i hate new york

This picture is actually from the beginning of the summer but like I told Laura, I was too ashamed to take a picture of my roach adventure from today. I took these pictures to use against our landlords somehow for making us live in squalor. This roach was on the wall right by the elevator door, and didn't move or anything when I was taking his picture. He was about 3-4 inches long from the tips of his absurdly long antennae to his back legs. I was convinced he was going to fly at me, which is the only time I really get freaked out by roaches.

This morning however I dealt with a small infestation of roaches in the grossest of locations ever. It was really traumatizing. So for background, the apt buildings next to ours have been abandoned for several years but now they are renovating them because the 2nd avenue subway is going in and they want to make them all nice. So while they've been renovating we have been getting a flood of newly homeless creepy crawlies in our building. It seems like as long as we keep things really clean they don't get too bad, but even so we see bugs constantly. The worst is around kitty's food, especially because he couldn't care less about them. I'll seriously see a bug and he'll be sitting there and the bug will run right past him and I'll point at the bug and kitty will follow my finger and try to sniff my finger but completely ignore the insect.

So for a while we had kitty's food in the kitchen but it just seemed too easy a place for roaches to live anyways without leaving bowls of food out for them to feast on. We moved his food bowls in to the living room next to the cupboard where I keep all of my extra bedding (winter blankets, extra sheets, etc) and the problem seemed to be solved.

Well cut to today when I go to get a fresh set of sheets out, I open the doors of the cupboard and see two roaches go scurrying UNDERNEATH MY POTTERY BARN COMFORTER!!! ugh. I took out every single item of bedding and shook them out and thank goodness there were none in there or i would have freaked out, now I just have to wash all of my bedding which is going to be a pain in the ass.

The really gross part was when I finally emptied the cupboard and was able to pull it away from the wall and found their secret hiding place. I'm not crazy in to the whole ahimsa thing but I generally try not to kill bugs and things if I can. I just feel like, it's not their fault that I think they are horrible, they're just trying to do their thing. But this was too much, it was just so gross. I had to go out and by the most toxic roach poison I could possibly find and I just drench the entire area until nothing was moving anymore.

I was debating whether or not I wanted to post about this or not, but Laura told me that I should because any new yorker can relate to the fight against vermin, which I thought was a good point. But just like the picture of the mummies remains in the palm springs toilet, there are some images that I just can't cope with being on my blog. I didn't want to subject you all to the reality of the swarm of roaches living behind my cupboard so I instead posted this one gigantic super roach in hopes that it would give you some indication of the horror that is NYC apt living.

I was on the phone with my Dad while I was spraying them down with poison and told him what I was doing. His response was, "Between that and the bed bugs I can see why you're always so anxious to get back to NYC".