New Year...The Laundry List

Happy New Year! It's a new year, a fresh start and even perhaps there is something changing in your life.  And yet, I feel as rundown as I did last January as eachumbilical cord y brought new drama to life. Let's start with the here and the now.
I am sleeping on an air mattress which is slowly reaching the cold tile floor as air is escaping from an unknown source. The cold tile floor belongs to my dear and best friend who thinks its warm in her apartment. Aleshia is curled into heras se here.self on a chair in three layers of clothes and jackets. My tool bag is at my head waiting for 730 am when we embark on  the journey of working for myself instead of corporate giants and stockholders. Aleshia is the one on the right in the picture. Her dearest wino friend, Cynthia is sitting at our kitchen table for a smoke break.  We have just spent the last two hours moving and cleaning for the bed bug  treatment on the 10th.
In the last week I have cried, cussed, bitched, moaned and prayed my way through mattress throwing, laundry by the ton and expensive pest control.
On a positive note my wife and I have launched our new business with a great buddy of mine and this pest problem is giving us the motivation for organizing our house.

Ben, our new business partner calls it the Bank of Karma. He is also found of saying I am more apt to make deposits into the bank so that any withdrawals don't leave me with a negative balance. Interesting way to see things but I am still asking myself "Are bed bugs a withdrawal??"
I am known for taking a negative and seeing a positive through the murky waters of the abysmal happenings in life. And my first reaction was action, hence my yard now appearing to be the new city dump. My second reaction was to clean....everything. Then the phone calls to everyone who showed up on Christmas day for Aleshia's famous raspberry ham.
Here's what I told the lucky recipient:
"Hi ..... I am calling you because we discovered bedbugs last night in our bedroom and our couch. Yes I know this is completely disgusting and I am sorry to have to call you with such creepy news. Its like calling everyone you had sex with becuase you have an std."

 I usually get a laugh at this juncture. The next conversation is how and who brought them over. Which prompts the discussion about my stepson and his fiance and their inability to conform to normal social standards. 

After the first or tenth time he lies or she lies we find ourselves questioning our own enabling behavior. There comes a moment when you have to decide to cut the umbilical cord and pray for sanity to return. When kept us in the game so long was the little ones whom we fell head over heels in love with. Our first grandchildren and although you know people can use children as weapons against you, there is this thought in the back of our minds that maybe, just maybe this isn't the case here.

We were mistaken and $2000 later we are dropping off all of their belongings.  Statingour boundaries concerning their hygeine and the ramifications of their actions on the little ones. Now this has been an ongoing battle for a year and a half, which for me was a year to long. When the appointed day arrives for their apartment to launch pest control we are told they didnt show up. Hmmm so i am supposed to sit back and say oh wel m you tried? Bullshit and thats what i sId, then i picked up the phone and made calls. 

Now I am qquickened out of my house mulling over the bank of karma that my friend Ben refers to, the air mattress is lower and the tile floor feels like a glaciar. And I ask the cold, dark room what do I see in this?

My answer comes quickly as we spent a few days talking about our business ideas and how we need to really get organized. The check list for bed bug treatment is to bag everything, throw away what cab be tossed, wash what needs to be washed and prepare each room for extermination. We have a five bedroom storage house with remodeling projects going on in three rooms. Guess I can rip out the carpet in those other two...

so the positive is we asked for the time and energy for reorganization and we got a lost job and bedbugs.

Its not that I think god isn't responding to our thoughts and prayers....it has more to do with the way she gets my attention. So bedbugs are awithdrawal and a deposit into the bank of karma. Here's to hoping its a wash.