I live in fear of bed bugs.
Thankfully we’ve never had any issues with them, largely due to extreme vigilance on our part. If we see anything that remotely resembles a bed bug, we go into DEFCON 1 protocol.
All soft goods are stripped and heat treated in a commercial drier, our mattresses are unbagged and treated with a heat gun, we take apart bed frames and linen drawers and inspect them with flashlights. We’ve got it down.
And we inspect the mattresses between every client. Every. Single. One.
So imagine how surprised I was to find what I thought was a live bedbug lying on its back in the bathroom. The bathroom! And during the day! It’s like it fell off something because those suckers (literally) don’t come out in the light and they certainly don’t hang out on hard surfaces.
But still, we inspected the whole house and found nothing. I can’t tell you how awesome it is to be handling loads of scorching hot linens when it is 100 degrees outside already.
We never got to the bottom of it. We didn’t find any other bugs or their eggs. It was a mystery.
Until yesterday a friend show me a bug that looked like this, only a little hairier.
She has the cleanest house ever. She doesn’t suffer from clutter like we do, nor does she have a revolving door of guests. Lonny didn’t know how to break the news to her but then by serendipity something happened. He saw a bat. In our house. At night.
I was already in bed when a bat started flying around the living room. I didn’t realize we had bats and I don’t have anything against them; I would prefer they stay outside, though. Lonny spent two hours chasing around with a butterfly net before he could go to bed. He figured that it was nesting in the walls somewhere. Remember my post about my house being infested by vampires?
Oh God, please don’t let this be what the insides of my walls look like!
It must have come in through hole in the bathroom ceiling chase that Lonny made years ago to extract a pesky squirrel. Fortunately they can’t get into any of the rental spaces. They migrate away in October so he’ll seal up any penetrations to keep them out next spring.
But what’s interesting is that there is such thing as a bat bug. It’s looks exactly like a bedbug only it is hairier and hitches rides on bats, which would explain that bug sitting on my bathroom counter in the middle of the day and perhaps my neighbor’s bug situation.
Who knew? I guess we better start wearing garlic necklaces to keep them away.
Time to cut the crap.
Here’s a fantastic piece in the local paper about Kenneth Kao, a chiropractor, Parkour instructor at APEX Movement and a Pole instructor at Vertical Fusion. He’s dynamite and so is the article. It might change how you feel about the pole.
Kenneth Kao. Doctor by day, pole ninja by night!
Uhhh This is crazy. So my boyfriend traveled a lot for work before I met him, and when I started moving in I kept getting bit at night.
WE HAVE BED BUGS. AHHHHH. We are in the process of throwing everything in the dump. I vacuum daily. We are getting most of the carpets replaced and the one carpet that is staying has been steamed.
We threw out all the beds in the house, and all of the linens…(our problem isn’t that bad, in fact we think that it was only in one room but I hate bugs and get so grossed out).
We shower in the morning, throw the clothes in the hamper after work and shower again before getting in bed….and again throw the clothes we slept in, in the hamper….and then shower. I do laundry daily.
I did research and realized that its not because we are dirty people or anything, just that he grabbed a bug or two while traveling and they multiplied before we realized. AHHH! It is becoming so damn expensive to replace everything….beds, box spring, frame, linens, couches….seriously, I feel like my life is over. lol
This post really hit home. I feel like I will be forever searching for these stupid things for the rest of my life now.
Oh my God. I am so sorry to hear that. You are living my worst nightmare which is why Lonny and I are C.R.A.Z.Y. about watching out for those things. We had a professional inspect our house and give us a clean bill of health and we took notes about where he looked and what he did.
Lonny has the (somewhat brilliant) idea to train Blue to sniff them out and then rent his services out to hotels and inns. But I was like, “But what happens when he’s too scared to walk on their tiled foyer? Then what?”
He’s going to be pissed that I’m even writing about this because he doesn’t want people to think we have them (we don’t) because of the stigma because you are right, it isn’t about being a dirty person at all. It’s bad luck.
Speaking of bad luck, the Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie is INFESTED in Manhattan. EWWWWW!
Think of this as an opportunity to get rid of a bunch of stuff and replace it with less. Bag your new mattresses in special bug-proof bags (you can get them at Bed Bath and Beyond) and keep rugs and soft goods away from your bed. You can heat treat your linens and pillows in commercial driers.
IS that crockery that you made?
No it isn’t. It’s commercial “crockery”. But it’s vintage! Do you want it? You will be unsatisfied by the size of the teacups.
That may need to be my screen saver….
Which one? The cartoon bug? The cute bat? The bat infestation? The broken teacup? What turns you on?
Oh. Duh. The picture of Ken. I walked in on him rehearsing shirtless. Do you want me to snap one off for you?
Yes I prefer the Ken picture over the bug or crockery….
Yah. I forgot what I had posted. Makes sense. Meeting with a bookkeeper today. Wish me luck!
You learn something new everyday. I’ve had several bats in my home over the years, but hadn’t heard of bat bugs.
I had no idea they existed until yesterday. They feed of of bats and while they can bite humans, they cannot reproduce without bat blood. Yuck. We’re going to install bat houses on the outside of our house for the next migration. They are terribly useful little creatures and should be made welcome. Outside.
That photo of Ken does not look humanly possible. But I never took physics.
Check out today’s post and you will see how he gets into it. He defies gravity.
He is so freaking amazing. And hot. Ken. Not the bats or bugs. And I love your tea set and wish I was a tea person. I love the idea of a good tea ritual…but I love the idea of lots of things.
Ken is adorable. He is so uncomfortable with all the attention. I told him he better get used to it. He’s going to compete in the Pole Expo coming up in Vegas in September.
Pingback: The Good Doctor (6086-6101) | Vivienne's Process of Elimination