My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world. - George Bernard Shaw
not that i have anything funny to say. since my exhibitionism many things have happened. chief amongst these is edith's discovery of an actual vile little bed bug. it was ironic because it was thursday night and we had just come home from survivor night at randy's. ironic hey? ha. well what's more ironic is that randy had captured a bug crawling on him that he was freaking out about--not a bed bug but a little beetle. i was sitting at the computer, my usual spot, and edith came in with something to show me. just looking at her face, i knew it was not something good. "is it a bug?" i asked, knowing some how it was. "not just a bug--THE bug." she was holding a kleenex like a platter and the dish was mr. bedbug. 'thud!' went my heart. it was instantly recognizable. what happened next was an extended conversation about throwing away all our furniture with the proposal of living on all plastic things. during this time i was looking up new places to live.
so far we are not moving. edith called the managers the next day to tell them about our nefarious visitor. she also called a lot of pest control places to find out what's what. she found this great place that injected a perimeter of death in the walls. this is the one that was the most attractive to us. the managers had to talk to the owners and didn't get back to us until monday. all of th pco's that edith called said to leave things as they were for the inspection so we did nothing on the weekend. monday i came home from work to a message from franca telling me the pco was coming the next morning at 8. she made it sound like we had to pack everything up. but she's got a thick slavic accent so i went straight to the source and called samy--our friendly neighbourhood pco guy (not the perimeter of death guy). he said since we found a bug we needed to be sprayed so he wasn't doing an inspection. he said we needed to bag up all our clothes and move everything from the walls.
what followed was a scrambled search of where to stow the kitties (mom and dad kindly took them--dad even drove out to pick them up in the morning), and a loooong night of bagging my room. i hadn't spent much time in my room since july and it was full of stuff and clutter. countless dusty cluttered piles. well thinking do i want this or do i want the chance of bed bugs being in it, is a great purging question. i threw away tons of stuff. and bagged up the rest. edith and i had the box of garbage bags in the hall between our two rooms and between the two of us we went through an almost full box of 40 garbage bags. like maybe there was 37 or 36 in there.
samy was a comforting kind of person. after looking through our place he said we weren't infested-infested. he could tell. he's been doing it for 15 years. edith is of the opinion that is just the one bug that she found waltzing along between her bed and her carpet in her room. but she hasn't been bitten mysteriously on and off again for 5 months. strange that buggy was found in her room then, but good because that's how he was found because she inhabits her room and her room is neat and tidy. well it was before the bagging manifesto. a little known fact about bed bug bites is that some people don't have any reaction to their bites at all. if this is true of edith, it is just another example of our diabolical oppositeness as the other end of the spectrum is extreme allergic reaction which is what happens to me.
so samy sprayed our house with poisons and gave us some friendly tips. he's going to bring us cloth mattress covers. back in july when i began to phobia about bugs i covered my bed with plastic. samy said this was better than nothing, but not very good protection.
dad was late picking up the emprisoned kitties, because of bad traffic and edith and i sat outside with the mad yowling felines waiting for him. there was a strange giddy atmosphere. i think maybe the relief of doing something about the whole bug thing. and the hope samy gave us.
i even made it to work more or less on time. samy comes back for a follow up spray--another comforting thing, ten days from his first spraying. this is to nab eggs that may have hatched in that time. i'm all for bug genocide with the exception of lady bugs and any bug who minds his own business and stays outside of human habitations and does not bite or suck human blood when given the chance. that's my personal philosophy on the matter.
archie and izzy spent their visit with mom and dad hiding behind the garbage can under mom's sewing desk. coming out only when visited by mom or dad. they hardly ate or drank anything. a little fast is a good thing for a chubby cat though. they were very glad to come home. we missed them too. since i put plastic on my bed they've been banished from my room because of their love to claw at plastic, especially archie. and they've always been banished from edith's room, so for the time they weren't here, it was strange to see our doors uninhibitedly open. it was strange to come home and not be met by two eager cats one weaving in and out of my feet, determined to fell me as i walk down the hall, the other nervously scratching her cardboard pad. the apartment seemed empty. "this is what it was like to not have pets." i said to myself.
so i've had two and a half nights back in my own bed. the first night was disastrous. i was fully dressed and layered and barely slept. what sleep i did do was fitful and thanks to the plastic and the excessive clothes (thick heavy jeans if you can imagine that) i was bathed in sweat. the previous days to this, on the couch, since the discovery of cold hard bug fact, i had been sleeping badly--waking up all through the night and up at 5am unable to go back to sleep. it was catching up with me. i was sooooo tired. thursday night i was desperate. i prayed specifically about a peaceful sleep and found some lighter things to wear to bed. it still had to be long pants but it wasn't jeans, and i wore a t-shirt. well it was the best sleep i've had in months and months. i even flung my limbs out of the covers which is how i like to sleep, but i haven't allowed it since sleeping on the couch began in july. all limbs had to be encased in covers no matter if i was burning up or not, and i often was even though i just used a sheet. anyways i slept with abandon and didn't wake up for reals until 7. the lift that gave me was wonderful. such a happy way to start your day--well rested.
well then there was last night. it seems weird to say last night when it is 3:57am and i started this post at 2:55am. i went to bed 11ish and started waking up at 1ish. what followed was a losing battle with sleep. i was soooooooo hot! desperately i flung my covers completely off. i couldn't understand it. i was wearing the same thing as the night before! i got up around 2:45. and came out to sleep on the couch. i couldn't. i was too hot even with just a sweater draped over me and i couldn't sleep on the couch without some sort of cover. i have suspicions about the couch. bed bugs make you suspect every thing. anyways that's when i figured out what edith had done. she had pumped the heat up all the way. our heater knob has number from one to five and it was at a definite five. i have an overreaction to heat and she has an overreaction to cold. how much more ying and yang could we get? seriously though, 5?? it's not the dead of winter! usually at this time of year we have the heat at a 2 or 3. 5 is like for those desperately cold below zero days. if she's doing 5 when we have nights with a low of 7 degrees, what's she going to do on truly cold days? if anyone's a candidate for a space heater she is.
last night we did some states shopping. i was looking for cheap jeans at the gap outlet. edith's interest was purely grocery shopping. i ended up with a pink sweater for 16 usdollars. i tried on many a 24.99 jean. i liked quite a few. i liked their cuts, their washes, the details on them. i liked the legs but i didn't find a pair that didn't try to redistribute my stomach fat in an unflattering way. pah. i also found this super cute black dress in lane bryant. it was flattering and cute except that the lining was inexplicably sewn to the hem of the dress, creating a strange yucky hang at the bottom. so i left it. but now i really want a cute black dress. i know where to get one too. bodacious is where the cute black dresses are. i just need to save my pennies as they say. miss edith-all i want is fermented mushroom juice and snap pea chips, found 3 tops for 23 dollars. we ate at applebees.
ok. i'm going to work on the mountain of photos i have to edit. latah.
so far we are not moving. edith called the managers the next day to tell them about our nefarious visitor. she also called a lot of pest control places to find out what's what. she found this great place that injected a perimeter of death in the walls. this is the one that was the most attractive to us. the managers had to talk to the owners and didn't get back to us until monday. all of th pco's that edith called said to leave things as they were for the inspection so we did nothing on the weekend. monday i came home from work to a message from franca telling me the pco was coming the next morning at 8. she made it sound like we had to pack everything up. but she's got a thick slavic accent so i went straight to the source and called samy--our friendly neighbourhood pco guy (not the perimeter of death guy). he said since we found a bug we needed to be sprayed so he wasn't doing an inspection. he said we needed to bag up all our clothes and move everything from the walls.
what followed was a scrambled search of where to stow the kitties (mom and dad kindly took them--dad even drove out to pick them up in the morning), and a loooong night of bagging my room. i hadn't spent much time in my room since july and it was full of stuff and clutter. countless dusty cluttered piles. well thinking do i want this or do i want the chance of bed bugs being in it, is a great purging question. i threw away tons of stuff. and bagged up the rest. edith and i had the box of garbage bags in the hall between our two rooms and between the two of us we went through an almost full box of 40 garbage bags. like maybe there was 37 or 36 in there.
samy was a comforting kind of person. after looking through our place he said we weren't infested-infested. he could tell. he's been doing it for 15 years. edith is of the opinion that is just the one bug that she found waltzing along between her bed and her carpet in her room. but she hasn't been bitten mysteriously on and off again for 5 months. strange that buggy was found in her room then, but good because that's how he was found because she inhabits her room and her room is neat and tidy. well it was before the bagging manifesto. a little known fact about bed bug bites is that some people don't have any reaction to their bites at all. if this is true of edith, it is just another example of our diabolical oppositeness as the other end of the spectrum is extreme allergic reaction which is what happens to me.
so samy sprayed our house with poisons and gave us some friendly tips. he's going to bring us cloth mattress covers. back in july when i began to phobia about bugs i covered my bed with plastic. samy said this was better than nothing, but not very good protection.
dad was late picking up the emprisoned kitties, because of bad traffic and edith and i sat outside with the mad yowling felines waiting for him. there was a strange giddy atmosphere. i think maybe the relief of doing something about the whole bug thing. and the hope samy gave us.
i even made it to work more or less on time. samy comes back for a follow up spray--another comforting thing, ten days from his first spraying. this is to nab eggs that may have hatched in that time. i'm all for bug genocide with the exception of lady bugs and any bug who minds his own business and stays outside of human habitations and does not bite or suck human blood when given the chance. that's my personal philosophy on the matter.
archie and izzy spent their visit with mom and dad hiding behind the garbage can under mom's sewing desk. coming out only when visited by mom or dad. they hardly ate or drank anything. a little fast is a good thing for a chubby cat though. they were very glad to come home. we missed them too. since i put plastic on my bed they've been banished from my room because of their love to claw at plastic, especially archie. and they've always been banished from edith's room, so for the time they weren't here, it was strange to see our doors uninhibitedly open. it was strange to come home and not be met by two eager cats one weaving in and out of my feet, determined to fell me as i walk down the hall, the other nervously scratching her cardboard pad. the apartment seemed empty. "this is what it was like to not have pets." i said to myself.
so i've had two and a half nights back in my own bed. the first night was disastrous. i was fully dressed and layered and barely slept. what sleep i did do was fitful and thanks to the plastic and the excessive clothes (thick heavy jeans if you can imagine that) i was bathed in sweat. the previous days to this, on the couch, since the discovery of cold hard bug fact, i had been sleeping badly--waking up all through the night and up at 5am unable to go back to sleep. it was catching up with me. i was sooooo tired. thursday night i was desperate. i prayed specifically about a peaceful sleep and found some lighter things to wear to bed. it still had to be long pants but it wasn't jeans, and i wore a t-shirt. well it was the best sleep i've had in months and months. i even flung my limbs out of the covers which is how i like to sleep, but i haven't allowed it since sleeping on the couch began in july. all limbs had to be encased in covers no matter if i was burning up or not, and i often was even though i just used a sheet. anyways i slept with abandon and didn't wake up for reals until 7. the lift that gave me was wonderful. such a happy way to start your day--well rested.
well then there was last night. it seems weird to say last night when it is 3:57am and i started this post at 2:55am. i went to bed 11ish and started waking up at 1ish. what followed was a losing battle with sleep. i was soooooooo hot! desperately i flung my covers completely off. i couldn't understand it. i was wearing the same thing as the night before! i got up around 2:45. and came out to sleep on the couch. i couldn't. i was too hot even with just a sweater draped over me and i couldn't sleep on the couch without some sort of cover. i have suspicions about the couch. bed bugs make you suspect every thing. anyways that's when i figured out what edith had done. she had pumped the heat up all the way. our heater knob has number from one to five and it was at a definite five. i have an overreaction to heat and she has an overreaction to cold. how much more ying and yang could we get? seriously though, 5?? it's not the dead of winter! usually at this time of year we have the heat at a 2 or 3. 5 is like for those desperately cold below zero days. if she's doing 5 when we have nights with a low of 7 degrees, what's she going to do on truly cold days? if anyone's a candidate for a space heater she is.
last night we did some states shopping. i was looking for cheap jeans at the gap outlet. edith's interest was purely grocery shopping. i ended up with a pink sweater for 16 usdollars. i tried on many a 24.99 jean. i liked quite a few. i liked their cuts, their washes, the details on them. i liked the legs but i didn't find a pair that didn't try to redistribute my stomach fat in an unflattering way. pah. i also found this super cute black dress in lane bryant. it was flattering and cute except that the lining was inexplicably sewn to the hem of the dress, creating a strange yucky hang at the bottom. so i left it. but now i really want a cute black dress. i know where to get one too. bodacious is where the cute black dresses are. i just need to save my pennies as they say. miss edith-all i want is fermented mushroom juice and snap pea chips, found 3 tops for 23 dollars. we ate at applebees.
ok. i'm going to work on the mountain of photos i have to edit. latah.
Comments
Oh well, I'm glad you're finally able to take care of that! How nice to have it all done and gone!
I had that heater blasted at 5 for a few nights, surprised you just noticed it...I sure do want a space heater, what am I gonna do in January when it really gets cold?
Fermented mushroom juice just sounds dizgusting. It's Kombucha a nutritious shot of health and vitality complete with algae, spirulina & chlorella!
Vicki is the same with the heat as Edith. it kills me :)
And I agree, just unpick the stitches and have yourself a bargain cute little black dress.
i don't know about the dress. it was also a bit too short, so it's not like i could undo the seams and then hem it again. it would be too short. oh well.