Plagues, Locusts, and Other Stresses

This month has been full of unplanned difficulties. We started out the month with a call from the bank asking about some suspicious charges--turns out our debit card was being used online fraudulantly to make purchases. We've had various problems since then with auto-paid bills bouncing and so forth since we had to get new debit cards. Resolving this problem is ongoing.

Next came our annual 4th of July party, which was great but a lot of work. We also ended up throwing out a ton of meat due to unexpectedly low turnout.

Then two days later one of the toddlers at the party came down with chickenpox--Katie's first infectious disease exposure. Thankfully she didn't end up getting it, but I had to avoid close contact with other babies for the 21 day incubation period. :-S

Around the same time Katie was teething and cut her first two teeth. This was good but she was fussy for a while.

Right after her teeth cut I got sick with a cold that lasted about 10 days (with a 10 day cough follow-on). Katie caught the cold from me--her first--but she had a much milder case.

This is a hazy period marked by sleeping whenever possible and working as much as I could handle. Of course my freelance projects picked up this month as well. Benjamin had a big presentation at work to prep for as well.

Around this time it became clear that Benjamin's boss wasn't going to approve his working four 10s to take care of Katie on Thursdays while I worked. I was working until 4-5am some nights to make up hours I couldn't fit in during the day. (Now Katie's grandparents are taking her for a second day each week.)

Then the locusts descended: we discovered we had bedbugs. "That's okay," I thought. "Thank god we have a pest maintenance plan" (leftover from when we had rodents in the attic this winter/spring and had to replace all our insulation). It turns out, though, that bedbugs are evasive and expensive to eradicate so they're not covered by any of the maintenence plans. No, treatment for bedbugs is $150/hour.

So we've spent the last two weeks bagging everything in our bedroom, throwing away our bed, putting our belongings in the yard in black plastic bags on the lawn or in ziplocs in the freezer. We shelled out the cash for professional treatment and fancy traps and bought a nice new bed and all new bedding (we took the opportunity to upgrade to a King).

On Friday I was walking through the kitchen and heard an alarm clock...in the freezer. It turns out I didn't close the freezer properly and our electronics defrosted. Not ideal in this hot weather, but hopefully they'll survive.

Later on Friday our new bed arrived (after I scrubbed the room) and it's great, though they refused to take our old bed away (yes, I'd checked ahead).

Yesterday I opened up a few bags from the yard to wash and reclaim a few things. As I was loading the washer I saw a small bug crawling on bedding in the bag. It turns out it's a baby bedbug, which looks considerably different from an adult. (Now that we Googled for photos, I think I saw one in Katie's room too.) Then later last night Benjamin saw an adult bedbug crossing the bathroom floor.

So here we go again. I just can't believe the bugs lived through that high heat. I guess we hatched the eggs. Yuck. Happy August.