Imagination in overdrive...

is not a good thing - especially when it comes to things that creep, crawl or bite.  I went up to the management office to renew my lease today for another two years.  The new office staff is very nice; the old property manager was a sort of sissy guy who jumped back like a little girl when approached by a small terrier.  Can you imagine?  Anyhow, everything is computerized now and while Andy was entering my information in the computer, my nosy self saw a page entitled Bed Bugs.  Bed bugs!  The seed for a major freak-out had been planted.  Now my rational self knows that we have no bed bugs, fleas or pests of any sort in our apartment, but still...  I signed all the papers and as I was leaving, Andy said, "Oh, this is yours," and handed me a legal-size sheet of paper with the heading: BED BUGS - A Guide for Rental Housing Residents.  Yikes!  Maybe it's an epidemic I don't know about - I laughed and told him it would make a good blog post.  If anyone can make the topic of bed bugs amusing, it's me.  Then I got home and read the thing.  Apparently, bed bugs don't discriminate and can largely be attributed to a surge in international travel.  Fancy hotels have them!  They don't transmit disease, but they're nasty little biters.  The guide went on to provide information on identifying and locating the filthy beasts as well as how to prevent an alien encounter when traveling.  Just like when a vampire knocks at your door, don't invite a bed bug in.  Don't pick up furniture left at the curb - who does that anyway?  It's also not advisable to wait for these flesh-eating zombies to leave on their own - call a professional.  I see a movie here: Bed Bug Busters, starring Dan Ackroyd and David Spade.  Rated PG-13 for extreme violence and over-the-top innuendo from the short, smarmy guy.  Of course, none of this stopped me from thoroughly vacuuming the armchair I got from a pristine, spotlessly clean upscale home in Parrish a couple of months ago, even though there was no evidence of wear, let alone an insect infestation of any kind.  I checked the sofa and chair, the bed and the dog and cat.  No bugs, no fleas - nothing.  I threw the biohazard notice away and set about my business.

And then, while getting ready to go to a Christmas dinner party, I noticed a welt on my arm.  I had apparently been bitten or stung by something - assailant unknown.  It itched like crazy, so I cleaned it with an aloe wipe ("Wipe! Wipe!"), put some cortisone cream on the area, slapped a band-aid on top and off to dinner I went.  Not a good thing - not a good thing at all.  Band-aids and my ghost-like sensitive skin do not mix - and by the time I got home, the raised irritation from the supposedly latex-free bandage was worse than the bite.  Fortunately, the itching had subsided, but the sting site was plenty ugly.  Time to break out the benadryl, more cortisone cream - and something to take my mind off imagining that a lone bed bug had somehow sneaked in here to bite me on the arm in broad daylight.

I'll let you know how that goes...