Since we moved in, Rob has spent countless hours under the house. He has wriggled into the crawl spaces repairing plumbing, sweating pipes, and caulking up holes. I realize now that I should have been more grateful each time I watched his feet disappear into the darkness. Now that I live in a rented space, watching the walls to our home be torn down from a distance, I have more clarity. I see that each of his ventures to the dark burrows beneath our home that temporarily preserved my sanity, had everlasting effects on Rob.
When we returned to Austin after our wedding in Washington, DC, we dove right back into our new jobs. Our honeymoon would wait until the following summer. Prior to the wedding, in our first week in the 'new' house, I had noticed a few creepy crawlers in the bathroom and squashed countless roaches with the bottoms of shampoo bottles.
However, as I remember it, when we got back in town, the number of 6 legged visitors rose significantly. Each morning, they scattered when I would turn on the bathroom light. After stepping on one with a bare foot, I learned to wear shoes inside at all times. I almost brought three roaches to school with me in my lunch bag one day. When I opened the medicine cabinet and two fell into my makeup bag, I had had it. Rob, for good reason, was against setting off roach bombs. We didn't want the chemicals in the house. We had tried indoor roach motels with minimal success.
We figured they must be getting in through holes in the floor, of which there were plenty. So, one weekend, Rob put on an old t-shirt and shorts to venture under the house for the first time. He pushed the vines out of the way and carried a caulk gun with him as he searched for any possible points of entry. He was determined to save me from the unwanted pests. He spent most of a day plugging up gaps. When he emerged, he was covered in a dusty film, complaining of all of the vines and leaves that had been in his way. He went to go rinse off.
If only we had known that Rob had been army crawling through poison ivy all day. The shower water managed to spread the toxic oils from his head to his toes. Anyone who knows someone who is highly allergic to poison ivy knows what happened next. I haven't ever witnessed anything like it. Rob is stoic. He had to have been in extraordinary pain during those several weeks, but even as I watched him peel away and reapply the bandages that protected each patch of blisters from sticking to his clothing, he didn't complain.
During the weeks that many newlyweds may have spent honeymooning, cuddling, and you-know-what-ing, I couldn't even hug Rob, worried I would cause him excruciating pain. I begged him to go get a cortisone shot or seek some sort of medical attention, but he would refuse, just smiling, and ask, "You seen any cockroaches lately?"
When we returned to Austin after our wedding in Washington, DC, we dove right back into our new jobs. Our honeymoon would wait until the following summer. Prior to the wedding, in our first week in the 'new' house, I had noticed a few creepy crawlers in the bathroom and squashed countless roaches with the bottoms of shampoo bottles.
However, as I remember it, when we got back in town, the number of 6 legged visitors rose significantly. Each morning, they scattered when I would turn on the bathroom light. After stepping on one with a bare foot, I learned to wear shoes inside at all times. I almost brought three roaches to school with me in my lunch bag one day. When I opened the medicine cabinet and two fell into my makeup bag, I had had it. Rob, for good reason, was against setting off roach bombs. We didn't want the chemicals in the house. We had tried indoor roach motels with minimal success.
We figured they must be getting in through holes in the floor, of which there were plenty. So, one weekend, Rob put on an old t-shirt and shorts to venture under the house for the first time. He pushed the vines out of the way and carried a caulk gun with him as he searched for any possible points of entry. He was determined to save me from the unwanted pests. He spent most of a day plugging up gaps. When he emerged, he was covered in a dusty film, complaining of all of the vines and leaves that had been in his way. He went to go rinse off.
If only we had known that Rob had been army crawling through poison ivy all day. The shower water managed to spread the toxic oils from his head to his toes. Anyone who knows someone who is highly allergic to poison ivy knows what happened next. I haven't ever witnessed anything like it. Rob is stoic. He had to have been in extraordinary pain during those several weeks, but even as I watched him peel away and reapply the bandages that protected each patch of blisters from sticking to his clothing, he didn't complain.
During the weeks that many newlyweds may have spent honeymooning, cuddling, and you-know-what-ing, I couldn't even hug Rob, worried I would cause him excruciating pain. I begged him to go get a cortisone shot or seek some sort of medical attention, but he would refuse, just smiling, and ask, "You seen any cockroaches lately?"
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