Shitshow.

Whoa, hey. I'm back?

Guess what happened to me? Sit down, and buckle in, cuz this is a long one...

Let's go back to early August. I'm super pregnant and super pissed about it, specifically, 4 days overdue. I can barely walk, can't sleep, can't eat, can't form rational thoughts... mamas, you know the drill.

Hubby is unloading something from the car, and he has some chit chat with one of the neighbors. He comes to me and says "So I guess the reason why all that furniture was left on the deck next door under that tarp is that they had bed bugs in there". I'm like.. eww.. gross.. and start googling. After reading a little while, panic sets in. I saw one of the bugs in our house a few weeks earlier. After reading even further I determine that I had gotten 3 bites around the same time that I saw the bug. After doing this research I am seriously freaked out, knowing what a problem bed bugs can be if you get them. I am about to have a baby and god knows I do NOT want to bring him home to this.

Now, this place we had been living in, it had always been a bit of a shithole. We are a young family with one income and it is hard to find places to rent in our budget, so we put up with it. We lived in a townhome attached to a row of 5 other townhomes, with an identical building next to it. Every unit had families in it, and while I am not making a judgement on them, it was a low income neighborhood and we all know what that can be like sometimes. The landlord had never been attentive, issues abounded. The heat was cut off at least 10 times in the 2.5 years we lived there, and once the water. He would never answer his phone. Every unit had some sort of issue, like broken stuff or mold.

Over the summer they had decided to move every one's waste bins from next to their doors to the outer wall of the building. Consequently, the outer wall of my home. Accountability was gone and garbage began to pile up. It was HOT HOT HOT, so you can imagine the stink. The stink was coming through my walls, and my unit was filling with flies. Said inattentive landlord had of course also built a really crappy set of buildings, and they were not very sealed off to bugs. Wait - bugs? Oh shit.. bugs. And guess what had happened to all of the garbage left by the next door neighbors when they jumped ship? It was left all along my outer wall, front wall, and on their deck. When I found out about the bed bugs it was two weeks after they had left, that stuff had been there for TWO.WHOLE.WEEKS.

So now, I'm really panicking. I send a facebook message to another neighbor (on the other side of the bedbug unit) and ask her if she knew what was going on. She comes over and fills me in - boy did she ever fill me in! It turned out that the infestation next door was so bad that an exterminator had been in three times (oh and I was pregnant next door and they didn't tell me) and the bugs were still not gone, so the people moved out and abandoned all of their belongings. So now I know the full story, and I'm super pissed/freaking out. I started calling IRAC and environmental health and filing complaints and trying to find out what my options were.

At first Matt thought I was being a bit paranoid, but he believed me soon enough, and we decided we had to leave. Our rent had yet to be cashed, so I moved the funds out of my account. I called the building manager after receiving a nasty facebook message about how dare I call environmental health, etc.. told him that I was moving and taking my rent with me. He agreed to have our unit professionally inspected and luckily we had no bugs, but it was clear that they were not making the proper effort to set the state of the buildings right and never would. I was devastated, because I had spent my pregnancy (and quite a bit of money) re-doing the boys' rooms. I was looking forward to coming home to a nest all ready for baby.






Luckily enough, the timing was very serendipitous. Matt's cousin had just bought a house and was vacating her rental property, and we were able to snag it before it was even advertised. Even better was the fact that the place was awesome... a house! With lots of space for us in a quiet neighborhood - it even had a yard. Best of all our rent would even be a bit cheaper.

Three days after finding out about the bugs, I was induced and gave birth. I already had the house 30% packed up, thanks to hard work, friends, and a wonderful husband. My labour was really smooth and we were blessed with a very sweet little bundle. I came home from the hospital to a living hell of boxes, daily harassment from the landlord/building manager, and investigating every tiny spot to make sure it wasn't a bug. I 'recovered' from delivery while not sleeping and spending every spare moment packing, sometimes with the help of friends and family. Ten days after the birth, we moved.






Because of how quickly we moved, and how much was going on, I didn't even think of my utilities until it was too late. My power took four days to be hooked up, and my internet took twenty. Because people helped us pack, I had no idea where most of my things were. I lost my etsy business completely due to things being packed instead of sent and then having no internet to communicate with my buyers.

So now, just over a month since the move, life is starting to fall back into place. We are mostly unpacked, and picking up the pieces of our life. I am back to blogging as of today, and hopefully in the next few months I can get my business together too. All in all, things are good, and if not good - on their way.