Paranoid 3: Betting our hedge

The roof of our former house narrowly missed the car across the street. Photo by: Jennifer Oberhammer

Looking back over the past five less-than-stellar years has me thinking about luck. Most of us think in terms of bad luck and good luck.

I don't think it's that simple. There's good-great luck and there's good-could-have-been-much-worse luck.

An example of the former is having the winning lottery numbers. When I think of the latter, I think of a scenario like this:

A woman gets dragged under a bus for a mile or so and then is set upon by a pack of feral dogs, but is still alive. The newscaster reports that she's in a medically induced coma while awaiting a donor for a full-body skin transplant. The cop featured on the five-second sound bite says, "That's one lucky little lady."

I'd say that's my kind of luck, but I'm luckier because I have all my skin--and teeth. And we got out of there, by the skin of our teeth.

So far, I've recounted major house damage and then heart damage. Then, there were the scabies-that-turned-out-to-be bed bugs and the therapeutic demolition job.

Next up we have real estate snafus, lice and a tornado. But there I go again, rushing things.

When I left off, we were engaged in a full out war against bed bugs. For months, we watched each other carefully for any rashes or bite-like lesions. I felt like a scout for the porn industry: "Take your clothes off and stand over here." And that was just for guests.

And the nightmares! In the dead of night, I'd go from a twitchy prone position to standing with all the bedding in my hands and the light on in 1.2 seconds. It wasn't long before Oli stopped asking what I was doing. He'd just wait until I was good and ready to hand the sheets back.

Bed bugs and beyond

After a year, we were in the clear. Not one to just sit back and enjoy some free time, I started advocating to move. I wanted to live in a house where I didn't have so many bad memories. Not that all memories were bad. I'd brought home my two (colicky) infants from the hospital to that--. Yeah, now that you mention it, there weren't a lot of good memories, plus we were running out of room to store all the sports equipment we couldn't use, now that we were parents.

I found the perfect place, just blocks away. We put an offer on the house and it was accepted. In a divine stroke of luck, acquaintances expressed interest in our place.

But of course, when your last name is Murphy, things rarely work out the way you think they will. After we signed off on our home inspection, our inspector's "just-in-case insulation test" for asbestos came back positive. I wanted out of that purchase in a big, bad way. But the vendors were really great about it and got it removed and replaced, largely at their expense.

The home inspection on our place didn't go so well either and we had to pay for some big expenses there.

What's a life event without bugs? This time it was lice and all of us were afflicted. The treatment and the moving stress had me flirting with female-pattern baldness.

Hegemony (Phonetics: Hedge-eh-money)

The universe wasn't done with us yet though. The purchaser's lawyer had hedge issues with our place.

Our hedge's proximity to a property line had our sale teetering on the edge of oblivion. It was the most confounding situation and I can't get into details here because I fear angering the gods of property and libel law.

Our legal fees quadrupled, while my mental faculties halved.

My and Oli's parents swooped in as I unraveled. I could neither eat nor sleep because I felt so responsible for our impending financial ruin.

In the midst of all this, there were layoffs at work and I was called to an unscheduled meeting. As I walked down the hall, pondering rules for filing bankruptcy, I was ushered into the "survivors'" meeting and I almost fainted with relief.

Hedge-ectomy

Our lawyer hit on a solution at the 11th hour, which involved a night-time visit with a chainsaw and a headlamp. Oli's hedge removal was masterful. When he was done, there was no evidence that a 12-foot hedge had ever been there.

It really did work out in the end. I loved our new house from the first, but I could tell that my husband was a bit "meh" about the cost, the big mortgage and stress of the move.

But five months later, he developed a whole new appreciation for our abode.

The April after we moved in, a tornado stampeded through the old neighbourhood and tore the roof clean off our former house and deposited it in the middle of the road.

I'm sure the neighbours across the road were cursing us for upping the "R" value of the roof insulation because it looked like their giant maple tree was part of a pink ribbon campaign.

I felt so badly for our purchasers; what a beginning for their new home. I thought a fresh start would change the luck of the place. They've recently moved back in and much like us, I'm sure they have a whole new appreciation for home insurance.

That house could really do with a dose of good luck. An end to the bad luck would be a good start.

Now, I feel pressure behind my right eye. I wonder if it's a tumour.

Paranoid Part 2: Scabies seem appealing

If there was a theme for this litany of misfortune, it’s this: We all have a sliding scale of what we’re willing to accept or deal with. For example, I remember thinking (at a time before I had children) that dealing with lice seemed the worst thing ever.


In my mid-20s, I was a reporter at a small daily paper and I ended up doing a whole series on lice outbreaks at this particular school—an assignment that had me scratching my head and shuddering with revulsion.

The fun and frolics of 2007 made lice seems like a vacation. But here I am, jumping ahead of myself.

My last post ended with my husband adjusting to the reality of heart failure because the heart damage from his viral infection became permanent.

But there were improvements. He managed to work half-time, an effort that required him to sleep all afternoon.

Then, my contract wasn’t renewed. I got a full-time job offer from a company that I contracted for, but they were bought out by a U.S. firm and a hiring freeze was instituted.

I had a cushion, so we were fine at first. Though eventually, the funds dwindled and mild panic started to set in.

Then, I landed my current position at a medium-sized high-tech company. Whew.

It was a steep learning curve, but I was keen. Running out of your emergency funds is very motivating.

Could the hives be scabies?

Shortly thereafter, I developed hives on my arms and I joked with my co-workers that I was allergic to my job. I started a food journal to see if there was a correlation to the number of hives I had each day and what I ate.

The hives continued. Benedryl became my close personal friend.

Then, my children started getting hives. Off to the doctor we went.

“Hives aren’t contagious,” she said. “It looks like scabies to me.”

Scabies! It just sounded gross and when she told me that they were mites that burrow into the skin and lay eggs, I was nostalgic for lice.

Filling the prescription was a laugh a minute. The pharmacist, an enthusiastic East Indian fellow who seemed to be used to dealing with the hearing impaired, told me loudly how the pesticide was to be applied from “the neck down--avoiding the genitals, of course—for the most successful removal of scabies.”

In my peripheral vision, I could see everyone near the counter take one big step back.

Home I went for The Great Family Pesticide Rubdown. Then, all sheets and clothes went into the washer/dryer on the “boil”/”roast” cycle.

We were cured—for about a week and the marks came back.

The treatments were so hard on my asthmatic daughter. She was pale and wheezing and I wasn’t going to do another treatment no matter what.

I was crying on the phone to my friend Susan, who, recalling bed bug horror stories from her grandmother, told me to look for evidence of bed bugs.

Sleep tight; don't let the evil motherf#$%ers bite

“Are there small specks of blood on the sheets,” she asked?

Yes.

“Do you see little black specks?”

Yes.

“Can you see the bugs? They’re like apple seeds in size and colour.”

No.

I checked the mattresses and not one was found.

“Check the box springs.”

Holy Mother of God! It was a colony. Several colonies. It was a bed bug New World in my house!

I had an answer. I was elated for one day and then I found out that they are incredibly hard to get rid of. If you miss just one pregnant female in your pest control efforts, you’re screwed. Adults can survive up to a year without a blood feed and females lay one or more eggs a day.

I was pining for scabies.

So, we were plunged into a (new) hell. Actually, I think I was the most plagued by this special kind of six-legged crazy. My husband kept his perspective. After all, he felt that after his heart troubles, this was bad but not that bad. For me, it was my tipping point into full-blown anxiety, which was further fuelled by insomnia.

We purged like crazy. It’s amazing how quickly you can declutter when you assess everything as a current or potential bug habitat. Ironically, before this whole drama, we had a blog entry from Penelope Trunk posted in our kitchen, called “5 steps to taming materialism” in which she described her own family’s experience with bed bugs.

It was a reminder of our pledge to have a small house but big adventures. What a load of crap that goal turned out to be. I tore that off the wall.

Because of my daughter’s asthma and her earlier exposure to harsh chemicals from the home refinishing and then the “scabies” treatment, we decided on the pesticide-free approach and worked with Evergreen Pest Control.

Of course, the plumbing goes to hell

It took herculean efforts of vacuuming and cleaning and caulking every baseboard, electrical outlet, everything. My friend Susan came over and helped out. She caulked and then parked herself in the backyard to steam clean the pieces of furniture that we decided to keep. What a hero. I wouldn’t have set foot in the place if I were her. Of course, her husband made her strip on the porch before entering her home. Lucky neighbours.

I even inspected my neighbour’s house because we were attached by a wall and the six-legged devil spawn can follow a wire or crack into another dwelling. The neighbour was in the clear.

For weeks, I cleaned for four or five hours a night (after returning home from work), until the sweat dripped off my head and exploded onto the floor. I’m sure all this was very slimming.

By day, I was a mild-mannered tech writer; by evening a panicky, maniacal cleaning woman.

And the laundry! Everything that was washed had to be run through again. And in keeping with our stroke of luck, our basement flooded.

The plumber ran a camera through the pipe and called us over to see how “not good” it looked. The drain vomited chunks of rusted out pipe and dirt when he pulled the cable out.

The old cast iron main sewer line rotted away and had to be replaced. This required chipping a channel through the cement floor in the laundry room and garage. Cost: $7,500.

Our garage floor was old and cracked, so we opted for replacement rather than patching.

But none of the companies we contacted wanted to dispose or remove the remaining concrete. Demolition sounded so appealing. My husband wasn’t well enough to do it, but I sure could. I rented a drill from Home Depot and tore out that concrete all by my-damn-self.

And I loved it. Even now, when things seem to be going badly, I fantasize about jackhammers and crowbars.

See also:

Part 3: Betting our hedge