I do not like roaches. I have a very irrational fear of them. I think it stems from when I was a little girl and one of my older brothers would chase me around the house with them and threaten to throw them in my hair. So, I really don't like roaches.

Josh is out of town for the next week or so. I have to wake up pretty early in order to get everything ready so I can take Ella to school and get to work on time. So I'm walking down the stairs and I round the corner to go to the kitchen. It's 5:30AM, so my eyes are still blurry and I'm a little out of it and I see a dark shadow on the floor a couple of steps in front of me. I think to myself that I didn't leave anything out on the floor, so I bend down to take a closer look and it's the biggest, fattest roach I've ever seen. I immediately run away and hide in the living room. So I peek around the corner to see if I scared it away, but he's still just sitting there being fat and ugly. I turn on the TV and some lights to see if any activity will scare him back into the walls, but he doesn't move. After about half an hour of waiting for him to move, Sadie wakes up. At this point, I'm running out of options because I can't let her down to walk around or she'll eat it and that is a situation that I never want to find myself in again (yes, again but with the other sister). So I hurl my flip flop in the general direction of the roach and run up the stairs to get Sadie. I wake up Ella and get her dressed and ready for school. We come back downstairs and he's only moved about a foot closer to the wall. So I let Ella walk by him (she doesn't even notice him) to see if she scares him away but he doesn't even budge. Ella comes back and she asks me to make her some peanut butter toast with banana slices for breakfast and I told her I couldn't make her breakfast and that she'd have to eat at school this morning. She got so upset and I finally admitted why I couldn't go into the kitchen. There was a man-eating roach in the way. So she walks over and takes a closer look and here is the next few minutes of dialogue between us:

Ella: Mommy, you don't have to be scared. He's not crawling, see? It's just a bug, so don't be scared. It's ok.
Me: But Ella, I'm really scared of roaches. They're really gross.
Ella: It's okay Mommy. You can just kill it.
Me: But I don't know how.
Ella: Just take your shoe over there and SMACK IT
Me: I can't do that, Ella. I'm really scared of it. Maybe I could get some bug spray.......
Ella: Yeah, get the bug spray! It's in the garage. Come on, I'll show you. You can put Sadie in the high chair while you spray it.
Me: Ugh, okay...


So we walk out to the garage, find the bug spray and then go back into the dining room. At this point, Ella is now hiding behind the curtains peeking out. But she's not hiding from the roach, she's hiding because she doesn't want me to spray her in the eyes with the bug spray. So I stand there for a few minutes trying to build up the nerve to spray the roach and I look over at Ella and tell her how I need her help, her love and support because I can't kill this roach. She nods at me, very knowingly, and holds my hand as I spray the roach. That nasty thing was too fat to even run away. So, I killed it. I have not yet picked it up. I blocked off the area so Sadie couldn't get to it and was able to make Ella some breakfast. I came to work and asked my mom if she'd come over to my house and throw it away for me, but she told me she wouldn't do it and that it's tough love and it's good for me to have to throw it away. I'm already having a little bit of a panic attack thinking about having to go home to the man-eating roach. Luckily the brother from which my fear of roaches stems from lives a few minutes from me. Maybe he'll come get it for me...........


A little dramatic? Maybe so. I never said my fear was rational. Lucky for me, I have a brave little daughter who helped me through it this morning. I love her like crazy.