O.K. before you start judging, let me explain that I have never written checks that I couldn’t cover before but desperate measures require desperate times and unfortunately, desperate thinking comes right along. Really though, I’m trying this new positive power of thinking thing everyone I hear WHO HAS MONEY talks about. So I’m trying to think optimistically that I will figure this one out like I’ve done so many and too many times before.
How did I get here????
You see my daughter and I just lost everything remotely familiar and of value to us. Wait, I take that back before all of you positive able to think clearly people with money start emailing me; we have each other, our health and this piece of crap Ford car that I made the mistake of leasing a few years ago (that’s a whole other blog but trust me unless you’re getting an old early edition mustang, don’t give Ford your money; both their cars and their service are the absolute worse). Back to how we loss everything. Believe it or not through a disgusting invasion of BUGS!!!!
At the end of June, my daughter and I moved into what appeared to be a big beautiful two bedroom apartment with living room, eat in kitchen and even a small space for an office. I had a nice cushion, so I thought, of money and bought wonderful new furniture as we never had anything really new or nice before. A single mother with no family and no child support (another blog, another day) money was always tight and well, I was always clever with a quarter in coming up with what we needed.
Sometimes I worked 2 or 3 jobs at once taking my daughter with me to my second and third jobs. Yep, just like a West Indian they would joke about on in Living Color or was that Saturday Night Live?hmmm…. I can’t remember now but anyway, I worked by day at my seemingly appropriate Corporate America job and then in the evenings I’d do customer service from 11pm – 6am while I made a padded bed of pillows and a comforter for my daughter on the floor so she could sleep and then on the weekends, not every weekend but at least twice out of the month, I’d do the hardest job, catering. My daughter came with me there too but damn that job was so hard. Carrying heavy pots of hot food, getting burned on occasion and worse no tip. I eventually became clever enough that I didn’t need that job anymore.
So we moved into this “picture” perfect apartment and then when the lights went out, oh my gosh!!! Bugs, bugs and then more freakin’ bugs!!! Bugs I had never even seen before or even had a name for where in this place. Within two short weeks, my poor daughter was covered in welts from what I learned to be BED BUGS after calling both the doctor and the Health Department repeatedly.
I was bitten too but had no physical reaction to the bites but mentally I was losing my mind. I still have these flinching bug seizures as I call them from time to time even now because I’ll think I see a bug out of the corner of my eye.
These nasty critters were not just satisfied in our new mattresses and pillows so they invaded our headboards, my daughter’s shoes in the closet, which we figured out only after her feet were bitten up terribly (that's one in her left shoe and for those of you who are a wee bit confused, that's HER LEFT, your RIGHT. And the nerve of those damn bugs, these were a pair of British designer's LuLu Guinness shoes! How dare they!!!!)
They invaded my favorite wicker chair from Italy and all of our new furniture; it included our new Crate & Barrel sofa, a leather loveseat with matching chair and ottoman, even framed artwork which took me years to pay the hundreds of dollars to get them each framed in the first place were now all ridden with bugs. These bugs took over our lives in a matter of a wink.
These suckers as they’re just that, they feed off of blood (unfortunately, I am now an official bed bug expert) even invaded my laptop. It crashed twice! Now it was officially war! My laptop was my sole means of getting money as I worked successfully for myself from home with an online retail store.
If you want to truly know how damaging both physically and emotionally these bugs are just go to http://www.youtube.com/ and type in bed bug. Click on the first BED BUG ATTACKS video and hold your stomach. It’s horrible and disgusting.
We instantly went from sleeping on new queen size beds to sleeping head to toe on the sofa which was now covered in four plastic shower curtains hoping the bugs didn’t crawl out and bite on us. We were told by the Health Department that it is difficult for the bugs to latch on to smooth surfaces. They were wrong!!!!
This place was so heavily infested that each night when we came in, I’d look on the sofa and see very faint red marks (the bugs are hardly noticeable until they find a host and start feeding– told you I’m an official expert now) and I’d have to wipe it clean with a piece of packaging tape to catch the nasty bastards. My daughter would never sleep at night and if she did ever fall asleep there, it was out of sheer exhaustion. If I went to sleep, it would be sitting straight up with my feet off of the ground because they would come out of the carpet at night and bite the crap out of my legs. It became regular practice that my daughter would only sleep in the car as I drove around sometimes aimlessly just to get away from the bugs.
Where’s the landlord in all of this??? Living off site near the water in a bed bug free condo. This woman when I confronted her had the audacity to admit she knew of the bed bug problem three months prior to us moving in. Yes, this horrible excuse of a human being knew of the problem and let us not only move in, but had her 90 year-old mother in the up stairs apartment bedridden with an aide watching over her also getting bitten. This woman was pure evil!!!! As Bernie Mac would say, "She must be a Shepherd for the Devil!"
I asked the aide one day if she also was aware of the problem and saying nothing, she just extended her arms to me showing me welts from her wrists to her upper arms. I hate to stereotype but this fool woman had to be illegal to this country as she told me in a thick accent, “I told her about these months ago.” I say she must be illegal because why in the hell, was she putting up with this?!!!!? Tell your agency you want another client and report the devil woman is what I’m thinking.
The evil woman comes by the next day after I complain to her and starts spraying pesticides like she’s a professional exterminator and very comfortable doing this as obviously she had done it before. Long story short both my daughter and I awoke the next day with diarrhea with my daughter vomiting too. That was it for me! I called the Health department yet again to find out what I already knew; we had inhaled too much of the pesticides is what they told me (you think). They continued truthfully that it would take a minimum of two but in this case probably three PROFESSIONAL (not Nasty Nancy the self-proclaimed exterminator) fumigations along with getting rid of all of our furniture including appliances. We would be at very high risk taking anything with us because these disgusting bugs can HIBERNATE up to 18 months in a piece of furniture, behind a picture, in an appliance without a host. Considering the current infestation and the damage already caused they strongly urged me to not take any of our belongings. I sadly agreed.
Could you believe this crap??? Just that quickly, in a matter of weeks my whole life changed. Not only did we lose all of our belongings we were only able to salvage some clothes only after washing them twice before going to our new place. Many of our clothes like our cashmere pieces ended up with holes from the pesticides and some I just saw bugs in and was like forget this, you win you can have it. I now have basically my whole wardrobe of clothes that could be saved in the dry cleaners now with a $500 bill because most of my items were dry clean only.
We drove away with 3 bins of clothes and my paperwork. My daughter cried when we realized her treasured softball mitts were infected and I couldn’t afford to get them professionally cleaned so we left them behind along with a stuffed animal from her new and first boyfriend. Memories and money were flying out of the window.
For obvious reasons we couldn’t eat in the apartment, not so much because of the bugs but the pesticides. I mentioned I worked for myself selling high-end clothing online, between the bugs invading my inventory and then them causing my laptop to crash, work was on hold. One, I couldn’t work without a laptop and two, I have a conscience and couldn’t risk infecting someone else’s home. Thank goodness for that cushion of money. WRONG!!! All of that coupled with having to find a new place to live, which required now another month’s security and another month’s rent well that three months safety cushion they say you should have disappeared before my eyes.
I’m currently taking the shepherd for the devil to Civil Court as I loss everything and she refuses to file a homeowner’s insurance claim and I unfortunately, didn’t have renter’s insurance. $22,000 worth of damages. All gone in an instant.
It will be 6-8 months before we even get a court date and that’s long money as they say. It’s not guaranteed I’ll ever recoup it all or any and no matter what it doesn’t even cover the emotional damages or the scars that still cover my daughter’s body from the bites and my bug flinching seizures.
I had to make a fast decision and get us out immediately because like I said, money was flying out of the window. With my income on hold, I had to weigh do we risk going into another place by a private owner giving two months security even though it’s against the law but private owner’s could care less and would it be bug free? Do I pay an astronomical fee to a realtor anywhere from $1,200 -$2,300 for the average rental fees here in New York City or do I find a new clean apartment in a well managed building and pay the one month rent and security with amenities out the ass??? I chose the latter and my ass is severely hurting now.
After exhausting all of my savings and resources that we had left, we now live in a studio with an echoing because it’s empty except for our three bins and our futon. We shared an air mattress up until a few days ago when an agency donated a $300 gift card to us after I sought help and so we upgraded to the futon. I much prefer waking up to the metal rod of the futon in my back because as much as I love my daughter, waking up face-to-face basically kissing her because each morning the air mattress would be sunken in the middle was killing my back even more. The futon is also so much warmer, the air mattress seemed to absorb the cold of the wood floor and we would be freezing as the weather has changed here in New York and our new fleece blanket I bought us just didn’t keep us warm enough. We lost all of our new bedding including my new down comforter to the bugs.
Now more than ever I have to be clever with a quarter. I found out that there is no help for people who get invaded by bugs. Help organizations and I use that term “help” loosely only help if you experience a loss from flood or fire. Although the end result is the same, you lose everything and need to start over, there really isn’t any help.
I met with one agency on Monday who offered to only give us help if we would share our story with the NY Times so they could get publicity in hopes to bring in more money for their agency and then they could help more people. In exchange for our story, we would receive a new bed. They told us they don’t normally help people like us (people like us, hmmmm would that be people in need) but strangely enough they do help people who are on public assistance or receiving some kind of aid. Did I mention this was a “charitable” organization? My daughter quickly responded to the woman at the organization, “So you won’t help us unless we give a story so you can hopefully get more money to help other people who are already receiving HELP!” If only you could have seen this woman’s face when my daughter said that. I love that little girl! In any event, the woman very uncomfortably responded, “Well you’ll get a bed.”
So basically, no story, no help and OK maybe I wasn’t thinking so clearly or perhaps I’m not as desperate as I thought because I declined their offer and decided to suffer a bit longer on the futon with the metal in my back until I figure out this mess.
Now, I must say though in my tiresome search to find help and as one agency passed me on to the next agency, we came across the Tzu Chi Foundation http://www.tzuchi.org/ They are a Buddhist privately run true “charitable” organization. God bless these people. I spoke with them only one time and they came right over to visit us. They neither judged, inquired in such a way that I felt it was too intrusive or hesitated because within one day they called and returned with a gift of a $300 debit card to use as needed. No social security number to be given out, no demeaning questions, no overbearing paperwork just well wishes and a gift card. I swear when I get out of this mess I will without hesitation donate to this organization.
In the past I have become the ultimate coupon queen getting $200 worth of groceries for as little as $20 and then reselling them out of the trunk of my car to the local bodegas and small grocery stores for a great profit to make ends meet. I’ve sold items on eBay and became a Power Seller in just months and I’ve even worked odd jobs while giving my nine-to-five to corporate America.
This time I think it is more than a challenge because well for starters, there is no 9-5 currently and I can’t interview because my suits are all in the cleaners. I could see it now. Sitting on an interview and saying, "Please forgive me for showing up in my jeans and my daughter's hoodie today. You see bugs invaded my wardrobe and they just loved my new Chaiken suit so much I had to wear this instead."
I’ve exhausted all of my resources and lastly, I can’t quite catch a good night’s rest because the metal rod just doesn’t quite hug me at the night quite like I would like to be held so needless to say, I’m grumpy in the mornings. So yes, this is a challenge but I think it will be quite interesting to see how the hell I get out of this mess and figured I’d take you all on my journey.
Each day, I’ll blog and we’ll see just how Clever with a Quarter I really am :o)
email reasonsandmore@hotmail.com
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