31 roaches

I was trying to think of a way to tie this life experience into a spiritual lesson. Some kind of teaching moment, you know? And I’m sure it’s there. But truthfully, this is just a story about a time my husband and I found 31 roaches in the walls of our home. And let me just tell you .. this ain’t no Baskin Robbins, y’all.

Enjoy. And happy nightmares. 

Let me start with some history, here. The first house Philip and I lived in was a decently old home. Built circa 1920’s. Beautiful original shiplap walls. Large, show-stopping baseboards. Breathtaking hardwood floors. Great bones to this gal. We loved her. I am also a home reno addict. And let me just say: I loved home reno before it was cool to love home reno. My parents single handedly flipped the house that I spent the second half of my childhood in and they still live there to this day. I grew up watching them breathe new life into old + tired lungs. I studied my parents as they worked hard and took something that was basically considered a burn pile at this point and turn it into an oasis that would hold 20+ years of memories. They poured their hearts into that house. 

So I fully blame them for my addictions. (Thanks mom and dad. I’ll send you my therapy bill).

Fast forward to my first home as a big girl home owner.  It wasn’t a fixer upper but it could have benefited from a few life lines. It started with the kitchen - countertops here, backsplash there, floors, paint, yada yada. Then Philip built this amazing deck out back, complete with a tin roof, fully screened in, cafe lights strung atop the cedar beams. You hear country songs written about porches like this one. It was magical.

So this went on for a bit; just a little zhuzh zhuzh here and there, nothing too serious. Just casually dating in the home renovation pool, if you will.

Then we took on our biggest project to date - we decided to flip one of the bathrooms. And when I say flip, I don’t mean paint the walls and add cute fixtures. We gutted that bad boy down to the sub floors. Except the sub floors were rotted so we tore those out too. And we could see the ground … from the inside of our house. This project deserves its own book. Or movie. We learned a ton and we made a lot of mistakes, both in our renovations and with each other. But we made it by the skin of our teeth and we moved forward. I just knew I had ruined Philip for any future home projects. He was jaded. It was my fault. I get it. 

This is my father in law standing on outside ground from inside my house.

Somehow, with the grace of the good Lord, I was able to sweet talk Philip into flipping our second bathroom about a year later. I think some of the PTSD had subsided at this point and he blocked it out of his memory. (That’s a trauma response, by the way). So here we go - bathroom #2 - the master bath. I had big BIG plans for this one. I went dark and moody in the first bathroom: black hex tile, jewel toned cabinets, black linens, gold hardware. It was sexy. But I wanted to go a different direction for this one. I wanted light and airy. A breath of cool with a hint of warm. Like a crisp spring morning when you can feel the undertones of summer coming right around the bend.

Saturday morning comes, demo day starts and we are rockin’ and rollin’. No water damage in the walls so far, sub floors are solid, everything looks good. I was jazzed. Philip was in good spirits. This is going our way. 

It’s now Saturday evening and our goal was to get all demo done by Saturday night. We are at the finish line. I mean, I can see the guy passing out water and bananas, here. We have one sliver of wall left to tear out, right behind the vanity. Maybe 3 foot wide of sheetrock to bust out and we are DONE. You see where this is going, yes? 

Philip is in beast mode. Chip Gaines would be proud. And then I hear it … the panic in his voice. “BABE! ROACH SPRAY. NOW!” 

I make like Taylor and I am swift, y’all. I run to the kitchen, grab the spray, make haste to the back bathroom and I see Philip on top of the ladder with his entire left shoulder holding the sheetrock to the wall. He looks down at me and I see it in his eyes. Something is bad wrong. 

I toss him the can. He pulls a corner of the sheetrock back and out scampers a roach. A pretty sizable one, at that. And being from Louisiana, we pride ourselves on big bugs. But this fella here was wearing a LSU sweatshirt. He sprays it, it falls to the ground, I step on it. Done.

Nope. 

Philip says, “I don’t know how many are back here”. 

“Excuse me?”, I say. “How MANY? You mean, like, plural?”

He responds, “Listen, I’ll go high and catch them up here. You go low and guard the floor for any I miss.”

Dear God. 

Y’all. I was NOT prepared for what I was about to witness. I’ve seen the movie Arachnophobia. Snakes on a plane. Jumanji. None of those prepared me for this. 

If you’re from the south, you understand family reunions. Actually … I am from the south and I still don’t get them. People show up to these things that I’m fairly certain aren’t in the family tree but I’m being told they are a cousin or something. That was the scene, here. Philip pulls back a corner of that sheetrock and all the cousins, Aunts, Uncles, and brothers twice removed were congregating around the BBQ table. All of a sudden I felt this presence come over me. Not of terror. But anger. This was the wild, wild west and I’m Billy the Kid. 

IT. IS. ON. 

I was guarding the threshold from the bathroom into our bedroom - roach spray in one hand, a shoe in the other, knees bent, feet soft. Light as a feather. Philip was stopping them as fast as he could with a hammer and a can of spray as they scurried for their lives out of the walls. He backhanded one with the might of Thor with that hammer. I don’t even think he looked. And I’m not gonna lie … it was hot. Any that he missed, I was there to usher them to their death. We were jiving like Sonny and Cher. I had his six. He had my twelve. I’ve never seen us so in sync. 

This went on for about an hour. They started coming out slower and slower. Sweet, sweet suffering. We were winning. Once Philip’s eyes had glazed over, either from inhaling so much poison or from not blinking so he didn’t miss one, we called it a night. Eventually we got all the sheetrock off and we discovered an actual roach nest tucked away in the beautiful bones of that shiplap. Joanna Gaines never warned me about that one. Have you ever seen a roach nest? Go look at a pile of coffee grounds, throw some dirt on it, and then clean out your vacuum and mix all of it together. That’s what a roach nest looks like. 

Of course, no one slept that night because all we could see in our dreams were … well … you know. But when it was all said and done, Philip and I had a grand total of 31 carcasses on our floor. Only death was left in our wake. Good thing we were ripping those up the next day. 

I’ll leave you with this nugget of advice: If you ever feel that you need counseling in your marriage, or even premarital counseling, that is wonderful and I am an advocate for that. However, I can guarantee that if I were to stick you and your spouse/spouse-to-be in a room with 31+ roaches, a can of spray, a shoe, and a hammer, I could tell you right then and there if your relationship will last. It’s the best marital therapy tool on the market today and much cheaper than counseling. 

Be blessed.