Ugh! MORE Bed Bugs!

I was tooling along quite happily, the week before last - doing my exercise, walk the dog, and enjoy the spring thing. Then I opened an email from Kevin's building manager. 

The bed bugs are back - and worse than ever. Somehow, in one of his dumpster diving expeditions, Kevin managed to bring home some hitchhikers. The manager was clearly at her wits end. Would I be willing to come back out and do the bed bug cleaning thing again? 

I can't tell you how badly I wanted to say, "No."

But that damn rocking chair spoke to me, and the answer that came out of my mouth was, "Yes, I'll be there tomorrow." The exterminators had been there the day before, doing a heat treatment, so I THOUGHT my only job was to clean up dead critters; a distasteful, but doable task.

I arrived on schedule the next morning, gathered up the clothing from the bottom of his closet, and set off for some chill time at the local laundromat. I washed and dried everything (per instructions), folded it (as a bonus), and took the clothes back to the apartment. I then gritted my teeth, and started vacuuming up dead bugs.

There were a LOT of them, but I cleaned and swiped and kept at it anyways. Eventually, I got to the closet. I moved a bag, and saw a group of live bugs; at least fifty of the things! Eeek! I am proud of myself - instead of running away, I kept vacuuming, sucking up all the critters I could get to before a few managed to escape behind the baseboard.

Sigh. I finished the job of cleaning up the dead bugs, then went to report the live nest to the building manager. 

She is going to schedule another treatment. Then, she, the building's social worker, and I are going to sit down to draft a special set of Kevin rules, to keep this from happening again. I am not in the rescue people from themselves business. He will either follow the rules or find himself another place to live.

Exhausted, mentally and physically, I went to the bathroom and stripped down, swiped off with a dry towel just in case one had decided to cling to me, put on a fresh set of clothes, and headed home. Once there, I brought my bed bug interceptor traps (that I'd bought the first time this happened) up from the basement, and made an island out of my bed, just in case.

The next morning, I woke up to a set of bedbug bites across my mid-section. One of those buggers had crawled up my pant leg the day before to find a bit of accessible skin. And I began to wonder, reflecting back on my actions of the previous day. I hadn't been quite as careful as I usually was around live bedbugs; until I found the nest, I'd been under the impression that all the bugs in the apartment were dead. Had I managed to bring one home with me??

Weirded out, I promptly tore my bed apart to look for bugs. I didn't find any, but cleaned and swiped, then went out and bought some bed bug covers for the mattress and box spring. That night, I slept soundly, figuring I'd done what I could do, only to wake the next morning to a trail of bites along my arm. They ITCHED!

As soon as I had a few minutes, I returned to my bedroom to look for strays. I pulled the mattress off the bed, carefully inspecting the seams of the cover for bugs. I heaved the box spring off its slats, and there, clinging to one of the slats, trying to be invisible, was a bug. (I'm not sure how it managed to avoid the interceptors, but think my blankets must have trailed to the floor at some point during the night.)

I had come prepared for this moment - I had a plastic bag and alcohol spray (kills on contact) ready to capture any specimens I found, so I could study them to see what stage of life they were at. In the moment, however, that scientific bent was buried beneath the impulse to make it BE GONE! Before I mustered any conscious thought, I'd smashed the critter with my rag so completely it was hard to tell it had once had legs.

I wiped down every inch of the mattress, box spring, and bed frame. I got out a flashlight to inspect screw holes and joints. I found just the one bug.

I started to extend my cleaning to the rest of the room, but logic stopped me. I didn't have to find any bugs that weren't on the bed (which, given their habits, was unlikely anyways - they like to live real close to the restaurant). They would come to me when they got hungry. I'd just have to steel my nerves and be the bait in the trap.

It's been a week, and I've gotten no more bites. *whew* Chances are good that I've found all the bugs I brought home. (Or, they're encased in the mattress covers, where they can stay. They can't get to me from there.)

Surprisingly, I've not been as freaked out as I once would have been. My hard decade taught me some lasting lessons about how to separate things that are real trouble from those that are just annoyances. 

Bed bugs don't carry disease. And God knows I've had itchy skin before, and will again. The good news is, given my body's reaction to the bites, I will never have a bug in my bed and not know it. And if I do find another one, well, it's an uneven war. The bed is still an island. I am armed with flashlights, cleaning implements, and the best knowledge of the internet. If all that fails, I have the ability to hire a professional exterminator to come kill them. The bugs just have their desire to eat.

I'm still waiting to hear back from the building manager about the state of Kevin's apartment - I've already told her I'm not going back in until they've done another heat treatment. But when they do, I'll do a weekly check until I'm sure the bugs are once again banished from his home.

Of course, I will do everything in my power not to bring more bugs home. I know they are out there. My isolate EVERYTHING I bring near him, and strip down at the back door method worked last time, I have no reason to believe it won't work again.

This, too, shall pass.

Spring!

Here in Kansas City this year, March started off in a chilly and cloudy mood. February was warmer than usual, and the crocuses and daffodils started to get a jump on the season - started being the operative word. They popped out of the ground, the first blooms appeared, and they stopped right there. They grew no taller. Buds that hadn't yet opened stayed tightly coiled and those first, precocious, precious flowers shrank back into themselves as best they could, to wait out the cold spell.

They stayed in suspension for two weeks and more, until spring arrived on both the calendar and in person here today. 

Yesterday started out with me in my heaviest winter coat, a north wind blowing, and the temps in the teens. Those temps inched up through the day yesterday, then took a jump when the wind shifted to the south just before noon today. It will continue to blow strong through the afternoon, and is slated to raise the temperature to nudge sixty. 

Poof! Winter, begone!

As I walk the dog each morning, I've made my way past a patch of daffodils; those early bloomers I referenced in the first paragraph. I've been cheering them on for the last couple of weeks. The temps would dip below freezing each night, and my heart would lift each morning when I walked by to see they'd survived to see yet another day. I thought sure, that 17 degree morning, that they had lost their battle against the cold. Their petals were shriveled, their stems bent until the flower heads touched the dirt in sad surrender to the elements.

But despite their seeming fragility, they survived! As I walked past in the clear light of dawn this morning, I celebrated to see their cheery yellow heads lifting in triumph from the ground. They'd made it, anyways!

If I am ever in a fight against evil, and I get to choose my allies, I hope I am able to choose the daffodils to be on my side. Such persistence in the face of odds; their delicate grace belies their toughness.

Beauty Is.

Illusions of Control

I really, really, really like to pretend I am able to control things. 
Some things. 
Anything?

I was considering this illusion of mine the other day as we were practicing our breathing in one of my yoga classes. Breathe in for a count of four. Hold for four. Breathe out for four. Hold for four. Repeat.

Control. Yup, I've got it.

But then my mind checked in with my body beyond my breathing, and I realized that not only am I not in control of my body, I couldn't begin to do it. I don't have the necessary knowledge.

Let me take just a short walk down that path.

Heart: beating. Got it.
Lungs: breathe in, then breathe out. So far, so good.
Blood: take the oxygen the lungs put into the blood and use the boost the heart gave you to go around the body, and distribute it to every cell. (However it is you accomplish that.) Oh. Don't forget to pick up the carbon dioxide on your way back around, ok?

Stomach: secrete some enzymes and digest that food.
Intestines: grab the good stuff from what the stomach gave you and parcel it out according to need. Fat, here. Protein, there. 

Wait. 
Micro-nutrients, go, where? 
How do you intestines know what to pull from the digested goo and what to pass along (so to speak)?

And why was it again that I needed a spleen?

Oh, shoot! I forgot to keep track of what the liver was doing! Madam gallbladder, are you on the ball?? The liver needs your help.

And is it time for the thyroid to manufacture some more T4 and T3? Oh, and the rest of the hormones that keep me on the level, I need some more of those! Pituitary, pineal, thymus and adrenal glands and pancreas, get on the stick! No, I don't know which ones I need!!!! Can you just make the same ones you did yesterday, so we can get by until I have a minute to figure this out?????

Oh, spit! I forgot to keep the heart beating!!!!!!!!!

Game over.

.    .    .    .    .    .    .     .

Let me pause for just a moment in gratitude, to send a message to the Powers Who Are. 

Thank you for the miracle that is the body that does the magic that allows my mind to say, "I am."

If you'll keep doing your part and keep the body working so my mind can keep working, "I who is" promises to continue the work of letting go of my illusions of control.

Leaf Questions

There is a high window in the yoga studio where I do much of my practice these days. The view out the glass from the floor of the studio shows mostly sky, framed along one edge by the upper branches of a stand of birch trees.

I am a creature of habit, so I often end up on the same section of floor, on the left side as you walk into the studio, in the middle row. From this spot, as I stretch and bend and breathe, I have enjoyed watching the trees as their leaves changed from summer green, to the bright yellow of fall, then to the almost bare gray branches of winter.

At some point this winter, I noticed there was one leaf still hanging in one of the trees. I began to look for it during each class, admiring its tenacity in hanging on, wondering when it would finally let go. It has clung to its branch through the rain and the snow, and is still there this week, even as the tree has begun to loosen its buds, welcoming the rapidly approaching spring.

Last week, I decided that stubborn leaf is holding a life metaphor / meditation for me. Two of them, actually.

The first is from the viewpoint of the tree: Is there something in my life I am clinging to past its time? A something that served me well in the past, but as I have moved on, no longer serves? What will happen if I finally let go of that something, to make way for new growth?

The second is from the viewpoint of the leaf: Am I holding on to the familiar because I am afraid to face the unknown that awaits when I let it go? When I look within, am I still clinging to a way of thinking that once provided life and growth, but now simply holds me back from whatever comes next? What will happen when I finally gather my courage, loosen my grip, and move on?

I don't yet have any answers. But I like the questions.