BEDBUGS!

Every now & then each of us does something goofy or kind of stupid that we aren't really sure we should admit to other people. For instance, years ago my father told me he accidentally picked up the tube of Brylcreem (for you young people, it's goop that old men put in their hair) & put it on his toothbrush. It took him several seconds of wondering why his toothpaste wasn't foaming before he realized what he'd done. AND then he told me about it!

Or many, many years ago when my sister & I were still kids my mother had made a birthday cake for a family party. The dog got up on the table & ate the corner of the sheet cake as it cooled. It was too late to bake another one so my mother simply took some extra frosting & filled in the gap then sliced it from the other side. We were sworn to secrecy.

The other morning, it was my turn to join the ranks of crazy ass occurrences in my family. We had just returned home from a Caribbean cruise & barely unpacked from our journey. It was that time in the morning when you are just waking up. It was starting to get light out & I turned over putting my arm around my body. My finger touched something hard just behind my shoulder. "What is this?" I lazily thought to myself as I touched it again. Confused, I scratched at it - then it came off in my fingers. I set it on the bed beside me & slowly opened my eyes.

Yikes! A black bedbug was right there on the sheet!  "Shit!" I exclaimed, "This is not good." Lou stirred & mumbled, "What?" I grabbed a Kleenex & wadded it up around the bug explaining what had happened to him. We are usually quite aware of the possibility of bedbugs when we travel but so far had never seen one.

I took the Kleenex to the bathroom counter & left it there while I pulled the blankets back to look for any more of the nasty little critters. Satisfied that there weren't any more bugs in our bed, I climbed back in. Of course, by now, we were both pretty much awake. I was not thrilled at the thought of that bug walking all over me while I slept - YUCK! After a couple minutes, I said, "I'd better get up & flush the damn thing so it doesn't get away." Lou replied, "Wait! I want to see what it looks like," as he got up to check it out.

Okay, before I continue I need to set the scene a bit. In my defense, it was still relatively dark out, I was half asleep, I didn't have my glasses on AND I really don't like bugs except in a controlled situation where they are contained. Plus this thing was hard & stuck to my shoulder - damn it! The thought of nonchalantly picking it off of me before I was fully awake was a little freaky.

Lou says, "It's not a bug." I asked, "Are you sure?" to which he replied, "Yeah, it's one of those decorations from your cruise card holder." Hmmmpph - he brought it over & sure enough it was a little, square, black piece of plastic between 1/8" & 1/4" across. Well, hell.

Okay.....MY BAD!

But, hey, given the circumstances I think I was pretty cool not to scream & leap out of bed. Thank goodness it wasn't really a bedbug or I'd have been washing everything in sight & spraying bug killer everywhere. Then I would have been feeling things crawling all over me for days afterward. And we would have likely gotten sick from all the insecticide in our bedroom. But fortunately, none of that happened.

Lou has laughed at me - or is it with me - a few times since then & said, "You should write a blog post about thinking you had a bedbug on you." So, I figured 'what the hell', might as well share this little tidbit of stupidity with all of you. If you can't laugh at yourself, who can?