This Week in Marauders.

This will be a vain attempt to make bedbugs funny. Not because there are so many readers of this blog, nor because there is anything inherently funny about the little fuckers (there isn't) but because I am tired of dealing with them and need to find a way to find humour in the bloodsucking cocksuckers.

I currently have 7 (very very very) itchy bites on my body. Two on my back (so convenient!), four on my arms, and one that I just woke up with on the back of my calf. If someone can explain to me why none of these little motherfuckers decided to bite me on my scars so I wouldn't feel the itch, I would be super grateful. I have the prescription-strength cream from the last time it happened, but it's not helping. So I am sitting on my couch (which has been stripped of its covering - it's off to the fires with it like the Velveteen Rabbit) scratching and looking over my shoulder to see if I can see any of the little motherfuckers to crush with my bare hands.

And now, a list:

Things which are true but really too ridiculous for me to process at 8:30 on a Friday morning:

1. There are 15 (Not an exaggeration) garbage bags piled 4 feet high filled with me & Sean's clothing sitting in our apartment, which is barely big enough for anything, let alone a mountain of clothes. I would really like to stage dive into it, but I think our apartment it too small for that and I would crack my head open. Then all my perfectly clean clothes which irregardless have to be washed again would be bloody, and therefore actually warrant the washing. Perhaps this isn't such a bad idea after all...

Observe, Mount Marauder:



It's simply too big to fit in the frame.

2. I packed all my clothes away in aforementioned bags, except for one white t-shirt and one pair of not-quite work appropriate pants. I'll be wearing them to work anyway, because they're all I've got. Although the thought of doing a little retail therapy before I go to work at noon is sounding increasingly good.

3. That instead of going to Northampton this weekend and playing with all my friends and seeing all my tiny baby 07s graduate, I will be doing laundry at Sean's house. Now, while this means I will be able to take frequent trips down North Avenue to get horchata (and you'd best believe they'll be frequent), this simply does not live up to partying and seeing Gloria Steinem. This, out of all the shit which is pissing me off about this, is what makes me most pissed.

4. That in addition to all of this bed buggy ridiculousness, I got a phone call from Sean while I was walking home from the subway last night asking me if I had experienced any lock-related wierdness this morning. I realized I had, and asked why. I was informed that our lock was broken. To make a long story short, we spent an hour in our stairwell with a semi-hunky Israeli drilling the shit out of our door. He broke two drill bits and decimated our lock cylinder. Observe:




$250 later, neither Sean nor I really find this humourous. And we both spent the entire hour with our tushes going numb on the staircase wondering just why in the hell we decided to stay in this apartment. We know, logically that we would have had to deal with the bedbugs either way, but at least after this go-round it all would have been folded and essentially packed and ready for moving. Sean actually went so far as to speak ill of my amazing negotiating skillz, which have gotten us so much free shit in the past. I feel as though this woujldn't be the case had I been able to negotiate down semi-hunky Israeli locksmith. I got the feeling that he was unnegotiable, unless you spoke Hebrew. C'est la vie, I suppose. But you better believe that if someone told me they had an apartment willing and ready for us to move into it, we would be there in a heartbeat. It was also good to note that he was powerdrilling through steel for an hour, making an unholy hellacious racket and NOBODY came out to see what was up. Robbers, note: people are still callous in this city and mind their own damned business at all costs.

5. Someone, who shall remain nameless, but whose name definitely rhymes with Bobert, so generously decided to pay for half of all furniture replacement costs. Furniture that I can't afford buy half of since mostly all of it was given to me in the first place, and let's be real, I'm not willing replace. If two high-level chemical bombs can't kill these fuckers, then I suppose it's time to admit their dominance over my life:

Oh, Giant Cockroach We Killed this Summer, grant me the serenity
to accept the bedbugs which feast on my bod;
the courage to not scratch their bites until they bleed;
and wisdom to know they're boss.

(An addendum to this post: Sean would like me to add that while the Marauders are boss, they are not the boss man, nor the boss lady. That's us.)


6. Sean just woke up and told me that my idea to find some praying mantises and keep them as pets was not brilliant. I disagree.

7. After stumbling out of bed and scaling Mount Marauder, Sean just killed a "freshly fed" mosquito. Fuck me. He didn't save it like I saved the Marauder I killed on Monday. I was hoping to perhaps make a collage of all the dead bugs in the apartment.


I hope that everyone enjoyed this multi-media presentation on the Marauder Insurgency, and I hope I'll never have to talk about it again.