I'm a well behaved gal these days (pearost alert)
A Proper Relationship can do that to you. But this was not always the case. Like most teenagers, my bedroom was my haven. A germ filled, cluttered haven. Schoolwork on top of CDs on top of uncleaned clothes on top of forgotten plates covered in greenish grey fur. I had purple carpet I hadn't seen in months - don't let a 13 year old pick their room colours. It's only going to go badly (although my brother's orange and leopard print theme would have put Graham Norton to shame, so I wasn't the worst one. Promise.)

Anyhoo, my mother, despite being a commune-minded hippy in a Gen X world (to this day she still takes people in who she thinks needs a bit of care, and partakes in smoking green stuff in her generally awesome way) kept the rest of the house spotless. We did the kitchen daily and some hoovering, so we did help, but the rest was all her.

One day, I spot some movement in the carpet. Well, I trod on something squishy - spotting would have been difficult. It's a cockroach! I'm terrified of all bugs and creepy crawlies, let alone the idea of a cockroach. I'll say that again: I'm terrified of all bugs. If you ever spot a wasp, I'll be heading onto a train to Cornwall to get a headstart on avoiding the fucker. After jumping and shrieking like the banshee-flid I am, I call my mum into the room.
Me: "Mum. Bug. What is it?"
Mum: "ahhh, that's a cockroach."
Me "Arrrggghhhhhhhhhhh" More banshee-flid freaking out. I'm imagining the cockroaches at night, climbing onto my legs, my face, waking up with a jolt after one climbs into my snoring gob.
Mum: "They can get everywhere, they can lay eggs anywhere y'know. I'll have to call the council."
Me: (fearing some local paper showing my room) "nooooooooooooooooooooooo"

So I clean. I chuck almost *everything* out. Most of my clothes, save 1-2 loads. My mattress (imaging hatching cockroach eggs in my mattress made me squirm), my bed (I had a divan. It's fabric, so eggs go there too). I couldn't bring myself to chuck my books, thankfully. My bedlinen was cleaned at 90C with a lot of bleach thrown in. Everything gets covered in neat bleach. The gap between the floor boards and the skirting board gets bleach poured in all the way round my room.

Eventually, I was left with a bare shell of a room. I had no bed. I had barely any clothes. My throat hurt from the fumes of unwisely mixing cleaning chemicals together. But there were no bugs. I was an accomplished arthmelow. I calmed down a bit. Well, at least for a few hours. The next day I spotted white residue on my toolbox (yay! lego!), went "ARGH EGGS", and poured more bleach on. Took me a while and a few goes to work out it was the dried up bleach, not more cockroach eggs. After about 6 months of sleeping on the floor, I stole my brother's old mattress, and about 4 years or so after that, I managed to purchase a bed along with some new flooring. Not too long after that, we move and I move out.

A few years along the line, I bring it up in conversation. My mum cracks up laughing
"It was a water beetle. There's a nest under the house. We only said it so you'd tidy up your room."
"So you let me go without a bed for 4 years because you wanted me to tidy my room?"
"Well, it worked, didn't it?"

The woman is a mental. But thinking back, it *did* work...
Which woman was the mental one I'll leave up to you.
(mmmm curry doesn't really understand this sig lark, Thu 25 Mar 2010, 15:12, 1 reply)

Simple
All women are mental.

It's what makes them so great.
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Fri 26 Mar 2010, 9:04, closed)