the replacement

i had another blog ready to post. i was about to pull the trigger on it and thought to myself, 'is this too much?' it was ranty, and personal, and while it was a great example of me - it was a bit much. i don't know who all will be reading this ultimately, but not everyone who knows me really, really KNOWS me. as open of a book as my life is, i don't usually just randomly offer up the kind of info that was in that blog.

so i saved it. maybe i'll post it another time. maybe i won't introduce you all to 'steph gas, certifiably insane with paperwork to prove it' right away.

maybe instead we can talk about the weather. that's right - the weather.

i live in central florida. for those of you who slept through/failed/ignored geography, florida is a peninsula. like a huge dick poking out from the southeast part of these united states. one side has the atlantic ocean, the other the gulf of mexico. these different bodies of water have differing winds. when these winds meet each other, all hell breaks loose.

guess where they meet. right the fuck over our house.

no, i'm not exaggerating. and it's like e v e r y day during the summer months (in florida, that's from may to novemberish). so i'm minding my own business, sewing or working or reading twilight, and there's thunder rumbling in the distance.

'oh, good,' i think. 'the lawn was looking a bit dry.'

40 minutes later the windows are rattling, the cats may or may not be hiding, and i'm glued to the television seeing if there are any tornado watches.

and if there are, i sit with the remote in my hand, toggling between the local drunk meteorologist and the weather channel, muting it and shushing anyone in the vicinity every couple of minutes to see if i can determine whether or not that last rumble of thunder sounded like a freight train, because that's what they tell me a tornado sounds like.

the first time we had a tornado warning, it was february of 2007 - about 7 months after we moved to florida. we were living in an apartment complex, and it was about 4am, midweek. we both had to work that day, but the thunder woke me up. it was ridiculous! i turned on the weather and there was a tornado warning! (to refresh your memory - a watch means conditions are good for severe weather, while a warning means it's on, bitch, keep your fingers crossed). i was completely hysterical. i have lived through blizzards. nor'easters. hurricanes. ice storms. floods. even minor earthquakes. but a fucking TORNADO!?!? i had heard you should get in your tub under your mattress - but we have a sleep number bed - the thing's made of air! it breaks down into small pieces! i remember waking my awesome husband up, sitting on the edge of my bed with my sneakers on, not letting the cats out of the bedroom, and deciding that the closet in our bedroom was where we should hide (it was a walk in - no windows, no outside facing walls, plumbing from the bathroom on one side).

we were fine, of course. lake mary wasn't so lucky. and lake mary was about 40 miles from us. that's not that far... there was a tornado in celebration one time - that's like maybe 20 miles from our house. that's not far at all. fuck that.

we had storms again today. i was not surprised, but i am still pissed like every time it happens. you know another awesome thing about florida? fucking bugs. like cockroaches. they are huge. like i've seen new york roaches - those little german cockroaches, light brown and skinny and under an inch long. i don't like them, but i've killed them. a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

down here? i WISH we had german cockroaches. we have huge fucking american cockroaches and i also think i've seen the florida woods roaches too. they get literally two inches long. they are huge and dark brown to black and shiny and they are not afraid when you turn on a light. they like stop their little trek to wherever there were going, basically turn to look at you, and are like 'what? what the fuck you want? yeah, i'm walking up the wall over you bed, bitch, what you gonna do about it?' i swear i saw one flip me off once. and it's like having ants - they just wander in. in new york, roaches usually end up places where there is lots of food or lots of paper or places to hide - schools, factories, food warehouses (ew, but true), nasty houses, or nice apartments that you live in that happen to be right over the apartment of a crazy woman who's been stealing and hoarding people's mail (roaches love shit like that).

like, in new york, you'd get ants and be like 'oh, noes, i have ants. i'll go get traps or whatever and get on with my life.' if a friend came over and was like, 'dude, there's an ant', you wouldn't be embarrassed and the friend wouldn't freak out because that happens, especially at certain times of the year. but if you popped over your boy's house and saw a fucking roach meander up the wall like he owns the place you'd be like 'what the FUCK, man? what is going on here? no, i don't want your taco bell - i'm out.'

like native floridians don't seem to get it - they're like ants down here. 'oh, a roach - hold on, i'll get it.' meanwhile i'm practically pissing my pants and trying to run out the house.

which brings me to a few nights ago. not all of you have seen my house, but i can affirm that while it may have a fine layer of cat hair over most things (there are three cats, no amount of sweeping or vacuuming can keep up with them) my house is not dirty or messy. i do not hide food in strange places or hoard other people's mail anywhere in my home. this particular night, i was having some trouble sleeping (this may have been a portent of sorts, looking back). i had taken off my glasses and was lying on my stomach, and my second pillow (they one i use to rest my arm on, because that's how i roll) needed to be adjusted. so i lifted my head and grabbed the pillow - it rests mostly on the wall, and part of it like bends onto the bed for my arm. so you can see the picture:

my bed. me, lying in it. my awesome husband, snoring. one pillow under my head, one mostly propped up on the wall RIGHT ABOVE MY HEAD. that's important - remember it.

so i lift my head and tug that pillow to get my arm on it, and i see like a shadow on the wall that seemed to come like from behind the pillow. i'm like, what the fuck? the television is on, but i didn't move anything there... and i look up, and the fucking shadow is still there.

that's when i realize it's not a fucking shadow.

i jumped out of bed screaming. mind you, people have to work tomorrow and it's like 1am. i flip on the light and taking a leisurely stroll up my wall RIGHT OVER WHERE MY HEAD WAS is a huge roach. he stopped and i think he looked back at me with a shit eating grin on his buggy little face. i screamed until my awesome husband woke up and kept pointing at the thing, like you do with a man who falls overboard, until my awesome husband came back armed with the can of raid and paper towels. (my awesome husband has no idea what 'quick like a bunny' means and has only one speed that he runs at. which made this seem like a long time.) then we had to strip the bed. then i had to change my pillow case since that nasty fucker was probably walking around on it. then we had to pull the bed out so i could be sure there wasn't some kind of fucking party going on under the bed. then i let my awesome husband go back to sleep, and i sat in bed, clutching the covers around me, until 2:45am when i finally started nodding off.

i fucking hate florida.