Visitors, Drinks, Dancing, and Palmetto Bugs

With the Rotary International Convention in town for the next week or so, there are a lot of Rotary members flying in to take place in the festivities (are they considered festivities when only five percent of your membership is under 40?). Part of that group flying in are my friends Mike and Heidi, who arrived at 10:30 pm last night, a Saturday.

Being the wonderfully awesome person that I am, I offered up a ride to Mike and Heidi from the airport to their hotel, and also offered to be their guide for the evening. Being the wonderfully awesome friends they are, they graciously accepted my offer and thus was sealed my devious plan to get out of the house for the night, trapping Hot Wife at home with Sick Baby (she'd hit a temperature of 103.5F earlier in the day - very sick). While I felt slightly guilty for this, I didn't feel all too guilty, as Hot Wife is generally in bed for the night by about 8:15 pm, and Sick Baby had been down since 7:30 or so.

Before picking up Mike and Heidi at the airport, I had to clean out the car, grab some dinner, and, of course, get ready. I cleaned out the trash from the car, picked up a pizza, then came back to Craphole Apartment to change clothes and get sexified for the night. For me, getting sexified for the night involved ironing a shirt, brushing my teeth, and taming my hair. It's not exactly a rigorous routine, and the results may or may not be considered sexified by all, but it passes as sexified to Hot Wife, so it works for me.

At about 10:30 pm, I received a text from Mike saying that he and Heidi had landed, so I got up to leave. After giving Hot Wife a quick kiss goodbye, I turned to leave. She said, quite prophetically, "You'll probably be getting home just as I'm getting up." More on that later.

When I opened the door to leave the apartment, a palmetto bug raced paced me from the outside. I'm pretty sure that it was clinging tenaciously to the front door of Craphole Apartment, just waiting for the door to swing in so it could land on the ground with a loud plop, thereby securing it a place inside Craphole Apartment. As to why it would want to live in this place, I have no idea, but I guess the dumpster around the block was full. For those of you who are not aware of what a palmetto bug looks like, please feast your eyes on this monstrosity:

Does it look like a cockroach to you? It should, because it's closely related to the American Cockroach. These things are fairly prevalent here, and they evidently await unsuspecting saps like me opening doors to let them into the house, kind of like these guys. Anyhow, I tried to catch/stomp the thing, but just couldn't get it before it scurried into the front closet. Since I needed to go get Mike and Heidi, I left the bug in the front closet and headed to the airport.

I circled the airport a couple of times, then saw Mike and Heidi and pulled to the curb to pick them up. A couple of big hugs later, the suitcases were loaded in the back of the SUV and we were on our way. While I was loading the suitcases, though, things were going on at the house that would alter Hot Wife's life forever. I received the first clue that something was wrong in the form of a text message, which I didn't see until later that night:

While the palmetto bug was making itself at home on my wife, Mike, Heidi, and I were headed down Veterans Memorial Boulevard to Jax Dax, a drive-through daiquiri place. I think it's essential that every guest to New Orleans is introduced to one of the greatest things that this place has to offer: drive-through bars. Mike and Heidi were suitable impressed, and each ordered a daiquiri and a Jell-O shot. While all of this was going, on though, my phone was blowing up, courtesy of Hot Wife.

Evidently not satisfied with my non-response to her text message (which I had yet to see), she felt the need to call me to inform me of the invasion of the giant cockroaches who woke her from her sleep. Let me assure you, there isn't ever a conversation quite as funny as trying to talk your wife down from panic about a palmetto bug while your two friends are ordering drinks at the drive-through from some co-ed working the window, all while trying to convince your wife that, no, that isn't a cockroach, it's obviously a palmetto bug, don't worry about it and go to sleep! Hot Wife really wasn't too pleased with my response, so I asked her if she wanted me to come home and take care of it, to which she replied, "no," and then said goodbye and hung up.

While I was on the phone with Hot Wife, Mike and Heidi were finishing up their orders and had paid, so when I hung up, I took the change from the co-ed, gave her a tip, handed the change to Mike, then pulled out to get on the freeway. On the way to the freeway, I gave Mike and Heidi a quick rundown of the palmetto bug situation, talking about what had happened while I was leaving and the phone call with Hot Wife. I remarked that a palmetto bug is basically a cockroach, but that I was trying to convince Hot Wife that it wasn't and that she need not worry. Hoping to God that Hot Wife wouldn't do her usual thing and research the living crap out of everything in her life, I pulled on to I-10 and headed toward downtown.

Three minutes later:

Yeah, so much for that. Being the smart husband that I am, I did the noble thing and told my passengers about the text message. Mike and Heidi burst into laughter, as did I, and we went merrily on our way down the highway toward downtown. I knew there would be a story about this bug when I got home, so I kindly ignored the text message and focused on having fun with Mike and Heidi. Here's a brief rundown of the night:

• 11:30 pm: Leave the highway, take a quick tour up St. Charles, then back down Magazine to show off the neighborhood
• 11:45 pm: Arrive at hotel. Stand outside waiting to be let in as we didn't have room keys. Wonder why the two men standing inside or the woman behind the counter won't let us in.
• 11:55 pm: Follow another guest into the lobby who didn't bother to even hold the door for us.
• 11:56 pm: Listen to the desk clerk finally address the man who had been standing there waiting to check in.
• 12:04 am: Finally begin the check in process.
• 12:15 am: Finally end the check-in process. Evidently not too many people put two hotel rooms on one credit card. This seemed to mystify the desk clerk.
• 12:25 am: Leave the hotel in the SUV, head to the Quarter.
• 12:35 am: Arrive on Bourbon Street on foot, have to walk between a row of cars blaring hip hop on one side and a host of scantily clad underage African-American women "twerkin" to said music. Welcome to Bourbon Street, Mike and Heidi! (Follow this link to see "twerkin." Note that the link is NSFW, and, as a bonus, the song in the link is the song that was playing.)
• 12:50 am: Reach the last Tropical Isle on Bourbon, grab a couple of Hand Grenades and a Horny Gator
• 1:10 am: Finish drinks, head into Old Opera House on Bourbon, and proceed to dance. A lot.
• 2:25 am: Leave Old Opera House
• 2:55 am: Reach the car, head to a 24-hour fried chicken place
• 3:02 am: Emergency potty break at my office on Poydras. So good.
• 3:12 am: On the road again, headed for chicken.
• 3:30 am: Leave chicken place (actually a gas station), head for the hotel
• 3:40 am: Drop off Mike and Heidi, head for home
• 3:59 am: Walk through the front door and observe Hot Wife sleeping on Craptastic Loveseat, obviously still afraid of the bug
• 4:00 am - 4:10 am: Conduct thorough search for rogue palmetto bug in bedroom, find nothing
• 4:10 am: Kiss Hot Wife goodnight, head to bed
• 4:12 am: Hot Wife comes into bedroom and proceeds to tell me her harrowing tale of combat with the palmetto bug. Details include its path of travel over both her hands while she was sleeping, plus the ability to hear it scurrying around a hissing while the lights were out. Bonus details included her paranoia regarding any object remotely the size of the bug, including wall hangers and light switch for the oven light.
• 4:25 am: Drift off to sleep

All in all, it was a great night. Many thanks to Mike and Heidi for a wonderful night, and many thanks to Hot Wife for not freaking out too much about the bug.

Epilogue

I found the palmetto bug on the Craptastic Loveseat at about 11 am. Keep in mind that this is where Hot Wife slept to avoid the bug. I killed it and disposed of its corpse in a dignified manner: burial at toilet. I didn't want a shrine erected at its burial site.