Ok we’ve all been there right, RIGHT? Just nod. You’re picking up your apartment, and you move a pair of sweatpants on the floor, out shoots (the HORROR) the most scary thing in the universe: the cockroach. There’s not a lot that can make this situation better. Feel free to scream, cry hysterically and call someone to talk you through chasing that sucker down and killing it.

Then its time to deal with it. Call your exterminator, and book him to come over, like YESTERDAY. Usually this can be facilitated by your landlord, who doesn’t want those vermin in his/her apartment building either. Go immediately to Bed Bath and Beyond, and purchase an eye mask. You’ll use this to help you sleep while the lights are on (the roaches mostly come out in the dark) for the next couple weeks while you recover. Then pop over to home depot, and purchase a can of roach killer and some boric acid. Make a border around your entire apartment with the boric acid, anywhere those puppies can enter (you’ll need a good vaccuum cleaner to pick this up later). Roaches (much like witches) can’t cross this sacred boundary. Be warned that roaches can fly, and this makes them 10,000 times scarier.

After this happens once or twice in your live, you’ll gradually be able to cope a little bit better each time.

The positive take away? 30 years from now, when your grandkids run off to live in NYC, you can commiserate with them about that one time you lived in a building with roaches to make them feel a little less terrified and alone (and to remind them that their grand momma is a cool lady who lived there as well). Naturally, you’ll edit out the part where you cried and didn’t sleep with the lights out for months. Naturally.