extermination day

Well hello everyone. I took yesterday off as a sick day. I was feeling
quite sick from all this so it wasn't a stretch. We took
the apartment apart yesterday. We took all the books and movies and
games and everything off the living room shelves and entertainment
center/coffee tables. We threw out the couches and our rocker and any
upholstered furniture. We moved all the furniture away from the walls
and took apart both beds. We took all our clothes, blankets, towels,
shoes, etc in the cars to the laundromat to get dried. The pest
people came at noon and I stayed there to ask questions while my husband got
a head start at the laundromat with all our clothes. They said they
were bringing out the big guns for this. The exterminator told me he
even mixed up the chemicals extra strong...hopefully not enough to
cause us to grow an extra head though. He approved of one type of
bedbug cover we had bought for the one in the spare bedroom but not
the ones on our bed so my husband and I are getting new covers for those. We
have to order them from offline though because they weren't in stock
at Bed Bath and Beyond, which is the only place we can buy those
special covers around here. They told us we did a great job at getting
the apartment ready for the treatment and it was a good thing we had
the glue traps out or we would have taken a lot longer to notice the
bugs. He also said we caught it before it became a much worse
infestation.

We did laundry and price shopped for a new couch. We won't get one
until this whole situation calms down though. For now we just have 2
wooden chairs in the living room.

When we came back from doing all the laundry it was about 7pm. We
walked in and it smelled like it had definitely been treated with
chemicals. Then we went into the bedroom and everything had been
moved around, we could see that they had treated everything too
because there was this shiney, still sticky residue on everything and
the carpet was damp around the baseboards. A couple of the dresser
drawers still had little puddles of liquid in the bottom of them.
They certainly went all out. We decided to put back together some of
the furniture/move it back to where it was before we brought in our
clothes. So we did the living room first--put the books and movies
back on the shelves. Then we moved the stuff in the kitchen, spare
room, then we went into the bedroom and started figuring out what to
do. We decided to put the bed back on the frame since it had been
thoroughly treated and then set it on the bed risers in the moats.
But while we were standing there talking I noticed a spot on one of
the mattresses leaning against the wall. I shuddered. No way...they
were supposed to be dead...took a closer look....please Lord, no....it
was a bed bug. A very much alive one. I squealed "BUG!" and my husband
walked over and said, "I can't believe it. They are not supposed to be
alive now, they said they'd all be dead!" and we got rid of it. Then
I looked around the room and saw a spot on the wall. Another bed bug,
high up on the wall. Really weird behavior from them, especially
since the lights were blaring and supposedly they don't like lights or
come out during the day. Then we saw another one RIGHT OVER OUR HEADS
on the ceiling. I had to help my husband get a couple off the surface because
they sort of stuck to it and didn't want to come off. It was really
traumatizing to come home to a bedroom with them crawling all over the
walls and ceiling. I didn't want them falling onto our heads. I told
him we should move t he bed away from the ceiling vent in case one
crawled into it and then fell back out at night onto our bed. I think
we found 3 on the ceiling and 5 on the walls. They were trying to get
away from the poison, I think. Anyway we decided it wasn't safe to
bring in the clothes so they are still in the cars. My car smells
like stinky feet because I have all our shoes in my car.

We did put 2 of those clear plastic storage drawers inside of bigger
bins filled with water so that we each have 2 little drawers that are
safe for clothes. The moats seem to keep anything from getting into
stuff because we have found a couple bugs in our bed moats in the past
2 days. We are hoping there are no bugs on our bed frame because that
should cure the problem eventually, if we can just make sure there are
none on the bed ALREADY we can PREVENT them from coming up via the
moats. If we get bites in the next week or so, or find any in the
sheets....we will buy a new bed frame. We also threw out our box
spring because we figured that was one more place for them to hide and
one big clunky thing we had to move around every time we checked the
bed for bugs so my husband went to Lowes to get more wood slats and now we
just have the mattress on slats.

Last night in my dreams I felt something really itchy on my ankle. I'm
not sure if I dreamed the itch or if it was real. Today that ankle
itches in the same spot but I don't see a red mark yet so I'm not sure
if its a bite or not.

I've started getting used to the idea that there may very well be bugs
in our bed even if we have pest people treat the frame, wash the
linens, use the protective covers, and keep it on moats. We can do
all that but there still could be bugs there somehow, and every night
they may very well come out and bite us. I still sleep lightly but
I've at least been sleeping-- the past 2 nights were better. I'm
getting used to the fact that it is somewhat out of our control and we
just have to deal with it.

Its still depressing though. We're trying to just live normally and
things but things definitely don't LOOK or seem normal, haha.