Exhaustion

Tomorrow I have a sick day off.  I get paid for it.  I have exhaustion from this trial by bedbugs that has been afflicting me and my apartment these last three weeks or so.  The exterminator was here today to do follow up.  Apparently my unit is now bug free but he has warned me to take certain mysterious precautions for reasons he would not tell me (a trained entomologist as well as exterminator, there is apparently a lot of arcane knowledge about the dear little buggies that I do not know, cannot know, am not able to know, have never known, never will know, and likely would never want to know)  I arrived home from a meeting with a supervisor at work just in time to see my apartment door open and my building manager helping the exterminator tear my bed apart.  What a lovely sight to come home to.  I helped finish the job and listened with bemusement at some of his recommendations, given that my subsidized apartment is tiny and there is no room for the cushions that are on my bed except on my bed.

I am glad to report that last night, for the first time, I wasn't bitten.  I am still going to bed fully clothed for the next few nights and will be sleeping on top of the bed and not between the sheets.  It kind of sucks but if I do get bitten it just happens around my wrists and neck.  All going well I might return to sleeping normally by the weekend.

I have been feeling like a human buffet.  My sleep has been generally horrible and all the extra work of cleaning and sorting and dealing with things has added to my tiredness.  I have so far succeeded in not transferring my difficulties at work onto my clients.  I have also been very careful not to make my supervisor's life miserable for giving me the pencil crayons that one of our clients had found while dumpster diving without first disclosing to me where he had found them.  I might add here, Gentle Reader, that it was just a couple of days, if that, after bringing home the pencil crayons that little bugs began to appear in my suite, near the pencil crayons.  I didn't know they were bedbug larvae.  I didn't know anything in those days about bedbugs.  Now I know more than I'll ever want to.

I haven't had to work a lot today.  I had that one meeting with my supervisor who is also my supervisor's supervisor who very conveniently has been cancelling our meetings the last three weeks since learning that she had helped me get bedbugs.  At least I get paid for the cancellations, two hours
a pop.  After the exterminator left and I was able to put my apartment back to rights (he might have stayed behind long enough to help clean up the mess he'd made)  I had lunch and worked on an art project for work next fall, a series of art classes and presentations about the Group of Seven.  Then I went for a long walk and bought groceries.  While stopping at a produce market I noticed a baby unattended in a stroller out on the sidewalk.  While I was selecting fruit from the outdoor display I kept a careful eye.  There was no one present.  I went inside the store and asked the woman being waited on if that was her baby.  She said it was and she looked suddenly worried.  I said the kid was alright, and I was just concerned.  I didn`t have the heart to lecture her about child neglect so I stayed outside near the stroller, very slowly picking out fruit, keeping an eye on this baby whose stroller could easily have fitted through the door inside the store where she belonged with her mother.  One of the staff looked out for a few seconds to see that things were okay.  Once the mother came out-she had been in there for quite a long time- I felt I could go inside and pay for my purchase.  Maybe I should have said something.

I took the bus home and found that I only had enough energy to lie down and stare out into space while listening to the CBC.  I eventually did get up to write this blog and make supper and eat it.  Even though I am exhausted I still need to be taken care of and I still need to take care of someone so I have made that person to be taken care of myself and I am now feeling strangely and mysteriously fulfilled.  I look forward to doing very little tomorrow.