere I would have preferred to find a roach less. It seriously makes me want to throw up in my mouth just thinking about it.

I wish I could tell you how this was resolved, but I think I blocked it from memory to protect my mental health. I'm sure there was weeping and gnashing of teeth and "why, God, why?" and the brushing of teeth with a finger that morning and the immediate purchase of new everything that was in the cabinet.

You're going to need more butter. And a larger bib.

I heard this on NPR yesterday and have been haunted ever since:

Scientists don’t know the lifespan of lobsters, but apparently they’ve concluded that lobsters don’t really age: they don’t slow down or lose their appetites or grow crotchety when teenage arthropods throw clam shells at their houses. They just eat and molt their shells as they grow bigger. And if they avoid parasites and the insidious lobster trap, they can keep growing unabated. So, the scientist in the interview said, it’s not without the realm of possibility that somewhere on the ocean floor, there could be 100- or 200-pound lobsters. It's not likely, but it's not impossible. As someone who is skeeved out by animals that grow to inappropriate sizes (see catfish, Hogzilla, etc.), the very thought of this sends chills down my spine.

I don’t want to live in a world where I could be cleft in two by a giant lobster claw.