The Harrowing Story of Beau & the Night I Almost Peed Myself

For full pictographic details of my recent "vacation" to Florida, please refer to the link to my flickr account located at stage right. Generally, there are very few details worth reliving or relating to others, so instead I will tell you this much more interesting tale.

This past Monday was a lousy day in the life of Dangerous K due to a previous unforeseeable event this past Sunday in which I drank approximately all the rum on Pleasure Island. This immediately led to (possibly) the worst hangover of the year in which I was confined to my bed except for brief sessions of vomiting and spaghetti consumption. All this instead of going to Epcot on Monday as planned.

ANYWAY, we compensated by going to both Sea World and Epcot on Wednesday in a super-doubleheader which made everyone else go to bed as soon as we got back to the condo. Except for me because Family Guy was on and its like heroin.
But even the wacky antics of Peter Griffin couldn't keep me up past 11:30 when I too headed to sleep. As previously discussed, my bladder is itsy-bitsy so as a general rule, I make time to empty it before bedtime.

I flicked on the bathroom light and immediately froze in the doorway. Looking back at me from a distance of 5 feet was a gigantore 3-inch cockroach sitting on my previously clean bathmat. He looked like this (yes I took a picture):

Maybe you would like a closer close-up, yes?:

So, there we were: me, now desperately in need of a potty break and it, a 6-foot tall, slobbering Beelzebug with a semi-automatic weapon. After several minutes of intense eye contact with a creature that I've heard could outlive me in nuclear winter, it dared to wiggle a leg at me, giving me a serious case of the heebie-jeebies and also helping me to determine that despite my righteous feminist ideals and stubborn independence, now was a time to go crying to my boyfriend because there was NO way to kill this thing with a flip flop.

I slowly backed out of the room and headed for Beau who was peacefully snoring in the next room.

Beau: SNOREEE

Dangerous: Beau? (poke, poke) Are you asleep?

Beau: Snore, gurgle.

Dangerous: Baby (poking becomes more urgent) I need you... [*Beau's interjection "Beau wakes up with the hope of late night nookie - not to kill a mutant"]

Beau: Gurgle (half rolls over)

Dangerous: Baby, there's a bug... it's in the bathroom... it's like really big.

Beau: (nodding, sitting up, silently going into bathroom)

DRAMATIC PAUSE

Beau: Holy fuck.

Dangerous: SEE! It's a very big bug!

Beau: I, uh, I think I need to get fully dressed for this.

Beau then armored up like knights of yore and went courageously into battle while I cowered in the fetal position on the bed. Eventually I emerged to find my hero coming in the front door:

Dangerous: It's gone?

Beau: It's gone.

Dangerous: I can pee now?

Beau: You can pee now.

Dangerous: Where did the bathmat go?

Beau: It's outside... there was no saving the bathmat.

You see, like a good Italian In Training, Beau made a clean hit and then rolled the body in a rug for easy disposal. He made me very proud.

It wasn't until the following morning that I discovered that Bologna and her husband, T, had similar experiences. We spent the remaining days very drunk and with all the lights on.

And now, I seek the ultimate retribution by publicly denouncing ON THE INTERWEB that the

Liki Tiki has cockroaches of unusual size and if your family offers you a free condo there, you should say "Good day!" and then hang up the phone or slam the door in their face, whichever is most convenient to your particular situation.

Bathroom Etiquette 101: What Not To Do

That game you play at work? The one where you sit alone in your cubicle drinking bottle after bottle of water so that eventually you'll have an excuse to hide in the bathroom for 5 gloriously free minutes? Yeah, you're not alone. Everyone does that.

This safe haven shouldn't be abused though and in my office building it certainly is. Not by my coworkers, but by the freaks at the company across the hall (heretofore known simply as "the Freaks"). In particular, by 2 individuals whose restroom behavior continues to fascinate and horrify me, much like a Discovery channel documentary of a lion eating a gazelle. Regardless of the entrails dripping from Mufasa's mouth and my own humanity puddling on the floor at my feet, I continue to watch. I continue to watch with my mouth slightly ajar and my head cocked to one side. This is similar to my expression whilst guarding the restroom.

First, there's Bertha. Bertha is a girthy woman with a distinct odor (as her carefully chosen pseudonym might suggest). By "girthy" I mean she's the type of person who makes me put the extra cookie back in the jar and immediately start doing abdominal exercises at my desk. By "distinct odor" I mean one of my coworkers once reported to management that something must have died in the ventilation system.

Besides her moderately unsavory appearance, she spends a great deal of time violating our restroom... physically as well as vocally. Very vocally. And sometimes while eating chips.

Then there's Freak #2 who I once called security on. Freak #2 likes to stand in the bathroom stall thusly:



Mind you, in this illustration, I was there first. I came into an empty bathroom. She came in and of the 4 available stalls (all to my right) picked THAT one thereby completely eliminating the concept of the BUFFER stall and launching an aggressive assault on my personal space. When such an event occurs, I am left with no choice but the inevitable Stage Fright. I cannot urinate whilst preparing for a physical attack on my being. Furthermore, having identified herself as a freak, she cannot no longer be trusted to fall into the category of safe assumptions. Included in this category, the safe assumption that people don't just go into the restroom to listen to you pee. Awesome. Now I (maybe) have an audience who's (maybe) staring at the wall to her left instead of looking politely ahead. I could (maybe) feel her eyes boring through the thin wall as she attempted to see me with her xray vision. All bets are off and I just had a Venti iced coffee. Queue tilted walnut bladder's uncontrollable whimpering.

Wait. Stop. I'm getting way ahead of myself. You've gotten me all worked up. This event happened several weeks after my original encounter in which I called security. In said original encounter I went into the bathroom to find what appeared to be a person standing so close to the stall door that a pair of actively wiggling shoes were sticking out into the surrounding room. And the shoes were large and masculine. So, I pulled Trick #460 from the Ol' Rule Book and faux-blew my nose before running away... running away and calling security:

Dangerous: Hello?? Security??

Security Girl: Hi.

Dangerous: Security Girl, it's Dangerous from upstairs.

Security Girl: Oh hey, what's up? Time to go home yet? Haha.

Dangerous: SECURITY GIRL! Do not joke about home. There is a MAN in my bathroom. You must come immediately to arrest him.

Security Girl: Seriously?

Dangerous: I'm very sure of it.

Security Girl: I'm so there.

Until Security Girl made her way up the elevator, I jumped into my Concerned Citizen gear and ran to the hallway where I concealed myself in the trash area to watch the only entrance to the Ladies' Room for the serial killer to make his exit at which time I would pepper spray him and finally get on the 5:00 News.

Much to my dismay, the only occupant emerged: a squirrely woman I recognized from the office across the way. And oh boy was she surprised to see me hiding behind a recycling bin. I went back to my desk with my head hanging low to wait for Security Girl to laugh at me... again.

So while you enjoy the serenity of a quiet, deserted bathroom for extended stays of near 20 minutes, I am forced to reduce my visits to unclockable speeds lest another encounter with the Freak side ensue. I am bereft of refuge in this sea of cubicles. I am chained to my desk, unable even to urinate my way into safety. If anyone needs me, I will be in the trash area, sitting in the corner and eating wet cigarette butts.

The inside of my face smells like feet and I haven't peed in hours

I blame this all on Grasshoppah, the evil temptress of pubs who lured me away from an innocent ed2010 event where I would have behaved and had a maximum of 2 glasses of wine. Instead we had wonderfully greasy turkey reubens (and I do truly mean that as a positive statement) around the corner at the Cask & Flagon. After finishing dinner we relocated to bar stools where I could rest my tired eyes from the 17 TV screens behind Grasshoppah's head which were very distracting and also starting to give me seizures.

Sometime between discovering that all the bartenders were UMass-Amherst grads and drowning my impending feeling of doom in 2 gigantore bottles of Magners (I don't care what you say - Magners is practically beer), the Whore showed up. Then Grasshoppah told us about Superman coming into her eye glass shop and screaming because of an old back injury that acts up sometimes... the punchline of which I did not get until just now. Shame on you, Impostor Superman, for imitating poor Christopher Reeves and shrieking in Grasshoppah's eye glass shop. Shame.

We then abruptly finished our drinks and left the bar. I don't understand why drunks feel the need to change locations. I don't understand pub crawls. I don't understand why anyone would give up a warm bar stool for going out of doors and into a freezing cold night which is indicative of the IMMINENT FROZEN HELL THAT IS WINTER IN MASSACHUSETTS. Bar stools are often hard to come by, so I find there are few excusable reasons to abandon one. I will enumerate said reasons now because I like to make lists:

1. You need to pee. I have a tilted walnut bladder so this excuse is valid for most any occasion that I can think of.
2. What you thought was a nice sports bar is suddenly overrun by girls with beat faces who are compensating by wearing indecently short skirts. No bar stool is worth feeling the gyrations of the coupling masses closing in on your personal space.
3. You're being escorted from the premises. Though personally, I've only been bounced from a few errant toy stores, my good friend Notorious was ejected from the Purple Turtle, Oxford's seediest night club and incidentally where we spend the majority of our time and funds while abroad. In England, it is considered inappropriate to projectile vomit on a bouncer. This is called the "language barrier".
4. You're falling off of your seat. At this time it is best to call a cab.

For no other reason should one abandon a perfectly good bar stool yet against my better judgement, I allowed Whore to direct us to a new pub which was ALLEGEDLY 7 minutes away. An hour later, we were still crossing highways in our exodus from Fenway to somewhere that resembled Beacon Hill. The Whore will deny that this walk took longer than 7 minutes (or at best, concede that it took longer than projected because Grasshoppah and I move like slugs) but that is because he had pants on. Yes. Pants, the absence of which create a sort of space time continuum where mere moments out in the cold feel like an eternity.

Gentle reader, last night I had no pants. Instead I had a cheaply made shift dress from a company that will remain nameless but had BETTER get their act together before I go to the mall and throw a hissy fit at the cash register. I know this dress was cheaply made because circa 8 pm on a trip to the ladies' room (see Reason #1) I discovered that the zipper had suffered a fatal malfunction, leaving my side exposed and my underthings visible. Despite my efforts to cover up, the wind cut through and it cut deep. I was cold.

This was all forgiven once I entered the Little Irish Pub That Could and immediately fell in love with their dart boards, drunks in camo pants, and $5 rumndietcokes. This is the place where I found myself in the wee hours of the night as Grasshoppah played crappy jazz music which made the pub people angered but not angered enough to exclude us from their dart game. It was the point where I met an aging intoxicated barfly who ALSO graduated from UMass-Amherst that I decided to go home. Or maybe it was because Grasshoppah couldn't stand up anymore and when she gets like that we don't like her around sharp objects. Or maybe I was tired? It's a gray area.

Regardless, I beat my previous record of a $20 cab ride from the city to the burbs by $5 which was exciting since that meant I could afford lunch today. Beau was asleep and very confused when I got in the shower at 2 am. But I had to. I anticipated what I would smell like this morning and could not allow myself to marinate in it all night. It didn't really matter though because I woke up "smelling like a distillery" as my charming boyfriend puts it. I'm glad I smell like rum though instead of whatever that smell is inside my head. Because in here it smells kind of like my little red shoes that I accidentally stepped in a puddle with and never dried properly.

Dieting = Concussion

I'm back on solid foods but am being punished for making fun of mine and Beau's collective chins, of which there are several more than should be allotted for 2 individuals. He shamed me last night by going for a run in the cold, dark night while I watched "Family Guy" and ate leftover Chinese food. To make amends, I exchanged my normal post-lunch snack of Something-From-The-Vending-Machine-But-Specifically-A3-Which-Is-Doritos for an apple... with a reasonable amount of cheese. GIVE ME A BREAK. Anyway, I was very proud of myself until about 5 minutes ago when a small enclave of gnats figured out there's a fruit core in my garbage can. Now I will spend the rest of the day engaged in battle which is unfortunate. The last time this happened, my boss walked over at the exact moment I was scaling a filing cabinet in a pencil skirt in order to whack a fly with a newspaper. At least the trash is on the floor so I have a shorter distance to fall this time.