A Welcome Back to Me and Another Cockroach Story

Last Friday Cupcake graduated from College. For the second time.

Congratulations on your Master Degree in Nursing Cupcake!

While Friday was spend celebrating Cupcake’s big achievement and drinking multiple margarita’s from the fun frozen margarita machine, Saturday was all about dinner and a movie. Cupcake, LSU Friend, and myself decided to meet for a nice dinner then brave the Saturday night movie crowd and go see Bridesmaids. Cupcake had pigged out on some guac earlier that day and I was completely indifferent, so LSU Friend had the honors of picking our restaurant. So, for once in our lives, we weren’t going to head to a local Mexican food place and drown ourselves in queso, but drive over to a local Indian food restaurant that LSU Friend swore up and down was yummy.

So we went.

Thoughts on Indian Food…
1. I’m not all that into Indian food. I don’t hate it, but I also don’t love it. It’s like this… why would anyone eat Indian if they could have Mexican? But, I think that about a lot of genres of food.

2. Cupcake is an EXTREMLY picky eater! My whole life I thought being an “extremely picky eater” just meant that you would not only HATE Norwegian food, but also turn into a huge brat if ever forced to eat it. (Yeah, maybe one day I’ll write about that story Favorite Cousin…) So, I was totally unprepared when I became friends with Cupcake. She’s a “selectatarian”. AKA a really picky eater. She doesn’t really eat meat… unless she wants to. And, then you (or whoever is preparing the meat) HAS TO COOK THE SHIT OUT OF IT. Nothing can be slightly under cooked or she literally can’t choke it down. Once, when I first met her, a few of us girls were cooking and she practically dissected the chicken breast to make sure no red veins or blood was left anywhere and then stood over the chicken while it was being cooked just in case the dead, sautéing chicken just started bleeding in the pan. Then she over cooked it five minutes and deemed it ready to eat. Also, she doesn’t really like “hole in the wall” kinda places. This absolutely makes my heart hurt, because to me there is nothing better than a steaming plate full of enchiladas from some random shack where the wait staff doesn’t speak English. Cupcake doesn’t like not knowing if the beans are vegetarian or not. All in all, I was shocked that Cupcake was even going to venture into the Indian food establishment. (By the way I adore Cupcake and all her little quirks.)

So, the three of us load up into LSU Friend’s car, Leroy, and drive the 3.5 minutes to Bombay Bistro for what the website and menus call, “modern Indian cuisine”.

When we enter Bombay Bistro, it is plainly obvious that is used to be Henry’s Hunan and six months before that it was Ancient Golden Dragon and six months before that China Pearl, but whatever. We took our seats on the wall, so that LSU Friend and I were sitting on a bench with our backs to the wall and Cupcake sat across from us in a normal chair. Next to us, shoved up against the table was a short divider which I guess was there to give us a little privacy from the table next to us. Everything starts out okay. I order my overpriced glass of wine, LSU Friend tells us what she has had there that is good, and Cupcake tells us about what happened at her grad party after we left the night before. Normal going out to eat things…

Me: “New job, new job” wine sip “new job”
LSU Friend: “Job, should I get a new job, job” wine sip “best friend getting married”
Cupcake: “Africa, new job, graduating… Eeck!”

Yes, readers, the nights shenanigans all began with a little “eeck”

The “eeck” was caused by a little cockroach climbing up the divider that hugged our table.

What followed was about ten seconds of absolute silence, wherein I (and I’m sure LSU Friend and Cupcake) had a litter internal dialogue with myself…

To Myself: “Okay. That’s gross. Wait. It’s still climbing. What do we do with it? Should I kill it? What am I going to kill it with? OMG, this is unfortunate.”

LSU Friend to Herself: “Well, shit. I finally get us to a restaurant that isn’t Chuy’s or Z-Tejas and this is what happens? Cupcake is going to freak out.”

Cupcake: “Oh, eeck, okay. This isn’t okay, but I’m going to Africa in a week and a half and I’m going to have to deal with bugs over there. Oh, but… oh, this is icky.”

Then Cupcake, like the awesome badass that she is, plucked our unlit candle off the table, and using the candle cup trapped the baby cockroach in the jar.

Me: “Yay Cupcake!”
LSU Friend: “Great, but , um… now what?”

Now what indeed? Cupcake had successfully trapped the little booger, but the roach is still alive and Cupcake can’t spend our entire diner with her hand holding a candle jar on the wall. So, she slowly slides the jar down the wall divider and secures the jar by leaning the cup with sugar against it, just in case that baby cockroach was part He Man and able to lift the decorative candle holder and escape. Success!

We then spent the next few minutes convincing ourselves that it was one lone cockroach and anywhere else we go is going have an hour and a half wait because it’s graduating weekend, so we might as well stay put and eat our Curry and Puho.

Then Cupcake goes to the bathroom, because she has the world’s tiniest bladder ever, and sees another bug. Here exact words were, “So, I saw our friend’s brother in the bathroom.”

By this time we have decided we should get rid of bug number 1, who is still trapped under the candle jar.

Cupcake: (leaning around the divider where there are two busboys and either a waitress or a manager cleaning off a table) “Excuse me Ma’am?”

Nothing

Cupcake: “Ma’am?”

Nothing

Cupcake: “Excuse me?”

Nothing

Cupcake: “Excuse me Ma’am”

Restaurant Woman: “What?!?! I’ll be with you in a second!”

Cupcake: “oh… okay.”

So now we’ve seen two cockroaches, trapped one, and Cupcake “AKA the nicest person in the world” has been snapped at for wondering, maybe, if it wouldn’t be too much to ask or too much trouble for the wait staff to kindly REMOVE THE COCKROACH from under the candle jar on our table. K, thanks.

Then our food comes out.

Here is where I’m sure most of y’all are all, “Why is Lemon Lady and her friends still sitting in this place and why oh why are they going to eat there?” I can only answer this question by of course blaming Cupcake. I blame Cupcake because she is our friend that gets grossed out by normal things like fat being on chicken and beans cooked oh so yummy in lard. She should have been jumping up from her seat and running out to the car, but instead she was just sitting there. It was like in my mind if Cupcake isn’t freaked out and if Cupcake can handle a few bugs, so can I. Then again, she also ate before we got there.

So the food is on the table and we start eating.

Cupcake: “Eeck!”

Me: (Throwing up in my mouth just a little bit) “Oh God… what?”
LSU Friend: (Spitting food in her napkin) “Oh crap… where?”
Cupcake: (Pointing) “Behind you. On the wall.”

Yup, there was brother number 3. He was crawling up the wall about three feet from my head.

Me: “Gross. It’s going to jump on my head.”

LSU Friend: “Lean on me friend.”

Cupcake: “Sir. SIR! We need help over here!”

Now, y’all tell me. What would you do if you were the owners of a restaurant where a nice group of young ladies kept seeing cockroaches everywhere? Maybe you would apologies. Maybe you could comp their ridiculous eight dollar glasses of cheap gas station wine. Let me tell you what I would not do, SEND MORE FOOD! Yeah, just in case we had forgotten if we had completely lost our appetites due to the infestation of disease carrying bugs the thoughtful management at Bombay Bistro sent over a free dessert. Oh, and it was gross. Like really gross.

Moral of this story, once every few years or so I get a great cockroach story while hanging with LSU Friend.

Oh, and Bridesmaids was really funny.