Saturday, August 30, 2014

Month Seven of Pregnancy

Let's just recap month seven of this pregnancy.  We could label it in several different ways:

1.  The month in which I billed over 240 hours at work in preparation for trial.

2.  The month in which I spent all 31 days living out of five bags and sleeping in five different places.

3.  The month in which I cried every single weekend (and some weekdays -- but every weekend).

4.  The month in which my left eye began to twitch daily, with increasing frequency as the month wore on.

5.  The month in which I received almost 100 bedbug bites and learned more than I ever wanted to know about bedbugs.

6.  The month in which I hoped our bedbug situation would be resolved, with unpacking to happen on August 30-31...and the month in which I realized that wasn't going to happen.

7.  The month in which I realized that Month Eight might be just as bad.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

It's Not 18 Days to Go

At the end of my last post, I said we had 18 days to go. 

I now realize...that's not going to be the case.  We have many, many more days to go.  On Thursday night, we slept in our apartment for the first time in two weeks when Mr. Squire got back from a five-day trip to Denver and I got back from a five-day trip to Richmond.  Neither of us got a lot of sleep because we kept feeling things crawling over us.  Every fifteen minutes, between midnight and 2am, Mr. Squire turned on the light and checked the corners of the bed -- to find at least one or two bugsies crawling toward us.  He killed 18 bugs that night.  We barely got any sleep.

18 bugs after the first treatment means that the number of original bugs was probably well into the several hundreds.  That's going to take more than a little time to cure. We're not going to be able to unpack on August 30 as I had planned.  This very well may take another 2 months--or more.  For those of you keeping track, that means we may not be out of this mess before Junior's due date--and that's if she waits that long to come.  

I really don't know what to do.  I have a trial that begins in exactly three weeks.  I have a child who is due to come in fewer than eleven weeks.  I have an apartment in the sense of four walls.  And  admittedly, I have a bunch of stuff in it.  But I can't access it, there are no shelves, the closets are empty, the couch is overturned, everything is in bags and bins, and ... I have a pit in my stomach just thinking about our future.  People keep telling me there will be an end.  Of course I know that must be true.  But it doesn't feel real to me right now.  The end feels so far away.  It feels so unachievable.  It feels incredibly out of reach.

It's not a guarantee that we won't be able to resolve this before Junior comes.  Lord, please please please make this go away in time for us to be able to create an actual home.  But it's also not a guarantee that we WILL be able to resolve this before she comes.  And my 4.5-month maternity leave looks more and more bleak.  Thankfully, we do have options. I think the first option is just to live with my in-laws for a while.  But... honestly, it had not been my hope or desire to live with anyone except for my husband and child--much less in someone else's house--during the already stressful experience of having my first child.  I know I sound like a brat for complaining, when I have a place to go and a loving family to help us out.  So I'll stop there.

My eye has been twitching for several weeks now, and I know it's because I'm really, really stressed. I had the worst week of work maybe in my entire career this last week.  Every week, I think the next week will be better -- and then it isn't.  It just brings more problems of a different variety.  And people keep reminding me that my feeling stressed isn't good for Junior.

I'm not sure what to do about that.  I mean -- is it really realistic to expect me to just ... be unaffected by all of this, so that my unborn child can be healthy?  If someone can please teach me how to compartmentalize like that, I'd really like to learn.  That would be a life skill that could help me in many ways.  I just don't think it's that easy. 

At the same time... I get it.  Life happens.  Crap happens.  Over the last few weeks, boy have I seen -- over and over -- that crap happens.  And I just need to find a way to deal with it.  Just wish I knew how.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

In Case You Were Wondering...


What it's like to have bedbugs, this is the post for you.  Here's a photo of what our apartment looked like the day that we *finally* unpacked after our long and stressful move.  This is what we call the "BEFORE" picture.


Just two days later, we found out that our place has been infested with bedbugs for 3-6 months.  I made the discovery upon finding a row of five bites on my back.  As the days went on, I found more and more bites (the bites have latent effect and can reveal themselves up to ten days after the bite).  By the time we found out about the bedbugs, we had already slept in our new place for five days.  That was enough time for me to accumulate upwards of 50 bites, and for Mr. Squire to accumulate more than 100 bites.  His were worse--his turned into welts, and he had more than 50 bites from his left shoulder to his left hand alone.  These pictures don't nearly do justice to the angry red welts he had all over his body:






He woke up one morning with his entire body on fire because he's very allergic to the bites.  :(  His bites make me so sad.  We spent the next few days mastering the ice pack and spending lots of time running a very hot/very cold cycle of water against his bites:


That's just the effect on our bodies.  

As far as our home went, everything we had just unpacked and all of our newly built furniture was potentially infested--so we had to undo all of our progress, borrow a couple of bedbug baking bags from friends (by God's mercy, we were able to borrow these on short notice rather than purchasing them), sterilize everything by putting through the dryer for 45-60 minutes or baking at 120 degrees for at least one hour--one bag at a time, then packing everything.

This was a three-day process of dawn-to-midnight baking and packing... here's the beginning:


Gives new meaning to "cooking the books":


Endless baking and packing until all the closets were bare...



And all of our possessions were stacked in garbage bags in the bathroom (top of the mountain reserved for the stuffies!)


All furniture deconstructed...




In the process, we became so paranoid about infecting stuff that we started to keep important documents in the freezer and our clean garbage bags and paper towels in the fridge.



And between preparing for a trial, dealing with a bad-move-turned-bedbug-disaster, AND being 6.5 months pregnant... well, I finished a lot of ice cream and cookies (Levain cookies courtesy of TV).  



And that's where things stand today... our exterminator made his first of three visits yesterday.  We've been staying at Big Brother Squire's place for the week while he and his family are on vacation (we know that it is totally God's providence and timing that they were on vacation this week), then Mr. Squire and I are both traveling on business (he to Denver, me to Richmond) for a few days... and then we will have to find another place to go until August 30.  

That's right--we vacated our Brooklyn apartment on July 28, didn't get to even sleep in our new apartment until July 31, didn't get 95% unpacked until August 3 (this is after we canceled our vacation due to the move snafu), and found out about the bedbugs on August 5.  From August 6-10, we frantically created a plan, baked and bagged all of our stuff, and deconstructed our apartment.  And we don't get to move back in until at LEAST August 30.  Worst move ever?  Maybe not -- but it's got to be up there.  (Especially with the trial and pregnancy on top of it.)

The good thing is... I'm finally--FINALLY--at a point when the heavy lifting is over and I can mentally and spiritually and emotionally rest a bit more.  I'm resigned to everything that has happened, and I am beginning to see God again.  It's still really hard, but I can finally acknowledge and thank God for His mercies along the way, like:

  • Big Brother Squire and his family being away, enabling us to stay at his apartment (which is on the third floor) while we were baking and bagging--which was a lot more convenient than staying anywhere else;
  • Little Brother Squire and his wife coming to help Mr. Squire move our furniture (at 6.5 months pregnant, I can't lift anything heavy anymore), and our friends Harvey and Stephen being willing to come in from the City and put themselves at risk of bedbugs to help us out (they didn't have to come, but their willingness was very touching);
  • Our business trips, which will take us out for a few more days;
  • AMAZING weather -- which kept our spirits high and made things a lot easier while we were baking (i.e. it helped that on top of paying exorbitant energy bills for running the dryer and the baking units 24/7, we didn't have to pay for AC on top of that to bring the temperature back down -- plus, I hate humidity and heat, so I was in a much better mood with the incredible, unseasonably cool weather); 
  • The prayers of many -- especially my women's group and closest sisters at church... I held off for a long time on asking for their prayers, but when I finally broke down in desperation, I felt the prayers of many upholding us;
  • Functioning internet at home, which allowed me to work from home over the weekend while helping with the baking and bagging... otherwise, I would have had to leave Mr. Squire to continue to do everything on his own, and that would have broken my heart even more; and last but most importantly:
  • My unbelievably strong and persevering and steel-minded hobey.  Even though he is completely spotted with over 100 fiery spots (I call him my dalmation), he just set his mind to conquering this trial and worked tirelessly and uncomplainingly to get everything done.  He never complained, he never whined (much unlike his wife).  He just put his mind to the task, steeled himself, and kept putting one foot in front of the other.  People often think I'm the strong-willed one, but I am convinced more than ever after seeing Mr. Squire at work over the last several weeks through the very difficult move and especially through the first big hurdle of this bedbug thing that he is really the strong one.  Incredible spiritual, emotional, and mental strength.  I couldn't have made it through without him and his strength that at many times had to be ample enough for both of us.  
18 days to go.  We're going to be okay.  I'm just starting to feel that that is true.




Thursday, August 7, 2014

Whiplash

Well...we live in New Jersey now.  And that's just about all I can say about that.

The move was an arduous, trying process.  We found out the night before our move (at 10:20 PM) that the apartment was not ready, so our stuff could move in, but we could not.  We spent the next four days in a hotel.  After working a long day at work, I shuttled to the apartment to unpack pieces of the apartment and construct whatever furniture we could as paint was drying and the electrical outlets were being changed in and out until midnight, then returned to the hotel to do the same thing over again.  Four days in a row.

On the fifth day, we finally parked ourselves in our new bedroom.  The outside was a mess, but the bedroom actually looked like something livable, and that was very nice.  Days six, seven, and eight were spent unpacking, cleaning, and organizing.  I got food poisoning on Day 9.  But that day, we finally finished (well, mostly -- turns out we couldn't put curtains up because of the metal behind the wall -- not sure what to do about that) and had our first overnight guest over.  And all was well.

Day 10 was good.  On Day 11, though, I found a row of bites on my shoulder -- five in a row.  And another five bites on my neck.  We investigated, we found very quickly:  bed bugs.  Apparently the place has been infested for 3-6 months.  We had no idea...until we finished going through the entire process of unpacking.  And spreading our stuff around in the process, picking up who-knows-what.  

Days 12 and 13 have been up and down as we've explored options for treatment.  Yesterday was up, as we thought we had found a solution that would be relatively quick (i.e. over in ten days) and would not require sterilizing and packing and unpacking everything because heat treatment would solve everything.   Today is way down.  That other solution isn't going to work.  Everything that I wanted to avoid, we have to do.  And it's going to be another 3.5-4 weeks before we have our home back -- and that's assuming all goes well.

We had to cancel our ONE vacation this year due to the moving snafu (there goes whatever "babymoon" we had planned).  We have canceled our baby shower due to the infestation trap and the havoc on our time, energy, and resources that it has drained.  I am frustrated from the bottom of my being to the top.

And people have been encouraging me to maintain perspective.  Honestly, I think I have perspective.  I just think I'm tired -- and I'm entitled to be tired.  Because we are not just talking about the last 13 days.  We are talking about the last seven months.  Because let's review the last seven months:   I've been preparing for a trial.  I've been pregnant.  With sciatica.  ANd I haven't had a vacation since December.  I just survived an awful move, and it turns out that we moved into a bug-filled trap that is going to cost thousands of dollars and many hours of heartache to fix--and that's if it works the first time around.  I'm sorry -- I'm just not in the mood to apologize for being a little angry and upset at the moment.

I had this talk with God a couple nights ago, and it looks like we're due for another talk again tonight.  I'm sure there is some reason for all of this, and one day maybe He'll let me in on the secret.  But can I say that this sucks?  Can I say that I feel like it's a bit much?  Can I say that I feel completely burned out?  Is that okay with you??