Unlucky in Bugs

So my PCO-mandated two-week period of daily vacuuming is over, and I have pushed all my furniture back to the walls. (I had been leaving a 1-2 foot space on most of the perimeter in my bedroom and living room to make it easier to vacuum so frequently.)

Although this will definitely make it easier to get around while not vacuuming, I think I expected my apartment to feel more comfortable than it does after reaching this milestone.

After all, how normal can life be when you keep your shoes in a plastic garbage bag?

Upcoming milestones:

August 14: One Month After Treatment

• Mop residual off floors.
• Steam clean floors.
• Steam clean curtains.

September 14: Two Months After Treatment

• New mattress delivered.
• Steam clean and pack air mattress.
• Unpack clothes.

First of all, I have always loved the smell of steam. I knew that if I found a steam cleaner that was good, that I would become obsessed and use it long after bed bugs.

Is the McCulloch Mc-1275 that steam cleaner? I’m not sure. It got 131 reviews on Amazon, for an average of four stars, and one of the featured reviews gushes about its abilities to blast the mold off her bathtub.

I had to pack to go to my parents’ house for the weekend and then get to bed so I wouldn’t sleep through the 4:00 am alarm that would get me to my 6:30 am flight on time, so didn’t really get a chance to steam thoroughly. Plus, the residual on my floor is good through August 14, so I’m not going to be steam cleaning my floors any time soon.

Here’s the lame ass photos of me steaming a wicker table that DON’T SHOW ANY STEAM but I swear a good blast of it is there!

I used only the basic hose, with no attachments. The steam would turn into liquid upon contact and the liquid would cool quickly on the surfaces of the things I steamed, so that made me concerned that it wasn’t getting hot enough. (The instructions explicitly state that you should not put your hands in the path of the steam, as the steam will burn.)

I am excited to try steaming my curtains and plan to steam my air mattress right before I finally put it away and replace it with the Sealy Posturepedic which I have put on hold indefinitely for now.

The MC-1275 is compact and cute and well built, sliding easily on its little wheels. I had it delivered to my work and carried it in the manufacturer’s box (not the Amazon box) all the way from the Financial District to Woodside by myself.

Overall, I’m glad to have the steamer around. I have faith that it gets hot enough to kill any eggs or bugs it comes into contact with. It’s reassuring to know that you can debug some of your stuff on your own without calling the PCO. It’s recommended, if you use it on your mattress, to buy a vapor steam cleaner, which run $600 and up, to prevent a possible mold problem. I am not using mine to clean my mattress.

I heard last week that bed bugs in her Astoria apartment had driven a friend of a friend to purchase a one way ticket to North Carolina.

It’s true, if your building has such a chronic problem that you have to move to have hope of being rid of bed bugs, there’s really no guarantee in New York that you won’t move into another building with or that will develop a chronic bed bug problem.

Which brings me to this link (which is also going up on the blogroll under blogs, although it is not really “just” a blog): the activist organization New York vs. Bed Bugs.

In my 23 days, I’ve already seen plenty of parts of this time-consuming process that could be served by clear and thoughtful legislation.

We’ll have to wait until Tim Harrington gets bed bugs until we get a true anthem, but for now we’ve got Cat Power:

So I read about S and G’s experiments getting bitten by bed bugs in a controlled sort-of experiment. I was also interested in S’s description of itchy spots she had been getting during months when there were no other signs of bed bugs in her apartment vs. the bites she got from the experiment.

I’m still unsure of the terminology as they use them… whether “phantom bites” refers to psychosomatic itchy spots conjured up merely by the fear of bed bugs, or whether they are old bites that start to itch and irritate again months later, or some other phenomenon.

They are similar to the ones I got over the weekend that really freaked me out. (I called my awesome pest control company and one of the managers there talked to me for a full 19 minutes and 17 seconds according to my call history… he answered all of my questions and told me to call him back in a week to follow up, whether I was still getting bitten or not.)

My own theory based on absolutely nothing is that my “phantom bites” are bites made by bed bugs in a weakened or damaged state who are going through the motions of getting a blood feed but certainly can’t go for five to ten whole minutes, like the ones that fed on S in the experiment.

And just because they survived so far and got a blood feed doesn’t mean that sometime in the past few days they finally crossed enough poison and are dead.

I’m not such a cock-eyed optimist that I think I’m rid of roaches for good, but I have not seen a roach in my apartment for two whole weeks.  Not a tiny one hanging out by my bathroom sink.  Not a big fat one with ten million feeler-leg-appendages running across my kitchen floor.  Nada.

And of course as soon as I post this, I will see one tonight, I’m sure.

Great name for an all-PCO rock band, by the way.

But now, is it over the top to name it “Cerberus?”

Yeah, I thought so. See, I do have some perspective left.

I found this at Home Depot. It had one of the higher heights, and was $12, but I think there are cheaper ones. I bought it because the source apartment in my building is on my floor but actually across the floor (about 10 feet door to door) from me. We don’t share any walls. And I had a sizeable (1/2 to 3/4 inch gap under my front door). My super installed it for me.

Also please note my crazy-person caulking job.

So this blog started out with a clear enemy. Which is always a good thing for a blog that wants a readership. Bed bugs are just my JA, yo!

But it quickly evolved into something different: a strange and sad, perhaps TMFI, place for me to voice my changing relationship to my apartment and my possessions in the enemy’s aftermath.

So let me be clear. The reason why bed bugs SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK SUCK, is because it is really forking hard to find an apartment that you love in New York city, and I really truly loved my apartment.

Enormous.

Sunny.

Near lots of trains and food (two blocks from Sripraphai).

Crazy/awesome immigrant neighbors and super.

Rent controlled.

Sure, there are the drawbacks: worn down bath tub floor and toilet bowl that can never stay clean, chippy white paint job over 100 previous chippy white paint jobs (65 of which probably had lead), schizophrenic water temperatures, windows that don’t stay up, bedroom door knobs falling off, and I live on Dog Poop Avenue for sures. “My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun…” but I loved her. And I love her still. Even though she had to go and get apartment herpes.

But it’s not just about the apartment. Everyone goes through apartment drama in New York. Getting bed bugs also means a very strange process that doesn’t sound like too much at face value – laundry, packing and unpacking stuff, even getting rid of your mattress… Everyone knows how to do laundry; everyone has packed and unpacked and gotten rid of furniture during a big move. But people usually move when they’re not happy with their current situation. Or they move for a new job, or to move in with a boyfriend or girlfriend. There’s an excitement to it all. People dealing with bed bugs are going through all that crappy inconvenient exhausting stuff just trying to get back to status quo all the while reading the internets and getting really freaked out and scared that bed bugs are these invincible superinsects who are taking over the world.

Going through bed bug treatment means being a refugee in your own home. It’s the ultimate post-modern situation. And like all post-modern things it SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS.