Traveling Challenges

For me, and many others, traveling isn’t what it used to be… There once was a time when people dressed up to travel in an airplane, and there was ample leg room and space to walk about. Well, there also was a thin veil of a curtain to separate the smoking section, so let’s rejoice the appreciation for clean air together. 

There also was once a time when you didn’t optionally wear a face mask to prevent airborne illness transmission, or worry about bringing home unwelcome hitchhikers like bed bugs. They are worldwide now and have no preference for your wealth status, resort, b&b, hotel or motel. They can be found at exclusive resorts, local hotels, on commuter trains, and gym locker rooms. A hotel worker once said that in any given month they usually have a whole block of rooms out of commission getting treated for bed bugs.  They reproduce quickly, and are amazingly efficient in feeding and disappearing quickly, while you are asleep, so this makes them very difficult to eradicate as they often are hiding in the walls or hard to see places. While you are most vulnerable, they come for you. That can be very discomforting to come to terms with. 

Bed Bugs – What to Look for:

• Fecal matter looks like Ink stains (looks like someone made dots with a black felt tip pen) on the mattress, box spring, sheets, pillows, bed skirt. These ink stains are the black tar fecal of the bed bug. The stains do not come out in the laundry. 
• Eggs that look like large white or orange rice shapes in crevices, between mattress and frame, behind couch cushions, chairs, or anyplace near the bed/living quarters. Eggs may also look like sesame seeds behind and in framed artwork on the wall in car seat cushions. 
• Bugs. Reddish brown to darker brown, these may look like an apple seed, flax seed, and come in small sizes from 1/8th” to 1/4″ big adults. They run FAST across the floor or bed if you happen to turn on the light.  They cannot not flip over if they fall on their back. For actual sizes see EPA.

There is no life, without death, and we must draw a line in safe boundaries for all life forms to flourish.

When You Have Them

1. Hire an eco friendly pest exterminator. There are pet safe sprays and there are room heaters. Both are effective, while some say heaters are best. You can try to do this all on your own, but you may be fighting an army and the commercial sprays you buy at the hardware store simply do not work.
2. Use 90% isopropyl alcohol spray to kill the bugs and eggs. You can spray anything – clothing seams, sheets, blankets, luggage, anything. It dries fast and is effective. This is not an instant solution – but is effective until you get treatment. Any less concentration will not work.
3. Vacuum daily and empty vacuum immediately to outside trash. You must be thorough and do baseboards, under and behind bed, mattress seams, closets in bedroom…it’s exhausting.
4. Hand held steamers, like Bissels model, are helpful to steam your pillows and mattress daily.
5. Pack all clothing and bedding into plastic bags or bins and take to the commercial washers. Only HOT water and HOT dryers will eliminate bed bugs – residential washers and dryers do not get hot enough.
6. Check all the floors and bedding each morning for fresh eggs. Use shipping tape rolled up to pick up the eggs – you can spray them with alcohol first.
7. Close all the gaps in floorboards and ceilings to minimize bugs from traveling to and from other households in shared living places.
8. Consider seeing a therapist. It takes time to recover from this trauma and often it wakes up earlier trauma in your life. You may feel phantom itching weeks afterwards, and be hyper alert with sleep issues.

You suffer, I suffer, therefore we must be friends.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

May no one experience bed bugs, ever again.

Loss and Life

I deeply prayed for all people to never get bed bugs.

Sometimes you have to purge items that are heavily infected. In our situation that meant our mattress, box spring, couch, zafu & zabuton (meditation cushions), yoga mat, rugs. These items were so infected with young that we couldn’t clean them enough before the professional treatment arrived.

I became heavily aware of the privilege to be able to safely discard these items. I heard first hand from a Buddhist friend who grew up in Nepal who lived with bed bugs in their concrete home as normalcy like we might live with mosquitos. Except, you can hear a mosquito, and you don’t hear bed bugs. I heard first hand from an immigrant who threw away their mattress in the night and had nothing to replace it for him and his daughters.

My heart grew heavy with these stories, and yet I felt lighter with shedding excesses as I didn’t stop at these items and took the opportunity to purge many more items. I discarded all old artworks, book binding papers, my baby items I had been carrying for all these years. It started a wave of cleaning up clutter that was liberating. The less you have, the less you have to clean. I don’t have much, we live with a small footprint, in an apartment. I generally have to live with the rule of limiting what I live with due to space limitations = one in<one out. Some items are necessity, and some are excess that can be shared.

It started a wave of cleaning up clutter that was liberating.

I know that Buddhism teaches us that the less we have the more freedom we have. When we can be unattached, we have less suffering. I am aware of my attachments and navigate how firm my grip is on them. That’s the true key, can you let it go and trust something will replace it? This is the most difficult with people and animals. We love deeply and when it is gone we ache.