The house knows we’re moving. And it’s pissed.
In the past week alone more insects than I’ve seen all year have moved in to terrify and taunt me. Giant ants, leggy spiders, a symphony of crickets, baby roaches, and huge flying winged things. I see them snoozing on the basement door, skittering across the carpet, and wafting through the kitchen. As soon as the boxes and furniture began to disappear, they began to appear with a freaking vengeance.
She’s getting back at us for giving up on her, I just know it.
Hey House, I feel guilty enough about leaving you as it is! The curse of insects is totally unnecessary.
Some days I hate that we have to downsize and leave you and your old-school fruit stand charm and your peaceful privacy and your leaking basement and falling trees and your hardwood floors and your luscious but severely uneven backyard with a never-ending assortment of surprising plants and fireflies and wildlife and weeds and your “vintage” basketball hoop and your stupid long-ass driveway I hated shoveling and your pretty crown molding and your awesome six bedroom windows behind. You don’t have to plague the place with creepy crawlies if you want me to feel bad for hurting your feelings, because I already do. It’s not your fault that everyone gives up on you after a year because your landlord is an incompetent fool and refuses to put the money in to perk up your crumbling foundation or update your insulation and electrical wiring and plumbing and landscaping and carpet to make you as wonderful as I know you already are. I fought for you every single day even when everybody we knew would point out your flaws and tell us to move, I still said you were pretty and perfect and that I loved you.
And though I know this move is going to save us hundreds of dollars every month which means we’ll have to work less and can spend more time together, I love you dearly and every single day I dread leaving you just a little bit more and every day I walk down that long-ass driveway and look at you in awe and wonder if we’ve made the right decision and if this new place will ever feel like home the way you did. I wonder how many times I’ll accidentally pull into the driveway after work only to realize that I don’t live here anymore.
So if that was your point with all the insects, you can knock it off and cut that crap out immediately. Because the bugs? Not okay.
I can handle working four jobs for which I am paid approximately zero dollars a month. I can handle cleaning and packing until my eyeballs explode. I can even handle trying to teach a farm of boll weevils musical theatre, romance, and stunts in a miniscule school library with immobile furniture and nowhere to move or room to even breathe, although it makes me cranky. But I’m a weenie and a pansy and a fraidy cat and a spider on my toilet paper roll at 7:37 p.m. is the last straw and it is something that I absolutely cannot handle at this point in my life.
And it is precisely that last straw of “I hhaaaaaaaaaaaate bugs and all this overwhelming nonsense!” that drives me to unabashedly down my body weight in massive Chipotle burrito followed by half a quart of Haagan Dazs caramel apple pie ice cream that results in what I like to call stress eating, which results in me lying useless on the couch, groaning in overstuffed pain, for the rest of the night. You can see how this is, obviously, an unpleasant situation.
So, nix the bugs, por favor. They are not necessary. Life as I know it is sliding to shambles without the buggies, and with them I can be found clinging to the top of the ceiling fan whimpering.
I will miss you house and you will always hold a fond place in my memory, sans the insects.
Yours truly,
Your Favorite Renter
