The Bug Lady and Me: A Tale Fraught With Woe

Today, I was reading Kimmie's post which happened to mention her contractor walking in on her in the bathroom (um....yikes) and this made me even furthermore dread this week's visit by our pest control lady. Since the very start, I've had embarrassing interactions with her, thus making me get nervous butterflies whenever she does her twice yearly preventative spray. And by "butterflies" I mean cannonballs being shot into the center of my stomach.

"Why would anyone other than the errant spider or ant quiver at the thought of the bug lady coming?" you might ask. It's all been about bad circumstances and crappy timing, that's why. The first embarrassing situation with her was at our old house. I was upstairs dressing and before I knew it, the Mister had brought her into our bedroom. I didn't even know that she had arrived yet. There I stood in my skivvies and there they were - the Mister with an "oh yeah....the wife is gonna kill me" look on his face and the bug lady looking like I wasn't even there. I think it would have been less mortifying if she would have reacted like most people act when they accidentally see one of their clients in their underthings - you know...embarrassment and shock and apologies. Instead she looked at me like I was a piece of furniture. A piece of furniture that probably would have worn a nicer bra if I'd known that she would be coming through all peek-a-boo.

The second experience with her was here at our new house. Up until that visit by her, I had been avoiding her - even leaving the house when she came. A couple of times, I'd go up to Sonic and sit until the Mister gave me the "all clear" because I was still so humiliated by her seeing me getting dressed at the old house. But this time, I decided that I was just going to do it. By God, I was going to stay in my home while she was here! That morning I stood at the kitchen sink like I owned the joint. She walked in the back door and took one look at me and says, "Wow! Congratulations!" I was completely stumped until I saw that she was staring at my stomach and lo and behold, she obviously thought that I was ripe with a little baby Kitsch.

I managed to stammer something about how I was only pregnant with too many grilled cheese sandwiches and scampered out of the room and confined myself to the back bedroom where the kitties were being cordoned off for her arrival. I was left weighing which situation with her so far had been more yucky. Since most non-pregnant women don't particularly like it when their stomachs are assumed to be packed full of another human person, I reasoned that we had finally topped the "hey! this is me in my bra!" incident. Besides, she'd seen me in my underwear - how could she think that I was pregnant when she intimately knew my body type?! I carry weight in my midsection. She knows that!

After she left, I remember blabbering painfully to the Mister about "Can't a woman just stand at her own sink? Can't she stand in her own bedroom in her bra? What do I have to do around here??" In fact, every time that she's set to come, I go off the rails on a crazy train. And that brings us to our third experience. This one is also twice as mortifying as it should be because she never acknowledged that it happened. When she came to spray that time, it was raining outside and she couldn't do the exterior. She did the inside of the house and said that she'd be back one day during the week when it was drier outside to do the exterior. Fine...whatever. Except for after she left, I wasn't thinking about her coming. It completely slipped my mind. So as one normally does on the average weekday, I was busy doing this:



Yes, I was break dancing with a mannequin boy.  (the best damned dance partner that I've ever had) 
The photos were for a funny montage for my Flickr stream. I used to take lots of wacky photos with Jack and post them to Flickr and on this day, I was seriously cutting a rug, trying to get this photo shoot right. I probably danced for two hours and by the time that I was done, had thousands of photos. I was dancing hard too. I'm talking breaking a "Flashdance" flop-sweat. After I was done, I looked through the photos, giggling to myself. I was pretty happy with the results - until a few minutes later when I happened to go outside and find the bug lady's note on the back door that she'd been by to spray the outside of the house for bugs. Holy crap. She had seen me - a grown woman - breakdancing with a mannequin boy...in front of a huge open window! She hadn't knocked on the window or cleared her throat to let me know she was there. Or ANYTHING. 
I was MORTIFIED. I just couldn't break the chain of bad bug lady events to save my life! There was no way that she didn't see me popping and locking with Jack either. We were in the back bedroom and I had all of the curtains wide open for better lighting. When she sprays, she goes to each window individually and hoses down the entire casing around the glass. That meant that at some point, while I was dancing to C&C Music Factory with a plaster boy, she was standing right there in the window watching me. And hey, you know me...I had no idea. I was all Special K and Jack was my Turbo and we were completely breakin' it down. Had she seen me attempt to do the worm???
Of course, she has never mentioned it at all so I know that she thinks that I am some strange freaky mannequin fetishist perv or something. She probably looks at Mr. Kitsch with pity because he's married to a barren, bloated freak of a woman who dresses like some kind of Baby Jane Hudson does Punky Brewster and jitterbugs with inanimate plaster boys while he's at work, bringing home the bacon. I often wonder if she wants to take the Mister aside and tell him about my dirty little secrets. I also wonder if I am the fodder for fabulous fables at the pest control office now. When they train new workers, does she stand at the front of the room and use me as an example of "the kind of craziness that you're gonna see out there"?  
Ever since that day, I've hidden in the back bedroom with the cats when she comes. For four years, every six months I am a fugitive on the lam in my own home. I sit in that room with the kitties with the drapes firmly pulled tight. I know that she knows that I'm in there. And she knows that I know that she's out there. And for now, that's enough for me.

Until next time, x's and o's, Eartha