We have bed bugs, pt. 1

Leisure Cove update: There was some sort of bed bug infestation in our building while we were gone and our apartment was caught up in the shitstorm: we weren't hit by the tornado, thank god, but we're still screwed.

Our plans for this weekend and beyond now look like this:
Tomorrow: wash everything, vacuum everything, scrub down the walls with alcohol
Sunday: call a professional to come in and use products that we're not legally allowed to buy
For the next year: live like the very worst of the Hollywood germ freaks, but without the luxury of being financially able to do so

Seriously, from everything we've read, and certainly everything we've heard, bed bugs are more patient than rocks, and can hang out for over a year in truly incomfortable situations without flinching. Apparently, you not only have to kill them, you have to kill them in every room of your building (in our case a gigantic, somewhat shabby apartment complex) then wait for their eggs to hatch (two-four weeks) and then do it all again. And then put everything you own in plastic bags for a year and a half and hope that does the trick. If not, start over.

Obviously, we'll keep you posted, hopefully with photos of us completely losing our minds and looking more and more like the pose I'm told Howard Hughes struck towards the end.

Case in point (from a great story Jess found online written by a bed bug survivor):

"Now I just sleep in the sterilized clothing I plan on wearing the next day [on a futon wrapped in painting plastic], or I use something I keep tucked in-between the two mattresses.

Bohemian yes! With the blankets bundled up around me, I am getting better at not letting them drag on the floor. And that's a serious issue. I tend to subconsciously bundle myself up now during wake-sleep-wake-sleep-wake-sleep periods …. But this was only after having to throw all those sheets and blankets back into the drier, like 5 or 6 times because they'd draped and hit the floor."

Great.