"Bedbugs and Ballyhoo"

Okay, there are 'bedbugs' and there are proper BUGS in ones BED. I've got the latter.

It's rather disconcerting because I'm lying here beside a gently snoring husband, and I'm too scared to turn off the lights because this random assorted collection of BUGS just keep appearing on the sheets from nowhere it seems.

The last one was a smallish oval Beetle type creature with tiny legs and a greyish body. The one before that looked like a miniature Disney creature - all purple and green with a square head, proper blinking eyes and wings. I fully expected it to break into song and start buzzing about my head in a choreographed dance of some sort.

Given the frequency with which we wash our sheets (an exercise in futility - or optimism, depending on how you look at it) I certainly wouldn't be surprised to find a whole eco system lurking beneath the microscope, were I ever to garner enough courage to train it on our bed (ever seen the movie "Horton Hears A Who?"). However it's one thing to turn a blind eye to creatures that we are literally too 'blind' to see...but another to actually lie here in the dark, freaked out, feeling my skin prickle with the subtle sensation of a winged - or strictly earthbound - creature alighting upon my limbs.

(Limbs which are now hyper-sensitive due to the coating of tiny fine blond hairs which have now taken up residence on my previously hairless body. You see I haven't been back to see my 'amazing' waxer 'Kemy' ever since I noticed these little blond hairs. I am almost convinced that the potion she slathered on me at the end of my session contained some sort of Indian Ayervedic mix of herbs guaranteed to make me a future frequent and regular customer. It's my own little conspiracy theory I have going....head to head with the opposing theory that perhaps my current outbreak of superfine hairs is down to me stubbornly refusing to bin - and subsequently bringing on this trip and using religiously down to the last drop - a REALLY expired (i'm talking at least 6 years here) tube of 'No-Grow Hair Stop Cream" which has likely been rendered so ineffective so as to produce the opposite effect. But I digress. As usual.)

Anyway, I am currently sequestered here in a room with a barely functioning fan and a single bulb giving off the kind of glow one might find in a $20 hotel room deep in the bowels of New York City. I know this you see because the husband and I once had the pleasure of staying in one such room many years ago. I remember we had to position the waste bin on a table to catch drips from a mystery leak above, and drank Coors Light Beer whilst watching "The Wizard of Oz" on a small black and white telly and listening to the chaotic street below.

Surveying our room, it doesn't feel like we've come up very far in the world.

And you see, I can't sleep because I lie here trying to imagine whether it's just a slight breeze from the fan I feel....or a genuine bonafide creepy-crawlie.

And what if it bites me?

Not that I'm any stranger to biting. The other day Dumpie had his first ever bite of Nutella and toast....LOVED it (of course)...then proceeded to take his next, frenzied bite directly from my poor thumb which had the misfortune to be holding this delicious chocolate treat too close to his gaping jaws. I screamed. The toast went flying and landed face down on his favourite picture book. Dumpie started wailing. And my thumb went entirely numb before beginning the throbbing which would continue unrelentingly for the next hour or so.

I guess the thing is, if one type of critter doesn't get you, the other will.