My birthday present to you

Today is my birthday. It wasn't the most horrible birthday I can imagine, but neither was it a peaceful fun day filled with all my favorite things and phone calls and cards flooding in. Oh no. Instead James refused to take a nap even though I spent TWO HOURS trying to help him get to sleep. And he was cranky all morning before that, and I was exhausted all afternoon after that, so I didn't get the chance to do anything on my to-do list, which all needs to get done because my mother was ostensibly supposed to be here at 4:00 this afternoon, but of course her flight got canceled so she's driving down from D.C. as I type this, and probably won't be here till midnight.

But I should've known today would not be the greatest day when last night we had a surprise visit from the Devil Himself. Ben and I were sitting on the couch watching the boob tube, and out of nowhere all of a sudden this bird comes flying through our living room.

No, wait, it's not a bird, it's THE MOST FREAKING ENORMOUS BUG I'VE EVER SEEN. HOLY. CHRIST.

This bug was so gargantuan, it could've been a Frisbee. I froze out of sheer terror. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined there would be a bug as big as a BAT in North Carolina, let alone IN MY LIVING ROOM. This was the MACK TRUCK of bugs, a Gulliver among Lilliputians, flying in MY house and landing on my moose poster. WHAT THE HECK, UNIVERSE? How did I miss the ginormous bloody hole in my house that has to have been there to let this monstrosity in?

Seriously. If Ben had hit it at me with a tennis racket, we could have had quite a ball game going. If I tried to stomp it with my shoe, it would've just tripped me. James could've used it as a rocking horse, or we could've put food out in a bowl for it and called it Rover, IT WAS THAT BIG.

So after staring dumbfoundedly at the Beast for an indeterminate amount of time, Ben finally sprayed it with some poison (read: chased it around with a tennis racket and a can of Raid) and it crash landed in our kitchen and crawled beneath our fridge. We hope it's dead, but we assume it's really just feasting on the contents of said fridge a la Fantastic Mr. Fox. (For those of you who aren't familiar with Roald Dahl, this means he's dug a hole up from underneath the fridge and is laughing his little endoskeletal butt off at us while we wait for him to dart out from under the fridge to his doom.)

After we felt we had the situation under control (read: weren't running around screaming like sissy ladies anymore), we did the sensible thing and Googled it. This method, after all, worked well the last time we had bizarre vermin around the house*. Turns out it's most likely a Palmetto Bug, which is just a cute way of saying REALLY FREAKING GIGANTIC FLYING COCKROACH.

And no, I'm not linking to any information about the Palmetto. I know some of you out there have the need to protect yourselves from the possibility that you're next. And you're smart people! Never mind that NO ONE IS SAFE while the Palmetto bug flies. But no one wants to see the pictures. Trust me on this one. I had one in my house last night and the photos just serve to exacerbate my trauma.

If this is my birthday present from the universe...I have some atoning to do.

*Please don't judge the general suckiness and confusion of my original blog. I was and still am technically deficient, but luckily I have learned enough to be able to create links intelligibly and have my text all be the right color and such. *cringe*