HAS THE NIGHTMARE COME TO AN END?!

Holy balls guys –

I know I’m a few days late on my debt update for Oct. 1st, (not that it’s too exciting anyway) but I will post an update right after this post, I promise! 🙂

Anyway, for those of you that know how my life was going as of mid-week last week, it didn’t get much better after that, haha. I won’t whine about it like in my last post, but I did want to share my horror-movie awakening from an already bad dream I had yesterday to show you how the bad-luck streak (hopefully) ended.

We went to bed after getting home at about 2 am from Traverse City – Cody had a golfing trip up in Mackinac that his buddy won from a benefit dinner, and invited him – and I dipped into a nightmare.

It was a trippy nightmare, with a video-game like twist (I don’t play video games…). I was placed in these ‘worlds’ where I had to make it to the end without dying, but it was set-up at the beginning against me, in favor of failure. In one world, I already had my guts ripped out by zombies before starting the level, and had to make it to the end without being eaten again? Doesn’t seem fair to me – Jeesh! In another level, it was a maze that was damn impossible. I tried about forty times and died by bee stings, being mauled by a T-Rex, shot in the head – among other horrifying deaths. Then, I tried to be smart and start the level off going backwards instead of forwards, and found this hidden entryway into a building with exit signs painted on the walls. I should have taken that as a sign of a sneak-attack, but I thought I was the world’s biggest genius for finding the way out. Instead, I was greeted with a pack of wolves that made me dinner.

I woke up to a thump on my head – a hard thump.  We have a “And they lived Happily Ever After” sign that is above our bed above the window, propped up against the wall, (we were too lazy to nail it down) and that’s what bonked me in the noggin. It’s fallen before, just never while we were sleeping, so at first I just chalked it up to my crappy week’s luck. I was rubbing it, when I felt a bug crawl across my face. I flung it off, thinking it was a fly, or (God-forbid) a spider, but didn’t freak out too much. I mean, was 5 am and I was exhausted from only getting three hours of sleep and dealing with that horrid nightmare. I felt another, and flung it off again. Hmm, maybe it was the same darn fly? My head hurt though, really bad- so Cody turned on the light to check on me.

“Renee, MOVE.”

And that’s when I turned around and saw it. Or should I say THEM. HUNDREDS of stink bugs, everywhere. On my head, on the walls, on the bed. I screamed so loud and for so long I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t call the cops.I know stink bugs are not a threat to humans, but the sight of that was HORRIFYING (and disgusting). THE BUGS CONGREGATED and clustered so much that THEY pushed the picture off the wall onto my head, and then scurried everywhere. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I could barely see my wall or pillow.

Cody grabbed the shop-vac from downstairs and vacuumed them all up, which took forever since there were so many. We tore apart our bed, took down other pictures in the room, (where a few more were hiding) and barricaded ourselves out on our small living room couch. I would have never guessed in a million years they were behind there. Our room is spotless, with barely anything in it (I’m trying to become a minimalist, even though I’ve slacked on those posts as well..)

There have been a lot of them outside our house and a few buggers inside, but once they ‘disappeared’ I figured they went back to hell where they belonged, like the mosquitoes. I researched them yesterday and found out they try to look for a place to cluster and spend the winter.

“The brown marmorated stink bug is more likely to invade homes in the fall than others in the family.^[7] The bug survives the winter as an adult by entering houses and structures when autumn evenings become colder, often in the thousands. In one home more than 26,000 stinkbugs were found overwintering.^[8] Adults can live from several months to a year.^[9][10] They will enter under siding, into soffits, around window and door frames, chimneys, or any space which has openings big enough to fit through. Once inside the house, they will go into a state of hibernation. They wait for winter to pass, but often the warmth inside the house causes them to become active, and they may fly clumsily around light fixtures.”

We tore apart our entire house yesterday, and took everything off the walls. We didn’t find any others anywhere else. It’s weird that they would choose our bedroom, it’s the coldest room in the entire house! We figured there must be a hole or crack or something letting them in, so we covered the windows and fixed anything we found.

Let’s just say it was hard to sleep in there last night. Every heeby-jeeby feeling I got of a bug crawling on me, I felt was real.

Anyway – this morning has been great so far. I’ve been SUPER productive on orders, promoting, blogging – I even worked out! All before 10 am. So I’m hoping that this is the beginning of something… ANYTHING will be better than last week. Last week tested my sanity in so many ways, I almost lost my mind and my fight against my inner demons multiple times. But good will persevere! Here’s to a GOOD MONDAY EVERYONE! (If those exist). 😉