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Bed Bugs

Sheerilee — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:48:25 -0500

SI heard that one way of preventing them is to wash your sheets in hot water. I would think that bleaching them would help also. However you hate to bleach colored sheets. I think I;ll take the advice about lavendar essential oil.

bed bugs

mary4 — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:07:47 -0500

mary mays Have heard about this situation before. I just spray my matress with lavendar essential oil. It works.

a bedbug poem

jessica.schafer — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:47:57 -0500

I wrote this back in October after the worse stress of moving a whole hallway out of the building was over. Enjoy!

The Breakup

dear bedbugs
I know that you love me
but alas, I do not want
to share my bed with you
our relationship is too one-sided
and I’m always asleep when you
want to spend time together

In Between Words

http://jessicaschafer.wordpress.com

Once in a lifetime is enough, right?

Cherre — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:05:57 -0500

Because I had bedbugs in my apartment just after college...horrible. If it happened again i might jump out the window! We had to move out the building and throw out our mattresses and upholstered furniture. Seems like once they're there, they never go away and now that I own where I live I just cannot imagine how I'd deal again...ughhhh!

http://FindYourBalanceHealth.com

My students reported on this just yesterday

Kim Pearson — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:13:24 -0500

I had my interactive news class go out and get the local angle on the bedbug crisis yesterday afternoon. They still have to get some video and images up, but their reports are here: http://ewingnews.ning.com/

KimBlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Real life experience

biscuitsandsuch — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 10:08:35 -0500

My fiance and I are just coming out the other side of a (HORRIFIC) bedbug ordeal in Washington, D.C.

We discovered them living behind a picture frame in our bedroom, and then, after we had the apartment visited by pest control, after we cleaned every square inch of everything we own, and after losing hours of sleep, we discovered that they were also coming into our apartment through the walls from neighbor's residences.

We moved, but because female bedbugs lay up to 500 eggs in their lifetime and are incredibly tiny we brought some with us. All in all it's been a year long battle and I still wake up every night at 4 am thinking things are crawling all over me. I may not ever get a good night's sleep again.

One product that really got us through is EcoBugFree. I spent hours on the internet (hours that I couldn't sleep) researching things that would kill them. It's kind of expensive, but when you're getting 10-200 bites a night, believe me you wiill spend $30 on a bottle of spray. The good thing about it is that it kill bb instantly, and also seems to kill their eggs. So if you can find where they're nesting (cracks, bedframes, underneath furniture, behind picture frames) you can pretty successfully wipe out the population.

Also, invest in those vinyl mattress protectors for both your mattress and box spring. And try as hard as you can to keep your sanity!

I've HAD Bedbugs!!!

VintageDutchGirl — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:13:12 -0500

Believe it or not we have had bed bugs recently!!! Eeewww. Eeewww.

We think we got them from our married student apartment and took them with us in our mattress when moving into our BRAND NEW HOME.

I was pregnant when we moved and the bed bugs had a heyday with me. I kept thinking I was getting mosquito bites, but lo and behold I found bedbugs on our mattress.

I found them Dec 23rd. We promptly moved out, hired an exterminator and laundered every shred of clothing/fabric in our entire house. Oh yeah, I was 2 weeks postpartum with a preemie at the time...did I fail to mention that?

$450 later (which included the monthly follow up), special mattress covers and exhaustive cleaning later, we are bed bug free...WE HOPE.

This bug crosses all socioeconomic groups, five star hotels and all. It is a horrible thing to go to sleep in your house and not know if you will be bit again.

I started not to read this

Nordette — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:28:46 -0500

A few nights ago I started itching, and having been scared before after seeing a news story on bedbugs and now that I'm back home in Louisiana, place of odd critters, I shivered thinking it could be bedbugs. Turns out I was having a reaction to medication. Whew!

Yes, the news show I saw said what you've said in your post, that bed bugs are on the rise again, even showing up in the finest hotels.

Nordette: BlogHer CE and NOLA Lit Examiner. Blogs @ WSATA & UMBOP.

Bed Bags are BAD!

ResumeTemplates — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:27:35 -0500

Aaaaaaaaaah I wish when university or hostel didn't get these little critters, but it did. It was a nightmare to get rid of. It took about 8 months, b/c all it took was someone not following the treatment plan. Lets get rid of these critters for good! My grandmothers retirement village now has an outbreak, but according to her, the outbreak is now contained! Sounds like some kind of movie!

Fleur from Resume Templates

bed bugs are terrible!!

jessica.schafer — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:49:02 -0500

I'm a resident director at a university and unfortunately, one of the hallways in my building got bedbugs and it was terrible!! Especially, because I felt like no one was giving me honest information about how hard they are to get rid of. There was an infestation the year before, when I wasn't working in the building, but I had assumed that the spraying they'd done and the summer months with no one in the residence would have dealt with the issue. Nope. Apparently, bed bugs can survive dormant for up to 18 months. Plus the sprays they use now only kill live bugs and not their eggs, which is frankly, just plan stupid. We had to move everyone out and completely gut that hallway, getting rid of all the wooden furniture and the carpets. Hopefully, the problem has been taken care of now, because I never want to go through that again!!

In Between Words

http://jessicaschafer.wordpress.com

Gross!

MrsWsKitchen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:24:25 -0500

I was fine with the article--it's the video that got me! *eek*

I've known about bedbugs for years--in fact, when I worked on a team that sent volunteers to developing countries, we would even discuss bedbugs and how to keep them off of you (most using kerosene in some way or another). Bring back the chemicals! I <3 Insecticides!

Amanda
Mrs.W's Kitchen

Another frightening post on this subject

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:20:05 -0500

Great (?!) post, Catherine! I won't be sleeping well for a while now.

Another frightening post that addresses bed bugs comes from Penelope Trunk. After a bed bug infestation, her family abandoned most of their possessions. Scroll down to tip #4 and be prepared to crawl out of your skin.

Leslie

BlogHer Contributing Editor, Research and Academia
My blogs: The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toybox

I've made it a huge priority.

Rita Arens — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:35:10 -0500

After several years of not getting enough, I will forgo lots of things to get my sleep.

Rita Arens writes at Surrender Dorothy and BlogHer and is the editor of Sleep is for the Weak.

Sleep... I'm doin' it rong.

Beth Terry — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:20:15 -0500

I flunk Sleep 101 on all counts. Drink coffee all afternoon. Stay up with wine and the computer. Get a few hours and then wake up early, my mind abuzz with new ideas, and start the cycle over again. Every few weeks, I have a weekend crash where I sleep for a full day. Of course, there's no such thing as catching up.

A while back I read this great article in Glamour that explained how we can lose weight just by getting enough sleep.

http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2009/02/lose-weight-while-you-sleep

Finally, I thought I would find the motivation to get my sleep hygiene in order. Well, not so much. Apparently I like staying up blogging more than the idea of being thin. Maybe this is just how I am. I take after my dad who, at 73 years old, loves to stay up until 3am messing around on the computer.

Are some of us just destined to be tired?

Beth Terry
www.fakeplasticfish.com
@fakeplasticfish
FaceBook

Not a mom, but exhausted

Suzanne Reisman — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:04:58 -0500

These last few weeks have been brutal. Full-time job, full-time school, freelance writing, and being on the board of a nonprofit child care center, plus wanting to go to the gym, and actually interact in some way with friends and family means that I may wind up with mono. Like you, I'm just tired all the time. Lately, even after I get a full night of sleep, I'm still tired. :(

Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants