Wish I may and wish I might...

The past two days, I did nothing but battle bedbugs. I got home Friday afternoon and continued the neverending task of bagging all my possessions and getting ready for some chemical warfare.

On a related note, after seeing the giant pile of garbage bags in the basement, my boyfriend forced me to watch an episode of Hoarders, which is a documentary TV show about people with hoarding disorders. While I may not have a hoarding disorder (I do not accumulate rotting pumpkins and 4-year expired yogurt in my house), I do realize that I have a lot more possessions that I formerly thought I would like to have. Living simply seems to have gone out the window in favor of living as complicated as I can, as long as I have space to store it all (such is the hazard of renting an entire house--you feel entitled to spread out all over it). Something has to change. Do you think I can survive without always having a craft supply for every possible occasion? Do you think I can start getting rid of some of the clothes I only wear once a year because I don't like them? Do you think, next time, I can resist when someone is Freecycling the entire Doctor Who series on VHS plus a few miscellaneous other Sci-fi videos?

But I digress.

Saturday we did it. It was so tiring, I don't even want to think about it any more! Yet, in spite of that, in spite of being two days behind on my work, I am compelled to blog about it. Perhaps I have a blogging disorder.

We cleaned every bit of furniture with Pine-Sol. We put (almost) every loose item in our bedrooms in plastic bags. I laundered my mattress cover. We sprayed in all the corners. We set off foggers, which were kind of unimpressive, considering they were supposed to be our coup de grace, in every room in the house. The only thing left to do is for me to put masking tape over all the cracks in my bedframe (and let me tell you, there are a lot) and put the duct tape back around the skinny parts. I am overcome with fear. Last night, I was so afraid that there might still be living bedbugs lurking about, that I begged my boyfriend to let me stay over, even though it meant driving a half hour to work at 6 the next morning.

But tonight, I have to stay here. If I get another bite, I think the only thing left to do is destroy my bed frame and buy a new one, remove the wall-to-wall rug, and sleep in plastic bags. And probably also beat my head against the wall until I have brain damage. I hope it doesn't come to that!