Elevator Cockroach

Playgroup was at Melissa's house today since Lydia couldn't let us into Maadi House and Melissa's apartment has a little playground in the back. Lora and I walked over together and once we got there we sat and chatted while our kids beat each other up a bit.

Rachel won't let Finn crawl anywhere--she pushes down on him until he can't move anymore. Finn then feels like he needs to push on Abby a little bit so that she knows how it feels. And thus the pecking order goes. It would probably go further but there's no one smaller than Abby yet and she can't really move around too well.

When the kids (ie., Rachel) seemed to be getting a little too restless to stay indoors we decided to head out to the playground. We gathered up the kids and all the necessary hud and walked out to the elevator.

After I'd opened up the outside door, I pushed the inside doors open and started to walk inside. That's when my well-attuned cockroach sensors spotted a gigantic cockroach. It was probably at least as long as my index finger and, as per the cockroach usual, sickeningly gross-looking.

"Ew, there's a cockroach in here," I said as I stepped inside.

Lora and Melissa peeked in to look and decided that we could all still fit inside the elevator and avoid the cockroach. Fitting three women and three babies in an elevator here is tricky under the best of circumstances--the elevators are teeny tiny--but we'd fit that many people in before so we knew it could be done. We just weren't banking on having a cockroach running around our besandaled feet.

All of us were watching the ugly thing, trying to anticipate its next move, as the elevator started its descent. We'd huddle together in one corner of the elevator and then the cockroach would charge at us and we'd scamper around to avoid touching it/having it touch us.

"Hey, it's coming toward your foot," one of us would warn another.

That one would shriek and jump out of the way and we'd barely have time to readjust ourselves before it happened again.

"There it is!"

*Shriek!* (scamper.)

"Where is it?"

*Shriek!* (scamper.)

By the time we'd reached the ground floor Melissa, Lora, and I were laughing so hard we could hardly control ourselves. Finn, Abby, and Rachel didn't find it so funny. Finn was screaming his head off and Abby just looked confused. Rachel understood was going on better than the other two--she doesn't even like it when ants encroach on her play space (unless we play the "Let's smash them!" game) so seeing this huge cockroach kind of scared her--and she was screaming along with us whenever the cockroach charged.

We used a different elevator to go back upstairs and there were no cockroaches. Rachel was still nervous about it, though. I'm not sure elevators will ever be the same for her.