Marla Anson Photography

I HATE the new Digg.

Thank you.

Also, I think I might hop over to reddit.

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This article hits very close to home as we dealt with bed bugs last year right before a big move into our new home. It was one of the most stressful and expensive things to EVER go through, especially if you tend to hord stuff. I am not a horrible horder, but it is in my genes and I can’t help doing it a little bit. I hadn’t heard about the containers and baby oil bit, I think I might try doing that on all the beds in my house. We have been bed bug free for almost a year, but no point in not taking precautions.

I tried to do as much of the heating and bagging stuff as she talks about in the article, but I didn’t have just a roommate I was dealing with. A husband, a two year old, a newborn, a sis in law and a dogger equals a lot of crap. And while three of those people could do a lot of work, there were two kids and a dog who were not really capable of helping in any way… So I did as much as I could, but with the amount of stuff I have it just wasn’t possible to do ALL of it. Mario probably would not have come to my house to treat with the job I did. What was really horrifying to me is that when our exterminators did come they told me I had done a great job and a lot more than most people do! Let me repeat that, A LOT MORE THAN MOST PEOPLE DO. Shudder.

How I Fought Bedbugs And Won

by Jasmine Moy posted @12:50 PM

It started with three little red dots, an Orion’s belt on my arm. “Spider bites,” I told myself. But out of curiosity, I asked my roommate whether she had any bites too.

“Oh yeah, a bunch, actually,” she said, and proceeded to show me clusters of bites on her stomach, arms and legs.

“Why haven’t you said anything until now?!” I asked.

“They don’t itch, I didn’t think they were anything to worry about,” she said. If there’s a hall of fame for famous last words, this probably deserves a spot on the wall. What ensued were weeks of largely sleepless nights punctuated by nightmares galore, and blood, sweat, tears, public shaming and the ceaseless bagging up of everything I owned.

According to a 2009 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in half of all bedbug cases, people will not show any visible marks, which, scary. You may have them now and not know it!

For that other 50%, reactions will vary. They may or may not itch, they may be small and red or larger and blotchy. “Bites are often noted in linear groups of 3, sometimes called ‘breakfast, lunch, and dinner,’” it isoften noted.

I learned if you shift slightly or breathe deeply as they’re feeding on you, they think you’ve woken up and start to head back to the mattress, but when you stop moving, they then stop to finish their meal. My Orion’s belt was a bed bug three-course meal.

Other frightening facts: they know when you’re in your deepest sleep, so often feed about 2 hours before sunrise; they can find you by your breath because they sense and hunt out carbon dioxide; you’ll almost never feel them biting you because they inject into you their saliva, which contains an anesthetic, while they withdraw the blood of their host; they can live for a full year or more without feeding, though a recent study by an entomologist out of Virginia Tech reported that newer generations of pesticide-resistant (?!) bedbugs survived only two months without feeding.

The good news? They aren’t known to spread diseases! At least not yet.

For me, it wasn’t enough to see the bites. I wanted a visual that bugs were living in my bed. I read that they hide in the corners of your mattress and box spring. You may not see the bugs but you’ll see the fecal spots they leave behind (eww), which look as if someone took a fine-tipped sharpie to the seams of your mattress.

Google Image search results inevitably show the worst possible scenarios, no matter what you’re looking up, but because I caught them early (no thanks to my roommate), mine looked like this, not like this. At this point, though I still hadn’t seen any bed bugs, I knew what they looked like. Hours and hours poring over photos on the internet and I’d become a sort of self-taught expert. They are rust colored, leaf shaped, vary in size (from 1mm up to 5mm), flat and they have visible ridges across their backs.

If you have no bites and you see nothing on your mattress, you’re probably in good shape. If you’re still worried, don’t call in the beagles yet. Try this cheap, do-it-yourself test that lures bedbugs with the carbon dioxide that dry ice emits.

So, I realized that my apartment was infested. Because never breathing again is not an option, I sought a solution.

Here is a short list of things that you should absolutely not do. Not only do these things not solve your problem, they’re expensive and time consuming.

1. DO NOT PANIC. Panicking leads to doing all of the things on this list.

2. Do not throw away your mattress. Even if you put a sign that says, “bedbugs!” on it, you never know who might pick it up, including someone else in your building, which means you’re making the problem bigger for yourself.

3. Do not buy a new mattress. If you haven’t thoroughly attended to the rest of your belongings, they’ll find your new mattress in no time.

4. Do not move. You’ll probably move them with you.

5. Do not bring all your clothes to the dry cleaner. It’s pointless, see above.

There are however a number of cheap ways to start combating the problem.

1. Get carpet tape (that’s the thick, double-sided stuff) and roll a line of it in your apartment doorways, which will keep them from getting in or out of your room/apartment. (Some have suggested outlining your bed with it, which seems extreme and is not aesthetically pleasing but would work as a preventive measure.)

2. Put the legs of your bed in small plastic containers and put ½ an inch of baby oil in the containers, which will keep bugs from getting into or out of your bed (they’re not good climbers).

3. Invest in mattress covers to cover your mattress and box spring.

4. Buy a gallon or so of rubbing alcohol and some spray bottles. Rubbing alcohol is your new best friend. It not only kills bed bug eggs, but also works as a repellent to keep them from laying new ones, and keeps them from biting you at night.

However, whatever the Internet says about being able to conquer the bugs all by yourself, I wouldn’t try it. Just as it’s unwise to get cut-rate Lasik, or fly to Mexico for plastic surgery, the risks outweigh the cost of paying a good professional.

My roommate had been working at a restaurant and the owner there recommended Mario to us. He was no-nonsense and comforting. He assured us that we weren’t dirty people and that we had nothing to be ashamed of. Just last week he’d seen a bedbug crawling on a guy’s shirt on the subway (oof) so really, you can get them any place! This somehow managed to make me feel both better and not-at-all better at the same exact time.

Before he could come and spray (fumigating almost never works in one shot, he said, and heating/freezing all your things costs a fortune and requires days in extreme temperatures, either below 10 degrees or above 115 degrees Fahrenheit), we had to take every object we owned, spray it thoroughly with rubbing alcohol, and bag it. Electronics could be given a once over with alcohol wipes. All clothes had to be put in the dryer for 10 minutes and bagged.

“When I get there,” he informed us, “I want all the bags in the center of each room, leave suitcases out, mattresses uncovered, all shelves and dressers empty. I will not touch your apartment unless this is done.” Yes, sir!

Over the course of the next week, as I carried load after load of laundry up and down my 5th floor walkup to the corner laundromat, I couldn’t think of anything worse that could happen to a person, short of terminal illness or loss of a limb. Even then, I assumed this had a silver lining: “Hey! Less body area to feast on!”

I sprayed myself head to toe in rubbing alcohol each night. I slept without covers and kept a flashlight next to my bed so that when I woke up in the middle of the night (I was being startled awake by nightmares several times an evening, go figure), I could try to catch them in the act. Why? I don’t know. Too afraid to kill a bug with my bare hands, I’d probably have just flicked it onto something else to burrow in.

Every morning I’d spend fifteen minutes inspecting every inch of my body to see whether a bite I had was a new one or not (some people mark them with pens, but that seems, to me, to call more attention to them than necessary).

You start looking for bedbugs on strangers on the train. You start imagining what kind of people let them get to the point at which piles of them are found in corners, and mattresses are covered like beehives. I was afraid to tell people I had bedbugs, afraid that if they knew, they wouldn’t want me in their houses. I wouldn’t blame them.

Bedbugs are, in a word, traumatic. But little by little, the bags started to accumulate. It turned out to be a great excuse to clean house. Any clothes that weren’t worth carrying up the four flights of stairs after their cleansing trip in the dryer went straight into a Salvation Army bin outside the laundromat. I invested in those vacuum seal bags, which conveniently also saved me a ton of storage space! I felt good knowing that all the clothes I was wearing were sealed in bags that no bug could penetrate.

Vintage, delicates and things with sequins went to the dry cleaner—but even then, you have to tell them you have bedbugs and then they may request you take your business elsewhere, which is humiliating.

But guess what? There are worse things than being humiliated at the dry cleaner. Like, say, getting bed bugs.

Mario showed up a week later and nodded his approval. He surveyed the place with eyes that rivaled your average predatory bird. From the doorway he’d spot something across the room, walk briskly to a random spot of floorboard, and with his index finger would swipe up a bug no bigger than the head of a pin. He’d show it to me and then crush it between his fingers, leaving nothing but a spot of blood between them.

He was a machine. And the problem was worse than I’d thought. Though all small, there were bugs in rooms that nobody slept in, in places we never saw them. He tore the cheap fabric from the bottom of my boxspring and I saw, for the first time, the bugs in my bed. They had managed to climb through the goddamn seams!

Mario sprayed like crazy, every inch, up and down the walls, drenched my suitcase, drenched my mattress—and in the end, he said he was fairly confident he got them all.

We were instructed to let the mattress dry for 24 hours, to sleep somewhere else for the night and to cover them the minute we got back. We weren’t allowed to wash the floor or walls for at least two months and were advised to keep our stuff in bags for same amount of time.

It’s four years later, and I’ve lived to tell the tale. Looking back, despite the unbelievable hassle and the nightmares and all, I think I got off easy. I had some 12 bites in total, with no severe allergic reaction to them. We caught the problem fairly early. I live in a neighborhood where 10 minutes in a dryer only costs a quarter. What’s more, I’ve been bedbug-free ever since.

Even now though, I keep the legs of my bed in little containers with oil in them. Sounds crazy, right? Well, it’s a small price to pay for some peace of mind.

Jasmine Moy lives in New York City and suggests you use extreme caution before Google Image searching the subject at hand.

Previously: Bedbugs: Is No One Safe? One Woman’s Story.

Top photo by pbump, from Flickr.
Second mattress photo by Commodore Gandalf Cunningham, from Flickr.
Photos of bagged clothes by proud bedbug survivor cuttlefish, from Flickr.

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I just got back from taking the kids to see Toy Story 3. It was so awesome!! I almost cried four times. When we got out of the theatre Garrick said he almost did too. I am just going to take a minute here to rave about Pixar, once again. I don’t know how they can pull off doing these OUTSTANDING movies ALL THE TIME, but it sure is great. I can count on this studio to always deliver a great movie with fresh ideas and writing. Thank you Pixar.

In other news, there has been so much going on with me this month. I am always wanting to sit down and write about it, but I never seem to have time. I have drafts that I started way back in December that I still haven’t finished yet…. Stuff about movies and vacuum cleaners, Nine Inch Nails and chickens. You know, all sorts of crazy stuff. Between taking care of the kids and (it feels like) a ton of other obligations, I never seem to be able to carve out time to write emails to people, let alone a blog entry. So in the mean time my list of unpublished drafts keeps accumulating. Maybe someday I will get around to finishing them.

In the mean time, I just put a bunch of video up on Youtube of the kids. My user name on there is              . Check out my channel if you want to see boring home movies of Trent and Hunter doing ordinary mundane things that all other children do. I’m not putting down their milestones or anything, but let’s face it, all kids do this stuff!

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A couple weeks ago I had some left over chicken and rice so I decided to make chicken fried rice. This was to prove to be a difficult task as I didn’t own a proper wok and had to use one of my regular frying pans. So on Thursday I went to Ikea and bought myself a new wok and made tofu fried rice that night! It was awesome! So much easier to cook rice with. I wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to buy a wok except that when I made that chicken fried rice I discovered that Hunter LOVES the stuff. I do believe that fried rice is about to become a staple in our house. Hunter eats the stuff like it was going out of style!

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Is it sad that one of the biggest highlights of the last two weeks for myself and the children (mostly myself) is that Netflix added four seasons of Rugrats to Instant View? That being said, Rugrats is just as good, if not better, than I remember. I love that show.

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I just got back from taking the kids to their first ever parade! Since Garrick is taking his first long distance trip on his motorcycle this weekend, and he has been gone since early Thursday morning, I have been trying to keep really busy with the kids. Yesterday we had preschool, so that kept the kids busy, and luckily this is 4th of July weekend so there is lots of stuff going on to distract the kids. I found out a couple days ago that there would be an Independence Day parade this morning and the best part was that it was just a couple of blocks from the house!

Trent was just astounded and couldn’t get enough of the candy that all the cars were throwing. He was also so jazzed about all the motorcycles in the parade. Hunter was just happy to sit back and watch the sites. It was so cute to see them both waving their little flags. They are both so tired out right now. Actually, I am too. Of course, because of all the candy Trent started having meltdowns upon arriving back at the house, but that’s ok. I have been surprisingly patient with the kids all weekend, thank goodness.

Tomorrow we will be going to see fireworks in Manassas. There is a big party that is supposed to start at 4 and then the fireworks are at 9:15. I think we will have a quick snack after nap time and we’ll plan to be there at around 5:30, 6-ish and hope for the best. I hope it won’t be too crazy with them.

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I would post pictures of the kids playing on it, except that I cannot put ANY photos on my blog right now! Apparently I haven’t been able to do so for months now. Hence the lack of new pics of the kids.

Anyway, I found a good price on a playground on Craigslist and it was right around the corner from us. The boys seem to love it. Once I can figure out why WP won’t let me put any pics up and I have some pictures of the thing, you will see the kids climbing all over it. Maybe I’ll take some video and put it on youtube.

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Last week, when I was at the canning party, I was speaking with another Mom who uses cloth on her baby. We sat around swapping advice on washing the diapers for a little while and I sent her an email later on detailing how I launder my diapers. After months of trial and error in cleaning them, I seem to have come up with a system for keeping the boys diapers clean.

I now always do an initial cold water wash with a few spoonfuls of baking soda. After that I do a hot water wash with some Arm and Hammer perfume/dye free detergent (as per the diaper makers suggestion.) I add one important ingredient to the detergent though! To my bottle of detergent I always add tea tree oil. This seems to be my magic ingredient in keeping the diapers clean and odor free. I find that twelve or thirteen drops does the trick.

After the hot water wash I do another cold water wash, adding vinegar to the fabric softener dispenser. I use the vinegar to restore the ph balance of the diapers after using baking powder.

A majority of the time, this system seems to work the best. Occasionally I have to do a second or third hot water wash with the detergent/tea tree oil mixture. Never more than three, though. This has been a great improvement considering that before I started using the tea tree oil I was having to do six to ten hot water washes to get the smell out, on top of the cold water washes.

I’m glad to have a system that finally works!

On a side note, two of my older sets of cloth diapers are falling apart. I got a bunch of diapers on Craigslist for really discounted prices and some of the diapers were pretty old. Right now I really wish that I had a sewing machine to fix them. Since I don’t I’m ordering two more sets of Fuzzi Bunz and I am going to try two Happy Heinys at the suggestion of a friend. She has been doing cloth with her boy a lot longer than I have and has tried many different diapers. According to her, the Happy Heinys run large. Just what my kids need!

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Last month I decided to splurge on a little something for myself and I went to the DHC website. I got a bunch of products to take care of the skin on my face, and it was worth every penny! I got myself two cleaners, a toner and a mineral mask. I cannot remember the last time my skin felt this nice. I am soon going to get myself a moisturizer from DHC, since I am almost out of my AVON stuff. I figured since I have been using the same moisturizer for years that it is time to try something new. Only problem is that DHC only makes one moisturizer with a sunblock already added. If you want to try something else you have to purchase the moisturizer and the sunblock separately.

Anyway, I have taken to pampering myself once a week by having a spa night. I use my mineral mask and soak my feet in the tub, give my feet a little massage and lotion and give my face a massage. I used to do this stuff all the time before the kids came along, but it seems to have been pushed aside these past three years. There is nothing like not having the time to do something to really make you appreciate it. When I used to have spa nights for myself it didn’t feel as indulgent as it does now.

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I have been so busy the past two days. Yesterday I held preschool class at my house (as part of the preschool coop that I am participating in) AND I went to a House Party sponsored by Ball, the canning company. Today I took the boys on a trip to a local lavender farm where we picked bunches of the stuff, did crafts and had a picnic lunch. This evening I also went to knit and gab, the first one I have been to in over two months. Usually I get so stressed out by keeping myself this busy, but I seem to holding together pretty well, even considering that we were going almost nonstop every day last week. At least we have tomorrow off, and Caitlin is coming to visit with her dogger, Brody, and her good friend Chandler is tagging along as well. They will get here on Friday and should be here for about a week, so that’s cool!

Anyway, I’m so jazzed about everything that has been going on the past two days. Preschool is starting to go really really well. We started doing that back in March and had a lot of trial and error runs, but now the kids seem to be getting used to the routine. We were even able to bump up the number of preschool days from meeting once a week to twice a week. We have been going through the alphabet and are just getting to the letter G. I had the letter E, so we focused on elephants since we have so many around the house from Trent’s past obsession with them. That seemed to go over really well with the kids.

The canning party last night was so AWESOME! I went without the kids, which was so totally energizing. I have been really in need of getting away from the kids and my daily routine for quite a while and spending time with other Mom’s last night really seemed to help. We made salsa and peach jelly and played Trivial Pursuit. I discovered that I am horrible at that game. On the drive to that party and back I had the windows to the car all rolled down and I was BLASTING Nine Inch Nails on my car stereo. I felt horrible when I checked my phone and discovered that Garrick had texted me an hour prior saying that Hunter needed me. Of course by the time I got back home Hunter was passed out.

Good thing, too, since we had to get up early to go to the lavender farm this morning. That was such a lovely experience. The farm we went to to is Seven Oaks Lavender Farm. As soon as I got out of the car I could smell the lavender plants. The boys had a really wonderful time since we went with the Joy Troupe and a couple other groups, so there were a lot of children running around. The farm also has a great play house for the kids to use while Moms are out in the field picking the lavender or making a craft. I tried to take a bunch of pictures, but they are mostly of Trent since Hunter spent a good chunk of the time on my back. It was so nice being on a farm and not worrying too much about where Trent was and what he was doing. I made a sachet with him, and I wanted to make a Lavender wreath but that craft was too involved for me to concentrate on with both of the kids. I picked up some pet spray for Icesis’ beds since they are all so stinky and I also got a recipe sheet and culinary lavender to cook with. I was very impressed with the farm, I wish I could do something like that… Maybe someday! Check out this YouTube video about the farm, it’s cool stuff:

Since I had all that fresh lavender, I decided to bring one of the bunches I picke with me to Knit and Gab to pass out to everyone. It was great to see all the Knit and Gabbers. It was a full house, too! Well, anyway, look for pics to come of the boys at the lavender farm, and even a few shots that Trent took.

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