You've probably been wondering what the bed bugs are up to. We are, too. I've tried to avoid mentioning them because I hate them.
We have now had six pest treatments, got rid of one bed and two mattresses, moved everything that belongs in bedrooms to the front balcony, under the deck and in the kitchen and living room. After the sixth treatment, we saw three bugs and had a few nights of bites, but have had nothing again for about a week.
Are they there, perhaps inside eggs waiting to hatch? Are they biting us but still in their nymph stage so we can't feel the bites? Are they all gone? I don't know. Having written with confidence a few times on this blog that I am sure we've got rid of them (once I said I was 101% sure) and then having more bites and finding more bugs, I confess I have completely lost hope.
I am losing my grip on domesticity. I have been completely displaced, I don't know where my clothes are, my home cannot be propery tidied or cleaned because there are so many things out of place by necessity. It's like we're in the middle of moving house BUT WE CAN'T SETTLE ANYWHERE.
It's driving me up the wall. Men don't mind so much - it's like camping. Women need to have their place to settle and nest. Without that we can't cope.
A bright spot in all this: we got our new bed. We needed to do this. I couldn't physically or emotionally cope with sleeping on the couch, air mattress (I hate the things) or the bare floor anymore.
I've kept the tea-tree oil everywhere hoping to deter any random bugs, but they've still been around despite the oil being strong enough to sting my eyes as I lie in bedding sprayed with it. It's been nice to sleep in a real bed, but even this little bit of settlement hasn't been enough to make me feel like a real human again.
I hate this next bit, but Hubs is right - it has to be done: we've totally completely evacuated yet again to put diatomaceous earth around the place in a last-ditch attempt to be rid of these things. So where our room once looked like this a few weeks ago:
We have now had six pest treatments, got rid of one bed and two mattresses, moved everything that belongs in bedrooms to the front balcony, under the deck and in the kitchen and living room. After the sixth treatment, we saw three bugs and had a few nights of bites, but have had nothing again for about a week.
Are they there, perhaps inside eggs waiting to hatch? Are they biting us but still in their nymph stage so we can't feel the bites? Are they all gone? I don't know. Having written with confidence a few times on this blog that I am sure we've got rid of them (once I said I was 101% sure) and then having more bites and finding more bugs, I confess I have completely lost hope.
I am losing my grip on domesticity. I have been completely displaced, I don't know where my clothes are, my home cannot be propery tidied or cleaned because there are so many things out of place by necessity. It's like we're in the middle of moving house BUT WE CAN'T SETTLE ANYWHERE.
It's driving me up the wall. Men don't mind so much - it's like camping. Women need to have their place to settle and nest. Without that we can't cope.
A bright spot in all this: we got our new bed. We needed to do this. I couldn't physically or emotionally cope with sleeping on the couch, air mattress (I hate the things) or the bare floor anymore.
I've kept the tea-tree oil everywhere hoping to deter any random bugs, but they've still been around despite the oil being strong enough to sting my eyes as I lie in bedding sprayed with it. It's been nice to sleep in a real bed, but even this little bit of settlement hasn't been enough to make me feel like a real human again.
I hate this next bit, but Hubs is right - it has to be done: we've totally completely evacuated yet again to put diatomaceous earth around the place in a last-ditch attempt to be rid of these things. So where our room once looked like this a few weeks ago:
it now looks like this:
(Yeah, that's Hubs!)
Can anybody out there understand why this is so hard for me to live in? In the middle of this chaos I'm trying to keep two children and a husband fed, clothed, happy and not living in a dump worthy of a Today Tonight Expose. Guh.
3 comments:
Come to Seattle. It is too cold here for bedbugs. The house down the street is for sale, and I know of two kids that are in the neighborhood that need a speech therapist. (And they are the right age to play with Sonny. There are also some girls in the neighborhood to play with Smoochy too!!) I know it isn't anything as FANCY as AUSTRAULIA...but we have good coffee, mountains, the ocean and more!!
Sounds tempting! I read somewhere that you can kill all stages of bed bugs by leaving your windows open on a cold day - the cold kills them. So I did the conversions (we don't know what degrees Fahrenheit means here - we work in Celcius) and found out that the temperature has to be MINUS 16 or something. You'd be hard pressed to get the air temp under about 5 in winter. Ground temp can sometimes be freezing (zero degrees Celcius) but minus 16 doesn't happen here. Ever. So diatomaceous earth it is.
I would be insane in your shoes. I like order and being settled. I probably would have killed someone by now, so I think you're doing really well.
Death to all bed bugs!!
Jen.
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