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.
In the past, people inside and outside of cyberspace have asked me what my landlord has done to alleviate my bed bug problem. When I tell them how little they have actually done, I have been advised to take my building’s management company and/or landlord to court, call 311, or to go to the media.
Well, it’s not as simple as that. There is a reason why I have been hesitant to take any action against my landlord or super.
The reason is that for several years, my family has violated the terms of our lease. Now our super made it very clear to us some time ago that she was aware of the violation, but since we’ve never received an eviction notice, we figured she has kept her mouth shut.
The super basically sent one of her relatives who she employs as her maintenance crew to my apartment to apply roach spray to get rid of the bed bugs. The worker also suggested we buy those fogger bombs in a can and spray ammonia on the mattress. Because we are in violation of our lease, my family is reluctant to take action against the super, the management company, or the owner of my building for fear that they may point out our discrepancy and throw us all out..
This is a unique problem for New Yorkers because many of us live in illegal conversions or are violating certain terms of our leases. For the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers living in illegal conversions, I’m sorry to say that any legal action you take will result in your eviction. If your landlord is not doing enough, or is doing nothing at all to get rid of your bed bugs, and you live in an illegal apartment, bringing your case to the media or any court will alert the City to your illegal apartment.
Once that happens, the Department of Buildings (DOB) along with the NYPD will heavily fine your landlord and padlock your building, prohibiting anyone from living there until the building has been brought up to code by the owner and the owner has obtained a Certificate of Occupancy for each apartment in the building. As a reporter, I’ve written countless stories about illegal conversions, zoning regulations and DOB safety codes and law enforcement procedures, so trust me when I say all this.
Bear in mind that because your apartment is illegal, your landlord does not have to observe any building safety codes, and laws concerning landlords and tenants are non-existent in this case. If you know that your dwelling is not a legitimate one in the eyes of the law, do not rush to the courtroom of the TV cameras as if it is.
Also, because the demand for housing in New York City so greatly outweighs the supply, landlords and management companies can include very oppressive terms in your apartment lease, such as no pets, or no heavy duty appliances (i.e., washers or dryers). Perhaps you’ve taken on an extra boarder to help pay your very expensive New York rent and you didn’t want to add this person to the lease for fear of the rent being raised. Perhaps you have an illegal cable hookup, or someone in your home is engaging in some other illegal activity in your apartment.
Those of you living in legitimate apartments, if your landlord doesn’t lift a finger to help you get rid of your bed bug problem and you want to tell your story to the police, a judge or a reporter, make sure you’re not doing anything in there that, if made public, would result in your eviction, deportation or incarceration.
And for those of you in illegal apartments, tenants’ rights do not apply to you. Laws are there to protect the law-abiding, and while I’m not passing judgment against those who live in illegal apartments, you are not a law-abiding citizen. Making your case public will only let the authorities know that you and your landlord are knowingly breaking the law.
Long story short, getting rid of bed bugs for most New Yorkers will have to be a task carried out by ourselves. It is rare for someone to reside in a building with extermination services provided by someone who knows how to deal with bed bugs.
Please do not inquire as to the nature of my violation.
I’ve never said a whole lot about exterminators…until now.
A warning to those who rely on their building’s exterminator, whether it be an in-house maintenance worker, your building’s superintendent or an outside contractor: Your building’s landlord or building management company is most likely a cheap bastard and will only pay for a cheap exterminator whose expertise is usually limited to ants and roaches.
I’ve shopped around via the Internet for bed bug-specific exterminators, and I really can’t afford one at the moment. What I’ve found is that I am my best exterminator. I know where all the bed bug hotspots are in my home, so I immediately know where to apply a bed bug-killing agent. I will work harder to get rid of them than a professional exterminator because it is my home, and I want them gone.
Keep in mind that I’m not putting down exterminators. Their job is a valuable one: to study various species of insects, how to spot them and how to kill them. Think of all the studying we’ve all done on bed bugs alone. Multiply all that time and energy by ten and you’re a professional exterminator.
All I’m saying is that most exterminators are still fuzzy on bedbugs, especially since for much of this century, bed bugs were non-existent. And the few who are experts on bed bugs know they are in the minority and that their expertise is in high demand. Economics 101: When supply shrinks and demands rises, prices rise as well. So basically I can’t afford you guys.
If you’re like me, who pays for a three-bedroom apartment equaling 50,000 square feet what people in Montana pay for twenty acres of land and can’t afford a pricey exterminator, just do the extermination yourself. Various items are on sale and are not so hazardous that only a licensed exterminator is allowed to handle it, and there’s lots of information on bed bugs out there.
Good luck!
It appears to me that once one acquires bed bugs, they never really get rid of them.
After trashing my bug-infested bed, mattress and headboard, washing every single piece of clothing I own and throwing out countless pieces of paper, I was shocked last night to find a bed bug crawling on my inflatable mattress. I quickly scooped it up, deposited it into a tissue and squeezed said tissue into my fist until I saw the brownish stain of its squashed guts.
I’d been sleeping in my own room, on an inflatable mattress for a few weeks now, and the first night in my bedroom was spent with M on my bedroom floor with only a thick blanket separating us from the linoleum. I had bought the mattress already, but stupid me neglected to notice the box the mattress came in said “Pump not included”. Another trip to Target.
The mattress kicks ass by the way. The brand is called Air-Tek. It’s a queen-sized mattress (a new venture for me since my previous bed was only a twin) which claims to support up to 600 lbs. It was on sale for $30 at Target, and the pump was another $10. It’s kind of hard getting used to an air mattress when you’ve slept on conventional mattresses your whole life, but it still makes for a comfortable night’s rest.
But I digress.
Even after the whole aftermath of committing bedbug genocide, and losing my mattress, bed, headboard, gallons of detergent and even more gallons of hot sudsy water in the process, I was thoroughly annoyed to see that they were still here. They’re like the Iraqi insurgents: the many, the scattered and the persistent.
So the fight still rages on.
You’ve probably noticed I haven’t posted too frequently this month, and I have a fairly good excuse.
I met someone. Someone really special, and we met last week. As corny as this may sound, we met through MySpace (yes, my co-workers intially sucked me into it) and we met for the first time last week after several phone conversations.
It’s really hard to date in New York City, and it’s even harder when you have bed bugs. Even in my case where the bed bugs have been largely eradicated, there’s always the possibility of a resurgence. I also have a bad habit of telling women when I first go out with them unflattering truths about me that most people would save for later. For example, in the recent past, I had told both my ex-girlfriend (who I was trying to get into bed with) and this other girl I liked that I had bed bugs. They stopped answering my e-mails and phone calls since then, and I kind of get the impression they really don’t want anything more to do with me. I wondered if their sudden decision to end all contact with me was because I told them about the bed bugs. I prefer to be honest with the women I date, but sometimes I wish they’d be a little more understanding about the whole bed bug thing. Most people think only people who live in filthy apartments have bed bugs, and maybe that’s what my ex and this other girl thought about me. Of course, neither of them really identified that as the reason they’re no longer communicating with me, that’s just my own paranoia at work.
For those living with bed bugs, if you’re already single you just might stay that way once your dates find out your dirty little secret. But I digress. This new girl, M, lives in the Bronx and on our first date I was determined not to ruin my chances of love (or lust) by revealing my bed bug problem. I was cooking up in my head excuses to explain, once I bring her back to my place, why I have no bed or mattress. I figured I’d tell her I sold them to pay the rent or some other lie.
So M and I are on our first date at a pizzeria near Pelham Parkway, and she tells me SHE sleeps on the floor because she has had bed bugs and had to throw out her bed and mattress. This wave of relief just washed over me, because I knew I could be totally honest with her about my bed bug problems. How I constantly mop and spray and sprinkle boric acid just to make sure I never see another bed bug. As wierd as this may sound, the minute she told me she had had bed bugs as well, I felt like we were meant to be together.
Obviously that’s not the only reason I like M. But the sheer coincidence that I had finally met someone who could not only relate to my problem but was a fellow victim herself was like a gift from above. We’ve been seeing each other and talking on the phone for almost three weeks now, and we are crazy about each other. The chemistry is so right between us, and I’m glad I didn’t meet yet another female who has a stigma attached to bed bugs.
M never really went into detail about her bed bug problem except for mentioning that she had thrown out her bed and mattress. I really care about this girl, and I’m really impressed that she was bold enough to tell me about that on the first date. Apparently she has the same habit of telling unflattering truths about herself that I do.
I am grinning from ear to ear as I write this. My heart is swelling and my stomach is getting queasy just at the thought of her, and all the bed bug bites in the world couldn’t bring me down right now.
Okay, I didn’t buy Sleep Tight when I said I was going to; I had to pay a few bills, and figured I’d get it when I recieved my next paycheck. But after reading the various comments on the previous post, I changed my mind. I’d really like to know more about Gentrol, as it sounds like the one bed bug killing agent that doesn’t seem to have any negative feedback anywhere.
I thought that headline would get your attention.
PMPs (Pest Management Professionals) are quickly honing their bed bug-detecting and killing skills to meet the increasing demand to rid homes of bed bug infestations. But sometimes human instinct and senses aren’t enough to find those few bugs who are hidden deep within the recesses of a structure. According to this article in Pest Control Technology, one company of PMPs in Ontario decided to train and employ a dog especially trained to sniff out bed bugs. Thanks to the dog’s keen sense of smell, he was able to find the bed bugs-in the plumbing between the walls!
The training of bed bug-sniffing dogs is certainly a creative idea, and I would love to find such a company in New York to sniff out any surviving bed bugs in my own apartment. While almost all the bugs I’ve encountered in my home have been dead, I have seen one or two living bugs, proof of survivors. And where there’s smoke…
Maybe I’ll make that my homework assignment and throw up the results on Bugged Out.
In 2004, the New York State Legislature, which is responsible for managing the state budget and drafting and amending state law, was cited as the most dysfunctional state legislature in the United States by the Brennan Law Center at NYU. It was onyl until the results of that NYU survey of all 50 state legislatures that New York State decided to have a wave of reforms, including the changing of several of its members. It was only in 2005 that the New York Legislature had been able to approve a sound state budget before deadline for the first time in over 20 years. So until this report came out, the legislature didn’t even live up to its own standards of efficiency and effectiveness.
So I guess it should’ve been no surprise to me when I saw that one state’s legislature had beaten New York to the punch. That state? Hawaii. I read about it in the Honolulu Advertiser, where that state’s politicians are working hard to push through a resolution that will request the director of Hawaii’s Department of Health to create a bed bug prevention and education program.
Okay, I know the Hawaiian resolution is non-binding and therefore lacks the teeth an actual law would have, but it’s a hell of a lot more than what our own state legislature is up to. New York State has made a lot of progress since that 2004 report, but they have so much farther to go. Part of the problem also lies in the fact that many legislature members represent part of the state that are outside the five boroughs, so they tend not to care so much about something they don’t see affecting their own districts.
Here we have one lone City Councilwoman trying to do this, and I haven’t heard of much support from other people. I haven’t even heard of one hearing for this bed bug legislation that Councilwoman Brewer wants to have passed into law.
Hawaii wants the resolution to be made official quickly because bed bugs affect tourism and tourism is Hawaii’s #1 industry. Well, tourism may not be the #1 industry in New York City, but it’s certainly a billion-dollar industry, according to the New York City board of tourism, New York City & Co. Even if tourism isn’t a big industry in New York City, real estate is. And bed bugs can seriously impact the value of a building infested with them. Bed bugs could very well spell the end of New York City’s sky-high real estate values.
What gets me is that the local tourism and real estate industries should be aware of this, and if they are, why aren’t they lobbying our politicians to do something about bed bugs? It’s not like it doesn’t happen on the federal level; the pharmaceutical industry, big tobacco and the HMOs all donate heavily to political campaigns and get the people in Congress to work for them. The tourism and real estate industries in New York City need to pool their money together and buy some good government intervention.
In the aftermath of the Great Spring Cleaning of ’06 and the Great Discarding of Bed, Mattress and Headboard of ’06, the only bed bugs I have encountered are dead ones. I should mention that I have not slept in my bedroom for a week. I have been sleeping on the living room couch, so the real test of how many bed bugs remain in my room will come when I actually sleep a full six hours there.
I’m waiting for my tax refund to come in so I can spend at least $100 on a quality inflatable mattress. I don’t feel comfortable laying out money for a new bed, mattress and head board in this apartment. I would only feel comfortable doing so in a new dwelling; therefore I plan to sleep on an inflatable mattress until I get my degree and save up enough money to move out.
On the positive side, I am enjoying the big increase in space that the absence of my bed and headboard have created. The bed and headboard combined were so bulky that the room almost looks empty in its absence.
I feel like just laying a blanket on the floor and spending the night just to see how many bugs, if any, appear. If only the couch wasn’t so much more comfortable than the cold, hard linoleum.
Next up for bed bug inspection are my bookshelves and my closet. One thing you learn quick about bed bugs is that eradicating them is like combating graffiti in an inner-city neighborhood: as soon as someone tags up your property, you have to paint it over the very next day. If you procrastinate and fail to cover it up in time, soon other vandals will get the message that it’s okay to tag up there, and in a few weeks, dozens of graffiti tags will have joined that initial first graffiti tag you failed to address in the first place.
Vigilance is key.