Digital Alterity

Last night, for the first time in nearly a year, I slept in my own apartment on a mattress that wasn’t inflatable. It was unbearably sexy. My back feels wonderful. I feel better rested than I have in months.

In spite of the fact that we know that our neighbors have bedbugs and the Sun Bay management has referred to the bedbugs as “an ongoing problem”, Allyson and I just couldn’t live another night of our lives on an air bed. I, who used to sleep in until nine or ten in the morning, find myself up and out of the bed by eight almost all the time since I had to worry about the cat clawing the air bed in an attempt to get me up. It was nerve-wracking to constantly worry about popping the bed by filling it too much or moving it across the floor to vacuum. And while sex is most certainly possible and still mind-blowing on such a mattress, it is rather like trying to do your taxes on a trampoline.

We went around on Saturday, looking for a more stable temporary solution to our sleeping needs. After all, we didn’t want to spend over a thousand dollars on a mattress, box springs, bed frame, and all the trimmings if there are still bugs in the building. I kept telling Allyson all week that what I wanted was a Japanese-style futon that you put on a floor. In a moment of pure exasperation while driving around looking for a furniture store that might have something, I raged, “If someone was selling what I want, I’d pay $250 right now!” Allyson stopped by The Futon Corner on Main Street, and we found our solution within five minutes of walking in the door. The futon proprietors will sell you just a futon mattress, and these futon mattresses feel almost like a real mattress. Actually, the mattress we decided on was actually firmer than the mattress that the bedbugs took over oh so many months ago. We bought an eight-inch mattress (their firmest model), a zippered cover for it, and at-home delivery. The total, oddly enough, was $242. Moments like that convince me that there’s some intelligence to the universe, that there’s a God and he has a righteous sense of humor.

Allyson and I have taken to feeding a couple of the semi-feral neighborhood cats. They tend to come by at about the same times each day now, begging for food and trying to avoid letting us touch them. As time has worn on, they’ve gotten a lot less skittish around us, and one of them even tries to walk in to see Tux sometimes when we open the door.

Last night, when I got home from work, they had presented me with clear evidence that they had accepted me as a friend. You see, they left a bat’s head on my front doorstep as a thank you for all the food I’d been giving them. The bat’s head was roughly the size of a dime, and they’d obviously chewed off the head right off the body (which never made it to my door step).

I know that I’m a cat person because my first and only reaction to this whole thing was to be really excited that our little outside kitties think so highly of us. After a lifetime of being surrounded by cats that my family tamed out of the wild, I understand that this is a high compliment from any active predator. Allyson, however, was royally freaked out by the whole thing. In fact, she and Jen could say little beyond “Ewwww! Ewwww!” for the next ten minutes or so after we came in the apartment.

Do they not realize how hard it would be for a cat to catch a bat? I mean, this took real dedication or just pure dumb luck on the part of our little urban predators. Bats don’t walk around on the ground for cats to pounce on. Personally, knowing that bedbugs (or at least their closely related insect brethren “bat bugs”) often follow bats around, I’m hoping that our feline posse kills off every one of them execution style.

I think we need to name one of the outside kitties Ozzy.

I’m fat again. This hardly a surprise to me when I look back at life over the past six months or so though. When stressed, I tend to withdraw and seek comfort. In all honesty, comfort, for me, is food. I love eating. I love savory. I love sugary. I love spicy. I love food.

And so when the bedbugs came, I dined out. I didn’t just eat the vegetable buffet either. I ate tacos, steak, and more desserts than I care to remember. When I got tired of noticing my weight edging up each day, I just stopped looking the damn scale entirely. It looks like we’ve hopefully emerged victorious over the bedbugs(1), and in that vein, I’ve been “going to start being good again tomorrow” for at least two months now. Sometimes I even start exercising a couple of days before I get depressed about something, quit exercising, and seek unhealthy food. The only thing I haven’t done is openly confess. So here it is, world. My confession.

I’m fat. I’m fat because I use food to soothe my frayed nerves. When I get stressed, I eat poorly and often, and due to my intensely introverted nature, I get stressed a lot. As a kid, I used to get so nervous at the thought of going to school that sometimes I would be unable to sleep. I played sick sometimes just so I could hide in my house, away from everyone. Sometimes, I even got so nervous that I actually made myself sick. One time I threw up before school in front of all the kids because I was absolutely panic-stricken at the thought of having to be around the other children all day. So yeah, I get stressed. For the past week, I’ve been fighting an ardent battle to face each day because I’ve been absolutely depressed over the election results.

Please note that while some people will tell you that they’re depressed, they really aren’t. They’re sad. That’s a completely fucking different thing entirely, folks.

The only times in my life that I’ve owned my life have been when I’ve been punk rock enough to own it. I’m owning it now, bitches. This is my life. I bow to no one. I don’t even bow to myself or any of my stupid ideas of myself.

I won’t be silent so that people can assume that I agree with them. When someone talks about how thrilled they were that people came out in droves to support the anti-gay amendments, you can bet your ass that I’ll tell them that I consider this a civil rights issue. When someone asks me if I’m attending church anywhere, I intend to tell them that I’m practicing my faith privately. When someone asks me what my faith is, I’m going to determinedly explain that I’m a Christian Buddhist. The punk is in, bitches, and he’s open for appointments.

And in that vein, I’m taking care of myself again. This world deserves/needs my presence for as long as I can manage. It’s time to drop this fucking spare tire. It’s time to make my blood pressure normal and healthy. It’s time to feel good again. It’s high time to feel so healthy and confident that when I get an ache or pain that I’m not convinced that it might be a serious health problem. I fear no one—not even myself. I’m coming out of the cocoon, bitches. I am unique and beautiful.

I walked six miles this morning. I will walk a minimum of twenty miles per week. I will lose at least one pound every week. Anything less is cowardice.

I will win. I don’t seek absolution. I only seek the galvanization of purpose that comes from revealing the sad, scared, depressed, secret places in my soul. You’ve all seen me weak, scared, and defeated. I won’t let it happen again. I am punk rock personified. I seek both salvation and enlightenment. I’m not going to lose again.

Footnotes

1. You have no idea how hard it is for me to believe that though. I’m still so nervous that my heart rate goes up when I go to bed. I try to just exhaust myself and go to bed before Allyson so that the lights are on. It’s like being in high school all over again.

I was having a dream that I’m particularly proud of when my cat woke me up this morning(1). I often have nightmares about the bedbugs coming back. I’d say that about once per week I have a dream that I can remember about discovering either a live bedbug or more suspicious bites. Last night was apparently my night to have one of those. In my dream, I was just as upset as I was the last time we found a live bug. My mother happened to be around, and we started praying together. When I prayed in my dream, the last thing I added was, “Lord, if I have to live the rest of my life with these monsters in exchange for the wonderful blessings that I already have in my life, then it would be worth it.”

It makes me happy to think of that statement. It makes me feel like perhaps I really do have an inner Christ/Buddha nature. In my dreams, my raw emotions, fears, and thoughts are uncontrolled and on display. For me to have such a spiritual insight and contentment in my dreams reassures me that I’m on the right spiritual path, that enlightenment is something that I might actually attain.

Footnotes

1. I’m not particularly mad at Tux for waking me up so early on a Saturday because, honestly, I had a lot of work to do this morning with regard to babysitting monthly and Tallahassee backups for work. They had the indecency to run on the same night.

Ever gone camping in your own house? That’s what my life has been like for the past several months. With air conditioning anyway.

Allyson and I have been sleeping on an inflatable bed since we first discovered the bedbugs back in June. It just seems prudent to make sure that the bedbugs are in fact completely obliterated before investing in another mattress and box springs that would only become infested if there were any of the wee beasties still alive. The air bed works remarkably well honestly. With the electric pump that we bought, it’s nearly painless to give the thing more air at night. With enough air, it’s almost completely like a mattress. You can even successfully have sex on it. The only real peril of the inflatable bed is its unfortunate propensity to pop when paired with a cat.

Tux has only popped our bed intentionally one time. All the other times have been during one of his feline exercise running fits that happen about once per day. If his route takes him through the bedroom, then he will surely pop the bed with his claws as he runs through. I don’t really mind the bed getting replaced on a fairly regular basis though because it also serves as an added check to ensure the bedbugs don’t find someway to nest on the pseudo mattress.

Last night, however, Tux had nothing to do with the bed popping. The bed ruptured along a seam in such a way that it would completely deflate in less than sixty seconds. As such, since Target was closed at such an hour, Allyson and I had to sleep on the floor last night. To be honest, it wasn’t too bad. I love sleeping on the floor personally and have been known to do so when Allyson won’t settle down and be still on the bed. Nonetheless, Allyson and I slept on the floor last night.

So, you see, this is a large part of why I just can’t bring myself to complain about the hurricane(s). I just can’t find a reason. Even if I lose power for a week, that’s nothing compared to what I’ve already managed to go through over the past several months. In turn, what I’ve lived through over the past several months is nothing to complain about when compared to watching your thumb decay while still on your body or managing clinical depression without drugs. In the end, my life is way better than I ever thought it would be—even with bedbugs, hurricanes, and Biblical plagues. Life is pretty good when you stop to look at it without getting distracted by self-pity.

I’m up in the middle of the night again. I suddenly popped up at two after about an hour of being asleep. I woke up with an itch on my right arm that looked suspiciously like a bedbug bite. After trying hard not to have a panic attack, I apologetically asked Allyson if we could turn on a light and check the bed. Upon inspection, Allyson had a bite as well, and we found the adult bedbug culprit in her blanket. We caught and killed it, making it the second adult bedbug that we’ve found since our pest control guy sprayed. I’m at something of a loss because I know that the stuff the fellow sprayed was pretty heavy duty. I’ve seen all manner of dead insects on the floor. I’ve watched a roach spontaneously die while walking across the floor. I don’t understand how these things are getting on our bed without dying.

I’m at a loss. I’m nearly at the end of my rope. I’m praying hard for some sort of solution and/or the wisdom and strength to continue dealing with this. Those of you who are religious, please pray for Allyson and me. Pray that we’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep. Pray that someday we’ll be free of these monsters.

So much has happened in the past couple of days that is so wildly disparate that it feels like it must have taken a week to live through. I really have to discuss everything separately to make any sense at all of it, and this has quickly ballooned into something just too plain swollen and epic to be contained in a ChangeLog entry.

Episode 2: Revenge of the Arthropods

As Allyson mentioned, after a week or so of getting random bites, I actually found a bedbug late on Wednesday night. Now you must understand that this is strange in and of itself. Bedbugs have evolved into little insect ninjas honestly. They can detect sleeping humans and will only come out in the cover of darkness if their target is safely asleep. Even given this strange early-riser bedbug, it’s pretty close to a miracle that I actually saw him. You see, even though I had only had four hours of sleep the night before (after being so excited about my new phone that I couldn’t properly sleep), I wanted to stay up to play Scrabble with Allyson. We retired to our room at nearly one in the morning and just kind of hung out up there with the lights on unwinding from the day. From the other room, Tux was whining about something, and I sat up to try to see what he was whining about. While sitting up, I saw it walking along the edge of the bed. I kept it corralled while Allyson went to grab me a baggie to seal it in so that we’d have evidence to show when we talked to the apartment folks the next morning.

After catching the bug, we each had our respective emotional outbursts. I went into full on hysterics, and Allyson got pretty angry. Allyson went downstairs to be alone, and I went to my computer to cry, pray, and email my family to ask for more prayer. Then I sat down to knit a few rows on my nascent ribbed scarf to try to center myself a bit. After we both calmed down a notch, Allyson suggested that we clean the house and get things ready for the exterminator to spray. This made more sense than anything I could thing of, and we began the bedbug culling sequel. When we initially had the bugs, we threw out tons of stuff. This time we even more aggressively threw out stuff. Random furniture has been eliminated just so that we didn’t have to move as much stuff. We still intend to get rid of our couch and several crappy bookcases as well. We finally retired at about 4:30 in the morning.

We were expecting the usual resistance up in the front office. In any conversation, the girl usually up there will start out extremely confrontational. You nearly always have to wear her down from “absolute bitch” to “normal human being”. I got up around 8:30 and started responding to my sister who was kind enough to respond to my frantic email from the night before. While typing, I heard a familiar sound. The exterminator was making the rounds on his monthly visit. In sheer joy, I woke up Allyson to tell her and then suddenly he made it to our apartment and knocked on the door. I invited him in, showed him what I found, and asked him what we should do. He said that he could be ready to go in an hour, and I told him that’s all we needed. We sprung into action and managed to completely prep our house for spraying in about an hour. We moved all of the furniture. We took as much stuff as humanly possible off of the carpets for a good residual effect on as much surface area as could be managed. When our pest control friend came back, we put Tux in his cat crate and 802.11b in her rodent travel cage and we left.

We passed the first part of the day out at McAllister’s Deli. We had a delightful leisurely lunch there on the breeze way with our zoo of animals. We ended up sitting out there from eleven until about one. Eventually, we decided to stop by Michael’s so that Allyson could shop for some yarn and needles while Tux, b, and I sat in the air-conditioned car. Making our way over to the little strip mall where Panera and Starbucks resided, we resolved to sit outside and pass the rest of the time until we could get back into our toxic apartment. After a cookie and a drink, the knitting started up again. I spent nearly the whole day knitting on my scarf, you see, and it shows. There has been a ton of progress thus far. I’m extremely proud and think I might give it to my Granny Richey when it’s all said and done. Tux was extremely well-behaved during all the parts of the day when we were outside of a restaurant. I think he rather enjoyed being able to look at the birds and smell the plant smells. The only time he fussed was when he was in the car.

Last night, I slept like a baby after getting enough stuff moved back to be able to setup our airbed. No bugs could traverse the toxic floor, and there was no reason I shouldn’t sleep. Eight hours later, I’m awake and typing about it all.

The Sirloin of Love

All of this occurred on my third wedding anniversary. At about 5:30 yesterday evening, we ignored everything bedbug-related and went on our anniversary date at the Stonewood Grill and Travern. Given the fact that it was only open for dinner, it seemed like a likely candidate for a nice romantic dinner. We both cleaned up(1) for dinner, and I even donned a pair of khaki pants and a polo shirt(2).

Stonewood is absolutely amazing. Allyson and I both got steak—she the sirloin and I the New York Strip—and I can honestly say that it was possibly the best damn steak I had ever had in my life. It was amazing. The sirloin was so good that it worked like some sort of mega aphrodisiac, and Allyson looked several times during the meal as if she were going to leap upon me suddenly to satisfy the carnal desires awakened by the wonderful corn-fed aged beef.

My Precious

The observant among you have already caught on to my mention of the new phone. I did indeed get the new Motorola V710, and it is just plain awesome. After getting the correct cable, it syncd up with iSync like an absolute charm, importing all the numbers in my OS X Address Book and all the items in my iCal calendars in a matter of about a minute or two. The phone works just fine with Verizon’s National Access over the USB connection, giving me an Internet connection anywhere that my cell phone can dial out. The voice recognition features are wonderful. With absolutely no training, the phone allows me to say the name of anyone in my contacts and prompts me to choose any of their numbers. It also allows me to dial numbers without even touching the keypad. The speaker phone is better than most of the speaker phones we have in my office building. The camera is pretty decent, but I have a hard time getting excited about the camera on a mobile phone. It is an absolutely amazing phone, and you can expect an article about it when I actually get to test the Bluetooth features once my Powerbook gets back from the shop. I know that some features are crippled right now, but I don’t know the extent yet.

The best part? Verizon allowed me to renegotiate my contract for an early upgrade. We signed up for another two-year contract (essentially adding one year to our previous agreement) and got the phone at the severely discounted contract-subsidized price. Because of this, Allyson also got to upgrade her phone, and she chose the LG VX4500. Both of us have leapt far beyond our pitiful Kyocera 2325 Fisher Price phones, and I’m now completely satisfied with my mobile phone situation.

The End?

My week-long vacation still continues! In today’s episode, God sends a hurricane to drench the entire state of Florida while I scramble to the local yarn store. For provisions, of course. I wonder how nutritious wool and cotton can be in a pinch…

Footnotes

1. As an aside, I can’t help but wonder whether other married folks shower together as often as Allyson and I do. I’m not really talking about anything hanky-panky-related either. Allyson and I shower together several times per week. Our hot water heater is such that if we don’t both take our shower simultaneously there probably won’t be enough to keep the person getting hygienic sloppy seconds warm for more than two minutes.
2. …and my new Chucks. You can generally convince a punk rock type to put on nice clothes, but you really have to watch what he’ll inadvertently put on his feet.

After getting up and fretting for an hour, I finally passed out on the bed again. Upon waking up two hours later, my “bites” were completely gone. This is strong evidence that they weren’t caused by the little wee bedbug beasties because I’ve still got some old bedbug bites from over a month ago that still feel like like bumps if you press on them. They also aren’t itching like mad—or even at all really. Allyson’s bites are doing the same thing. I’m going to nuke the bedroom with flea spray again tonight and continue to the weekly bed clothes washing. I think that I have far less cause to worry than I felt that I did at six in the morning.

I finally went this morning and turned in invoker to the fellows at Computer Kingdom (or “Komputer Kingdom” depending on which phone listing you look at). The tech has doubts that it’s the hard drive since I can access it just fine when booted from an external firewire drive. In any event, it’s under warranty. I could honestly care less about what the problem turns out to be since I’ve got the whole machine backed up onto an external firewire drive.

I can look forward to another busy day at work trying to get things done before vacation. In any event, once ten o’clock rolls around, I’m officially off duty for a week, and I’m disabling my work email so that I won’t be able to check it and trick myself into working from home. From that point, I care only about video games, knitting, sex, cooking, music, consumerism, and whatever else chooses to strike my fancy.

Sometimes I just don’t know what to do. Over the past several days, Allyson has gotten some strange insect bites. Now in a normal house this isn’t really a cause for concern, but when you’ve had bedbugs…well…you never quite feel safe to ignore insect bites. I felt somewhat comforted by the fact that I had yet to receive any bites which called into question the whole bedbug theory somewhat. After all, why would all the bites be concentrated on just one person? Last night, however, my whole emotional house of cards came tumbling down. You see, I seem to have bites of some sort on my foot since going to sleep four hours ago.

I have no idea what to do. I have no real proof that bedbugs are at play, but the circumstantial evidence scares the shit out of me. Did my neighbors who just moved out have bedbugs that are now migrating? It’s pretty obvious to me that we shouldn’t have a surviving colony of bedbugs considering the massive gap of time in which we received no bites. Am I overreacting? Should I spray flea spray in the bedroom (as I have every time one of us was nervous about a mosquito bite and in need of reassurance)? Should I call in the pest control again?

I have these stupid fears that I’ll never have a normal life again. That nothing I do will ever truly stop them. That I’ll spend the rest of my life sleeping on an air bed and worrying that the cat is going to pop it while trying to wake me up in the morning.

I’m glad I have the next week off after today. I can use a vacation after months of dealing with this.

Several more nights have passed, and I have no mysterious bites. This paired with how that the bites I had picked up seemed to disappear makes me inclined to believe that I was being bit by mosquitos whilst walking home or something. If the bedbugs are currently here, they’re intentionally avoiding biting me. Hopefully, life will continue according to this trend.

Sometimes I find myself wondering why the general population has a tendency to look for same-sex friendships. This tendency isn’t really gender-specific by any means, but due to my XY chromosomes, I tend to notice it more amongst women. I’ve never really had all that much in common with other guys. I’ve got three fellows from college that I tend to really enjoy hanging out with, but I don’t think we’re spectacular examples of masculinity. Truth be told, Allyson is my best friend in a way that a lot folks seem unable to grasp. Maybe it’s a function of my extreme introversion, but I feel no real pull to have same-sex friends as a complement to my friendship with my wife. Guys tend to come together to talk about cars, sports, and chicks—subjects that tend to bore the shit out of me.

On that note, I get the feeling that one of the authors from this month’s issue of Bust wouldn’t like me too much. Rachel Elder’s “What Up, Wimpster?” left me feeling somewhat beaten up. I matched nearly every one of her admittedly humorous stereotypes, but my wife still seems to think I’m a pretty amazing guy. Not every non-masculine guy is a manipulative asshole. Furthermore, I think it’s just as valid for a guy to enjoy Hello Kitty, indy rock, and gourmet Arabica bean coffee as it is for a girl to like semiconductor electronics, house-remodeling, and shirts that say “Chick Magnet”. The budding Zen adherent in me wants to say something about being too attached to an expectation of how men should be. The Levinas lover in me wants to demurely mention something about the grasp/caress paradigm. The “wimpster” in me chose to publish something about it in my “blog”.