Of Moose And Men
The Best Laid Plans Of Both Often Go Astray

New York faces bed bug problem. Schadenfreude, anyone?

My bedroom is set up once again (mostly), after the last round of treatment for the bed bugs. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but I’m certainly not holding my breath.

The latest round was a supposed fogger. The guy sprayed stuff all over and we retreated from the room for the day. Presumably this stuff then gasssed up the place and got into all the nooks and crannies and killed things. Whee. The frustrating thing is that nothing has yet been done about the source of the infestation, the boys next door. Normally I’m all for evictions taking a certain amount of due process, but like the famous joke that a Republican is merely a Democrat who’s been mugged, I’m not feeling terribly generous towards them at the moment.

The birthday itself on Monday was… eh. Was very busy at work, and then Richard and I went to Mama Ayesha’s Calvert Cafe for dinner (free entree coupon, can’t turn that down), then home to crash out and the like. Yesterday was similarly low key. Dinner and drinks with Brian and some TiVO watching of bad comedy shows. And cleaning, of course, to prep the apartment (which ended up being a waste since we only did the bedroom) for today’s “fogging.”

The cats have handled most of these “close off this room,” and “shut us up in that room” things pretty well, which is a good thing. Natasha’s been recovering from the out of the norm stuff much more quickly than she did right after her vet experience.

Been running, though I had to skip that this morning for bug prep. Will see about a swim tomorrow, but not holding my breath on getting up rested enough. I have some time to take it easy and recover, but damn these bugs better go bye-bye so I can get back into my full, normal routine again.

Well, shit. Here I thought the last treatment of the place had managed to kill off the last of the bed bugs, but it seems there were either more eggs waiting to hatch or more new ones have crawled over from next door, because I woke up to more bites this morning.

Frak.
Me.

The bed sheets are dry now, having been washed in hot water and dried on high once again. Thankfully the laundry room was pretty much empty, so I was able to get those and all my other laundry done at one time. I still have to pull the mattress off and treat the frame with more boric acid, but I’ve not done that yet; honestly it’s been difficult enough to muster the energy to deal with the laundry itself, much less hauling the mattress around.

That has to be the worst part of this whole thing – that not even my “safest” space is safe. My bedroom, which is where I sleep, where I play on the computer, where I read, has been compromised, and there’s not a whole heck of a lot I can do about it. I keep the place clean, but they crawl into clean spaces as easily and as casually as dirty ones. I continue to clean the sheets, dust the (new this spring) bed frame, keep the bed away from the wall, coat the legs with Vaseline to keep them from crawling up, tuck the comforter in to keep it off the floor, but still I’m getting bitten. So still my “safe space” is unsafe, which means I can’t have people over, I can’t have anyone sleep in the room with me, and the feelings of isolation and despair just continue to climb.

They keep treating this unit, and supposedly treating next door, the original source of the infestation, but the bugs continue to bite. They’re also supposedly looking into evicting, or not renewing the lease of, the men next door to shut the place down as a crash spot for every Tom, Dick & Harry that needs a cheap place to sleep (there are four beds set up in the studio apartment there, all of which showed signs of bed bug infestation the first time it was treated).

I’d be tempted to move, but by this point I’d have to isolate and treat everything I own to ensure that I didn’t carry any eggs with me to a new place. Every stitch of fabric would have to be cleaned, then moved elsewhere, and every piece of wood would have to be treated with steam and boric acid to ensure they weren’t harboring any eggs, the mere contemplation of which leaves me more than a little bit exhausted.

I don’t know what else to do except try to soldier through, keep calling management to get the apartment treated, yet again, and keep pressure up to get rid of the ultimate source of the little fuckers, the men next door, but damn I’m tired of fighting this. Next week will be two months since I first noted bites, and about a month since I started getting almost weekly visits from Orkin for the infestation. I like the Orkin manager, don’t get me wrong, but I’m getting tired of having her come in to treat the place. I want my safe space to be safe again.

This was so not how I saw myself spending my 33rd birthday.