The tale of another curve ball: bed bug edition

        
   

     
     
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I don't think I'd ever been more excited to welcome a Monday in my adult life. I'm uncertain that I could even accurately recall the unfolding of events over the last few weeks. I know there were bed bugs, I know there were emails with an exterminator, I know there was crying.

It all (I think) started when we scheduled for an exterminator to come out for an inspection of our condo. Necessary, apparently to get rid of the damn things. Unnecessary to prove that we have them. Tim took the day off work, we planned to schedule it on a day when Ella was in pre-school to minimize the toddler chaos. The day arrived, a Tuesday, I believe, and the exterminator...did not, especially fun since it was an "we'll be there between 8 and 5 situation." The cynic in me called it. Based on my diligent customer-review-based research, I went on record asking Tim if he thought the guy would even show. We called and...the worker went to the wrong city. After the routine go-arounds of customer service, we scheduled a new day. Since our condo association works exclusively with this company, we had to bend our patience and work with them.

The re-scheduled day arrived, so did my cynicism. But admittedly, to my surprise, the man was totally competent and friendly. It's looking up! We thought. We scheduled a heat treatment for the following weekend. And I spent most of the preceding week slowly working through the prep list we had been given and Tim and I finished up Friday evening and Saturday morning. Saturday morning came, the kids were anxious to get their star pancakes we had promised them, so we packed up the rest of what we'd need for 8 hours and waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Tim once again called the company only to find out they did not have an appointment on the books for us that day even though we had received a confirmation for said appointment 2 days earlier. All of our furniture had been moved to the center of each room, the beds had been stripped, the kitchen essentially wiped of groceries. So, as we scrambled to form a Plan B, we went out to get those star pancakes that our kids were now begging us for.

We made a choice that we were going to go out and take the day as it came, but we were relieved when we got a call on our way out of the diner saying the new scheduled time was for "tomorrow", Sunday.

As inconvenient (and expensive) as it was to find a way to eat out all 6 meals between Saturday and Sunday, the 4 of us ended up having a great weekend despite the chaos. We went to the cider mill and the kids got balloon animals. We went to the library where we all checked out books and movies. We got coffee, played in the park, went out for pizza with friends, went to church, looked at houses in neighborhoods we like, picked up a few things for Baby Girl. The goodness of family time offset whatever stress that tried to force its way into our days.

I wouldn't say I'm an expert at dealing with curve balls, but I've become pretty damn good at it since Tim and I got married. Yeah, I was pissed when all of this initially happened. I'm pregnant and was tired and achy and was very much over having to deal with this problem that wouldn't go away. But instead of dwelling on all that, we shifted our attitude to focus on the good which helped us to stay rooted in gratitude.

Come Sunday night at 8 o'clock, we arrived back at our now bed bug free home (which was disguising itself as a sauna) to all of our belongings scattered about every room. We were so happy to have this months long drama behind us that we overlooked our fatigue and diligently worked till nearly midnight to reorganize the place.

A royal pain in the rear, right? However, there were/are some bright sides to the whole ordeal. 1) Though we've had to spend a decent chunk of money on dealing with this issue, we did not have to foot the bill for the the heat treatment. 2) Our landlord has been incredible and accommodating. Having been through some unpleasant renting situations, we're especially grateful when renting goes well. 3) Our condo got the deepest clean its gotten since we moved in. It actually wasn't even this clean when we moved in. This helped us to get organized and ready for the arrival of Baby Girl. And, Tim and I jointly decided to do a few projects around our place to make it feel even better for our duration of our time here. (Stay tuned for some before's and after's.)

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