Want to see what life has looked like around these parts lately?
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| All of our linens bagged up |
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| Our bed completely stripped |
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| Our Vaseline & packing tape bed bug traps |
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| And.... literally washing every piece of clothing we have |
Do you know what those are pictures of? Potential Bed Bugs.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Gross - even typing the words send me into a tail spin.
So, long story short, over the past week Brady kept waking up in the morning with red, itchy, mosquito-like bites all over his neck, arms, and torso. So, me being logical |cough, not wanting to EVEN entertain the idea of having bed bugs, cough| I started dispelling the possibility because I didn't have any bites. |Maybe it is an allergy, maybe they are hives, maybe we should switch detergents, etc. etc.| Well, after lots of Googling and calling an exterminator I found out that bed bugs are picky about who they do and do not bite |oh, how polite of you bed bugs|. So, there went that plan - we could possibly still have them even without me showing any signs of bites.
And by the way... when you think your mattress might be infested by varmints, Google is NOT your friend. Google is great for helping navigate a new city, finding a recipe for your weekly meal plan, or even for discovering random videos of cats. But Google is the absolute WORST in this situation. All you will see is a confirmation of how nasty and aggressive these buggers are and how practically, totally, and completely ruined your home, and life, are. Great.
So, after spending far too much time researching and far too much time with our eyeballs inches away from our mattress' nooks and crannies, we bolted to our leasing office |more so just to get out of our apartment|. The landlord provided us the brilliant plan: "easy, throw out your mattress and box spring."
I'm sorry, Mr. Apartment Man, you mean throw out our mattress that costs 2 months' rent when we don't even know for sure if we have bed bugs yet? New plan, please.
Once he realized we weren't just ditching our entire bed until we got confirmation of the bed bugs he sent us on our way with a giant list of "To Do's":
1.Vacuum every soft surface of your house (all couch cushions, curtains, etc.) twice a day
|Wait, what? I have a thing that takes up about 10 hours of my day called a job|
2. Vacuum all sides of the box spring and mattress
3. Run all linens and recently wore clothing through the highest setting of the dryer
|Heat kills bed bugs, but it also kills adorable throw pillows :( sad day.|
4. Set your alarm for between 3 and 5 AM to see if you can spot any bugs crawling on you
|Do you know how awful it is to hear that alarm? Not only are you being woken up from a dead sleep, but you are being woken up to look for bugs crawling on your body! Luckily, we didn't spot anything.|
5. Purchase a mattress encasement
|This is pretty much like a giant diaper that zips all around your mattress keeping everything inside. It also makes a very sweet crinkly sound with every move, as if our quality of sleep isn't bad enough at this point in time|
6. Wrap packing tape around the feet of the bed frame
|Bed bug trap #1|
7. Line tupperware rims with globs of Vaseline and put the feet of the bed frame in the tupperware
|Bed bug trap #2. Apparently these bugs are unstoppable, reproducing at 200 eggs a night, yet Vaseline.... their Achilles Heel!|
Unfortunately this long, tedious list doesn't actually get rid of the bugs. It just gets us through until the exterminator can come and confirm if we do or do not have bed bugs - ON WEDNESDAY!! Wednesday seems like an eternity when you currently get the heebie jeebies when sitting on any soft surface in your house.
So Brady and I spent all Saturday, with the help of my generous parents, cleaning and practically fumigating every square inch of our place. Hours and hours. Happy Weekend?
***
This weekend was a hard one for me on many levels. For those of you who know me personally, or have been reading for a while, know that one of my biggest struggles as a new wife is feeling like I am constantly fighting perfectionism. Read my first, and very honest, post about it here.
Fluffed pillows, sanitized counters, straight picture frames, Pinterest-worthy meals - the whole nine yards. It is a daily struggle to not set insane expectations for myself.
You can only imagine how inferior, how much of a "wife failure" I felt I was, when I heard the possibility that our sweet little home was being invaded. What had I done wrong? What had I not cleaned well enough? What domestic god had I pissed off?
I felt dirty, unkempt, and just plain crappy.
Isn't that life sometimes? A storm, or an accident, or a "bug" hits our lives and immediately we start blaming ourselves? What could I have done better? What could I have changed? We start running through the hypothetical what-ifs - what if I hadn't driven down that road? What if I had called just one more time? What if I just had gone to the doctor sooner?
Or, in mine and Brady's case, what if we hadn't stayed in that hotel over Spring Break, or ridden on that public bus, or sat in that movie theater? |Sorry, don't mean to ruin all of those places for you, but really... they are the top 3 places to get bed bugs and also all places we have been recently - yikes!|
Do you see how clear it is? Unless we want to avoid life all together - movie theaters, or driving, or public transit - we can't really avoid the less-than-ideal, and sometimes heartbreaking, situations life throws our way. We are promised that bugs will bite our lives.
But we are also promised to be sustained through the times it feels like our lives are being infested - infested with the negative, the overwhelming, and the downright creepy-crawly.
How we deal with this infestation is another thing, though. Instead of asking yourself the millions of what-ifs, and the what-could-I-do-betters start turning to the people in your corner - the people who promise to show up when your car is in a ditch, you've gotten that termination letter from your boss, or when your house is infested by super-strength bugs. Because in reality, don't the situations we find ourselves in beat us up enough, as is? We shouldn't be doing it to ourselves. Especially considering that, more often than not, it won't change our circumstances.
I can feel like a total loser of a wife but that doesn't change the fact that potentially one of those sneaky jerks clung onto one of us at some unknown time.
So, really, if I am able to push myself and change my perspective, I think the point of this whole weekend fiasco was to show me you don't have to fight the attacks of your life alone. You have family, and friends, and a Big Huge God who are more than willing to slather everything you own in Vaseline.
Now here's to hoping and praying and crossing every finger and toe possible, that the exterminator finds nothing on Wednesday and that my house just got to be really, really deep-cleaned for nothing! :)
Keep you all updated!
Hugs & -ish
J
Labels: Faith, Family, Inspiration, Marriage & Love, Real Life
