I don't like bugs in my house. The only family member who tolerates and encourages indoor bugs is just over four feet tall. On the few occasions I've caught him trying to smuggle a bug past me, it's been a fairly benign one like a cricket or a ladybug. I can live with those, but I can't tolerate anything related to a cockroach.

 Cockroach related bugs thrive in this part of North Carolina, especially waterbugs, which is Southern for Really Enormous Cockroach. I've seen some so large that you could fill them water and ride them across the Sahara. I can't stand them or their airborne cousins, Palmetto bugs. And Palmetto bugs are a bug-hating woman's worst nightmare: huge cockroaches with wings.

 Fortunately, I am married to a man who dislikes cockroaches as much as I do and doesn't mind spending many leisure hours with a gallon-sized container of bug spray washing down every nook and cranny a bug could use to enter this house. He wages serious war against bugs of all size, especially in the summer, when our deck appears to be crawling with the things.

 They're inside, too. No matter how much he sprays, how hard I clean, waterbugs the size of a battleship still appear as if by magic, especially if we have company.

 Take, for example, the night a friend came to visit. He'd never been to our home before and we invited him into the den, seated him in my husband's favorite recliner and started chatting. Suddenly the paneling behind my husband began to move. I sat mesmerized as the biggest waterbug I've ever seen started crawling up the wall behind our visitor's head. My husband saw it, too.

 Together, the two of us watched Bugzilla make its way up the wall at the speed of about a mile a decade. Our friend talked and laughed and told jokes and we laughed and nodded and sat transfixed, watching that bug sashay up the wall. All I could think was, "Hmmm. I wonder what Martha Stewart would do in a situation like this?"

 Would Martha pull off her shoe and throw it at the bug (possibly hitting the unsuspecting guest?) or would she grab a rolled up newspaper and just pound the stuffing out of it? Would she politely tell our guest, "Excuse me, but an enormous and very nasty bug is getting ready to drop on your head" or would she just let out a Sheena, Queen of the Jungle yell, leap on it and stomp it into oblivion?

 I finally decided Martha would decorate the bug and use it as a centerpiece at dinner, but that wasn't an option for me. The bug was close to the ceiling and, if he kept going the way he was, he would probably end up falling from the ceiling and into our guest's lap.

So I looked at my husband and said, "Gee, darling, So-and-So has never seen the upstairs. Why don't you take him?" Upon which my husband jumped up, grabbed our startled friend by the arm, ushered him upstairs and took him on a quick trip of the bedrooms and bathrooms – which were in disarray. I'm sure the man thought it was all quite bizarre.

 But not half as bizarre as having a cockroach the size of a water buffalo materialize on the top of your head.