The Moving Date Approacheth …

EDIT (09/08/06): Wow. Hi, Dateline viewers. You may want to check out a question-and-answer document I wrote to answer questions I’m commonly asked about bedbug infestations, those entries I wrote during my infestation and the Wikipedia entry on bedbugs, which I contributed a great deal to after my infestation. If you’re of a mind to, stick around and take a look at my blog as a whole. If you’ve got a bedbug infestation yourself, my deepest sympathies.

… and my tension riseth.

I suppose the real focus of this concern is the underlying fact that this isn’t just a move, it’s an escape. I don’t know if I was the origin of the bedbug infestation in my building or not. It’s possible I was; every building’s infestation has to have an origin point, someone who initially brings them into the building, presumably from a vacation spot. (To clarify: I’m actually hoping that my apartment was the origin point. If so, then that origin spot was wiped out by thorough treatment, and reinfestation is more unlikely.) No one’s complained to my landlady of their own bedbug infestation (or so she has said), but that’s not to say that someone isn’t trying to fight them on their own (if they’re late on their rent, they may not wish to tender the complaint), or that someone isn’t looking at their arms and wondering in puzzlement how mosquitos could still be biting them in fifty-degree weather. The poison ended up killing a lot of other bugs, making me think that it’s just a bit of a buggy building and that the problem could have originated elsewhere within the building, not from something I brought in.

Anyway, my goal in moving at the end of October was to move out during the sixty-day window when the spray would still be operating in my apartment, so that I could move bedbug-free. And, I will be moving during that time, so I hopefully will be moving bedbug-free. The only practical step I can think of that I didn’t do, and I should have done, was to have unpacked a few of the boxes much earlier. At the moment, I still have a box of videos and DVDs, a box of oversized books, a box of kitchen supplies (that one is actually open to the air, so it is probably not so much a concern), and a garbage bag of kitchen supplies that are still packed from the initial spraying in August.

Yet, I am really, I think, overreacting about this concern. The idea behind the unpacking (despite the upcoming move which then requires repacking) is that if any bedbugs hid in items that were packed away and thus protected from the spray, this would give them time to come out (as they would be hungry) and be exposed to the poison prior to me moving. They now will only have about two weeks’ time before they get repacked when my parents come up to help me pack up the apartment on the 22nd. But, you see, the chances of there actually being bedbugs in these yet-to-be-unpacked boxes is low — from my understanding, the main congregative spots for the bedbugs were in areas along the baseboards on the west wall of the apartment, in a gap between wall and doorframe in the closet, and along the side of my boxspring (long thrown away). Plus, when I unpacked the other boxes, I didn’t see any of the little critters in my possessions.

I suppose what the fear of “bringing them with me” is, essentially, is a new face on the same fear of not being able to escape these fuckers, and having to deal with them again and again.

I’m finding that the mechanics of dealing with a move are myriad, although I’m slowly catching up with the small detritus that seems to float about. The postal service’s online process actually was helpful, to my surprise; it allows you to file your address change in advance and online for a dollar (they need the credit card process to verify your address if it’s done online), and then offers you links to a number of other places where you might need to change your address. Despite some intense thinking, I had forgotten about the need to notify the IRS or Illinois’ driver’s license bureau, for example. And the USPS offers a service where you can mail out customized notification postcards for only eighty-three cents each, including postage. That’s actually quite a decent rate, and I’m probably going to take advantage of it.

I went over and bit the bullet and signed the new lease on Wednesday evening, and took another look at the apartment while I was there. It really is very nice. I think *rueful laugh* that that must be half the problem — I get the sense that I could be happy in this apartment, but my emotional guard, my cynicism, is still finding itself pretty rigorously up from the tough summer that wrapped up with BedBugFest ‘05, waiting for a big Monty Python foot to suddenly swoop down from the sky and squish me if I get too happy or too comfortable. There is a sense of violation, I think, still left from this infestation. The new place’s closet isn’t nearly as large as my current one, and I am losing some shelving, resulting in a probable storage problem right off the bat, but this is a solvable concern, and one far overwhelmed by the positive improvements over my current apartment experience.

For example, there is a pedestal sink which is nice and large, and the toilet seems to be a nice, strong flush (with no tank, oddly enough). The new appliances and cabinetry is nice, the windows are nice and solid, and, most importantly, I get the sense that this management company prides itself on professionalism and, moreover, is not afraid of spending money in order to develop a good, solid base of tenants populating a new, renovated building. It makes sense for them: they can then sell their buildings after a few years for a nice profit, if the building has been well taken care of and is well-populated.

This differs from my prior landlords — an attorney at my employer clued me into what the rapid turnaround (six landlords in eight years) meant. He said that this probably indicated a run of new, poorer landlords, who needed every cent in rent money and couldn’t afford to make any but the most necessary and required improvements, and then finally ended up being overwhelmed by the financial responsibility and selling the building to a new landlord before they got into the red with their own personal finances. It does not look, fortunately enough, as if I’m going to face that problem with my newest landlord.

So, in the meantime, the next steps this weekend is to make the reservations for the truck, and to get the boxes delivered to the apartment; to unpack all the remaining boxes and to clean all of the dishes that could’ve been exposed to the poison spray; and to clean out poor Charlie’s litter box, which has been neglected for a little bit.

Onwards and upwards, as they say …

Share: