Bugged Out

As an anonymous commenter so thoughtfully posted, there is a company that will mail Suspend to New York! www.doMYownpestcontrol.com

I checked out the site and found nothing claiming that Suspend could not be shipped to New York. Mysteriously enough, DoMYownpestcontrol is in Georgia, just like Doyourownpestcontrol, which does not ship Suspend to New York. In any case the wonderful commenter said that he has successfully recieved Suspend in the mail.

I’m just glad I didn’t have to make some out-of-state arrangement to have a shipment of Suspend delivered somewhere and then smuggled into New York like it was heroin. I have a sister in Philly was agreed to have it delivered to her apartment and she would either mail it via DHL.

To be honest, I was almost kinda looking forward to meeting her in Penn Station (She takes the SEPTA to NJ Transit to get here from Philly) and looking around cautiously before muttering, “You got the product?” and she hands me the package like it’s a big coke deal going down. Hahahaha!

My sister’s partner has family in Brooklyn, so she and my sister make frequent trips between Philly and Brooklyn. They usually bring Philly cheesesteaks (I tried them for the first time when I visited them in Philly and God, were they delicious! The ones in New York are okay, but they nust can’t compare.) and they could’ve brought the pesticide, too. Oh, well.

I’m just waiting for my next paycheck so I can order some.

Remember, www.doMYownpestcontrol.com

…to a movie that never should have been made!

Oh, man. Woke up the other day to find an adult bed bug on my pillow. I guess I had been itching for the last few days, but most times I can’t tell if it’s a legitimate itch (we men do itch quite often), a bed bug bite or my own paranoia recreating the sensations of a bed bug bite. Some birthday present! Last night I saw a small bed bug crawling across my bedroom floor. I immediately scooped it up with a wad of tissue and flushed the whole thing down the toilet.

I always kind of figured they weren’t really all gone. The total disappearance of bed bugs following the disposal of my bed, mattress and headboard was too good to be true. I had found dead bed bugs on my floor and along the area where the floor and walls meet for the last few months. It’s like something out of a bad horror movie, except this isn’t scary, it’s just annoying.

I checked out www.doyourownpestcontrol.com after reading all the rave reviews in the comments area. Does anyone know why they don’t deliver Suspend to New York?

Nuff said.

More details to come…

Actually, it’s 1:28 am so technically, yesterday was my birthday. It’s my first birthday without my bed, mattress and headboard, three things I’ve had for almost 20 years. It still takes some getting used to.

Since I’m still enjoying the beer buzz, I’ll blog later this week.

See ya!

Bugged Out

I came across this hilarious (not that I’m having a laugh at this commenter’s expense, but it’s funny because it’s happened to myself and so many others) comment someone left on my last entry and it prompted me to shed a bit more light on this very important topic.

I am getting minute small bumps and itches during the day at work…but I don’t
see any bedbugs at least that I can recognize. I am paranoid that the nymphs are
too small for me to identify so I pick at anything that looks like a speck of
dust or small white fluff or that eggs are in my clothes and that they are
hatching during the day inside my clothes close to my skin…Has anyone else
felt this crawling sensation at work during the day underneath your clothes? It
usually starts later in the afternoon. Sometimes I have picked off small round
things that are dark in the center and yellowish brown around the outside but
again they are too small and I usually just crush them and wash them down the
sink.

-Anonymous poster

Man, I’ve experienced this so many times. There were times when all I had to do was think about bed bugs to start feeling itching or crawling sensations. I still feel bed bugs on my body that aren’t there, or at least I can’t seem to find them when I “feel” them. I still check my clothes for bugs or eggs when I pull them out of the closet, before I put them on. I’ve mistaken many different things for bed bugs, specks of dust, crumbs, ashes, shirt buttons, you name it.

I think (or theorize) that the crawling sensations are a combination of your body and subconscious, wracked if not slightly traumatized by the advent of bed bugs in your life. Think of your central nervous system after experiencing bed bugs as a car with its alarm set to super-sensitive. If so much as a sole leaf floats down and touches the roof of that car, the alarm will sound as loudly as if someone had just smashed the windshield. Woo-woo-woo-woo! Eee-er eee-er eee-er eee-er eee-er eee-er! Whoooooo-up whooooo-up whoooooo-up whoooooo-up whoooooo-up whoooooo-up whoooooo-up! Wheee-oh wheee-oh wheee-oh wheee-oh wheee-oh wheee-oh wheee-oh!

So if your skin feels anything during the day from a gentle breeze to your own clothing brushing against it, that biological hypersensitive alarm goes off. Your subconscious and your nerves come into play by reproducing the crawling sensations you felt when the bugs were actually crawling on you. In that sense, bed bugs really mess up your nervous system, because the nerves are supposed to send signals to the brain, not the other way around.

For example, my mother says she no longer sleeps with her mouth open because she’s afraid the bed bugs will crawl into her mouth. Another bedtime ritual for her is making sure her hair is covering her ears as she is horrified that bed bugs will crawl into her ear holes. I guess she’s afraid they’ll crawl inside, go all the way up to her brain and start changing her thought patterns, and by next week she’ll be crawling on me and sucking my blood. Just kidding, ma. Ha ha ha.

But seriously, bed bug paranoia is an interesting phenomenon because while bed bugs cannot be proven to carry physical disease, the paranoia can lead to a mild form of mental illness in extreme or even moderate cases. I mean, if you’re a paranoid schizophrenic, or Woody Allen, bed bugs may literally drive you crazy. Drug addicts are another group whose habit instills paranoid delusions, so imagine what one of them must go through if they have bed bugs in their home and they just shot themselves full of heroin. I remember this guy from high school who used to see spiders crawling on his arms when he would trip on acid. I can only imagine someone living with bed bugs taking LSD or some other hallucinogenic and looking down at his breakfast only to trip out and see a cereal bowl filled with bed bugs and a spoonful of the critters only a few inches from his mouth.

This whole thing reminds me of this funny saying, “If you don’t think I’m paranoid, just ask all the people who are out to get me.”

I think it would be really interesting if a psychologist or a psych student were to study bed bug paranoia and do research on its effects on the human psyche.