So, for those of you who don’t live in New York and don’t subscribe to New York Magazine (it’s fabulous, btw), you may not realize that there has been a lot of attention lately on bedbugs. They are infesting NYC with a vengeance. In May, there was an article that I read (while still safely in Arizona) about the oh so disgusting pests. For those of you who don’t know me (or my sister), paranoia runs thick in our blood.

Fast-forward to Monday of last week. I wake up with a bug bite on my ankle. Of course this means that I have bedbugs. So I start searching my bed (and entire apartment) for evidence of them. Monday night I cannot get to sleep for fear of the creatures. I get up, praying that the internet I am currently stealing from “NETGEAR” is working and do a frantic search on the WWW. This, of course, does nothing to calm my fears.

I finally get to sleep. Tuesday passes without incident. Then Wednesday night, as I’m getting ready for bed (which now consists of stripping down my sheets and looking for bugs)…I see a teeny-tiny bug. IN MY BED. I am FREAKING OUT. I get my computer out…again…and research. The hard thing about bedbugs is they are so small, it’s hard to compare anything to a picture because the pictures are all magnified. But of course, I’m convinced (despite the fact that I have not been bitten by any bugs again) that I have them.

The next day, as soon as I can leave work, I head to Bed, Bath & Beyond to purchase a mattress cover and a protective bag in which to put all of my bedding. I come home and do what needs to be done. I’m feeling better. Not good…but better. I’m still stressing out, but…I’m okay.

Fast-forward to this week. Wednesday night. I finally convince myself that I have got to put my kitchen table together because it has six drawers in it that I desperately need in order to put the rest of my kitchen stuff away. I get home and open the box from IKEA…(I wish I could explain what happens next in a way that will make your skin crawl the way mine did, but I’m not that good of a writer)…and there, in the foamy paper that’s protecting my table top from its legs, are hundreds of itty-bitty disgusting bugs crawling all around.

I freak out. I mean…FREAK OUT.

Over the next two hours I trash. I bag. I vacuum. And trash some more. I scrub. I show. And I cry. A lot. Kneeling on my floor and I search with my eagle eyes (a blessing and curse) for any signs of movement. I lint-roller my entire bed. Multiple times. I am seriously pissed off at the world…but mostly at little bugs.

Thursday, I call an exterminator and set up an appointment (after much cajoling) for today. This morning, two hours after they should have been here, I call and tell them not to bother and find another place, in my ‘hood, where I can actually take one of the lint-roller sheets containing a couple of “specimens” (is that word not totally gross…like, it’s never a good thing) to have someone hopefully tell me that I’m just really paranoid and I don’t have bedbugs.

Alas, I am really paranoid and I do not have bedbugs. The likely culprit, according to my new best friend (with a serious lazy eye that kind of creeped me out) at the pest control place, is a lovely bug known as a mite. So, I arrive home armed with two “bombs” ready to do battle. While mites are infinitely better than bedbugs (mites are really everywhere…but not this big), I have decided that I would rather not spend another night sharing my bed with bugs of any kind.

I un-bag everything I had previously bagged (one of the ways to get rid of bedbugs), set the bombs off, and head to IKEA to return some things that won’t fit and kill some time.

And right now, I am sitting in my hot, humid apartment with the windows open in order to air out the bug killer. Kind of miserable, but totally worth it. It turns out living in New York is not all fancy meals and Broadway shows after all.