Woke up this morning thinking about orange/cranberry chutney with pork tenderloin, something I had at a friend's home several years ago.  Why I woke up thinking about this succulent dish I don't know.  Most of the past 37 mornings I have woken up itching and thinking of bed bug tyrrany. So chutney is a glorious change, and I am giddy and grateful.  Last night I went to sleep thinking intermittently of The Iron Lady, a movie I was watching just before bed, and Psalm 103, my lifeline and a satisfying catalog of my benefits as God's child.  I memorized this Psalm twenty years ago in the midst of panic attacks and have fled to it innumerable times since.  Reading truths like "[He] forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, [he] redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, [he] satisfies your mouth with good things [aah--chutney!] so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's";"he does not treat us as our sins deserve";"so great is his love toward those who fear him";"as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us" and "as a father pities his children so the Lord pities those who fear him" is like sipping hot cocoa by the fireside on a wintry night.  The words sink deep and warm into my mind and gush into my soul. They have rescued me from anxiety, despair, depression and insecurity.  God delivers me because He delights in me (Psalm 18)!
I wonder if Margaret Thatcher ever had bed bugs. Her meditating on Psalm 103 would probably have been precipitated by matters more important.
Today I will clean the study for an hour, check bedsheets for spots, check traps under bed legs for bugs, and do the daily load of laundry with hot water (and a color catcher sheet) then a high-heat dry for 80 minutes. Peter can move study furniture for me when he gets home from golfing with our youngest. (Please, dear, help me quench this violent need to attack every nook and cranny in our home with the vacuum cleaner.)  I put the ozone generator in the study on high for 90 minutes last night.  It's a small room so it got blasted with ozone.
This afternoon and evening will be fun.  Peter, our youngest son Keaton, and I have a little game competition spread over three nights going on.  Then we get to watch the Boston Celtics beat the Heat (hopefully).  It's a big night. Not all business and bed bugs.
On that note, sometimes I get overwhelmed when I think of ALL I should be doing to be rid of bed bugs.  Then I remember that God isn't asking me to do in one single day ALL that I should do.  He's only leading me to do what I can do now, today, and He's giving me the grace to do it now, today, and then to trust Him, the one who never slumbers or sleeps, to take care of the bugs.  (I already do that when I'm sleeping, right?)  When I look back at the past 38 days, I am astounded at the amount of work God's allowed me to do.  No wonder those internet stories were overwhelming to me.  My perspective when I read them ignored time and God!

Read Mark 9 with my son this morning.  It's a remarkable chapter of faith--something I really needed today, particularly after yesterday's discovery.  I am encouraged to cry out to Jesus with my desires, to believe in His promises and recognize and confess my tendency toward unbelief (in my case, my tendency to be frantic and grasp for control, forgetting that bed bugs too are part of His design for my life right now) (see Mark 9:24).  Can I claim Mark 9:25 ("I command you, come out . . .and never enter . . again") for my problem?!  I am emboldened to increase my faith by taking my burdens to God in prayer and fasting (9:29). And I am determined not to let my peace be distracted by my schemes and efforts, but to look only to Jesus for my peace (9:7-8).
Last night I vacuumed the entire downstairs area, getting into baseboard cracks and going over the couches and chairs really well with the knife edge of my vacuum cleaner.  I couldn't scour the study as well as I wanted since I have trouble moving the large bookshelf and desk in there. I'm a total lifting wimp.
A friend of mine lent me an ozone generator, a machine that takes the oxygen in a room and turns it into ozone, to try to suffocate any remaining bed bugs.  So that went into the study to do its magic for an hour.  I don't know if it will work since I can't make the room completely airtight, but I'm trying everything within reason these days.  "Within reason"  is a pretty broad category.  It includes everything except burning my house down.  And who knows when that will become reasonable.
May 1, 2012, I began reading on the internet various horror stories and non-solutions to bed bugs.  I spent a lot of time crying and calling my husband Peter while he was at work.  May 3, 2012, Peter and I agreed that I would not read about bed bugs on the internet.  This has been a difficult promise to keep, but I have done it thus far and am glad because the fodder I got for panic within the first three days of May has been well enough to keep my mind swirling for years.  I read (sometime between May 1 and May 3) that New York City is the most bed bug infested city in America.  No more visiting that fine city for me--at least until the government lifts its ban on DDT or some amazing scientist discovers an instant cure for bed bugs!  Who would ever want to live there?  I wonder if Tim Tebow's place is infested.  Easy solution for Tim Tebow:  burn your house down.
OK. Time for me to do something with my son. (My three oldest are working at our church's camp this week--yes!  we cooked their backpacks and high-heated their clothes before they left).  I am committed not to allow bed bugs to rule my life.  I take an hour or so each day to do what I can to get rid of them.  But then I must give myself to what is much more important than a sterile house.

The adventure continues. . .

Today is Day 36 of my bed bug adventure. Day 1 was May 1, 2012.  I'm so glad it all began on a First.  (January First would have been better--and I think Monk would agree--but May First will have to do.)  It is only now, June 5, that I have had the time, energy, and stomach to detail my story.  May was a long month.  My life has been a whirlwind--researching, crying, bagging, vacuuming, calling (the exterminators), washing, more crying, baking (items that cannot go in the dryer), gagging.  Then go through the routine again.
Through it all, God has been with me.  He is my only hope to get through this.
Just now, after 36 days of washing, vacuuming, pest control treatments, and numerous highs and lows, my son comes to me with a dead bug on a board game from a room that had been "safe."
"I think this is a bed bug, Mom."
 I think to myself, "No, I think we're done with those--and there're certainly not any bugs in the study."
I look. It's a bed bug.  Dead, thank you very much, but still a bed bug.  How on earth did he get in the study?!!
My confidence that this trial is near an end plummets.  Time to scratch.  Time to vacuum.  Time to turn my confidence away from the mirage of a bugless house to the Lord of the Bed Bugs, who ordained this momentary trial for my good and His glory, who made and knows every bed bug on this earth, who sent his only son Jesus to earth to join humankind and rescue me from sin and death, who claims me as his child and delights in me.  Time to rejoice and be grateful.  Time to go.