A Day in the Life 2: PRICEY the Unicorn
Monday, July 11th 2022
Because things aren’t normally hectic enough. This weekend we had a bed bug scare in my kid’s room. We went to the County Fair about a week ago and “won” my kid a $60 unicorn which I rightfully named PRICEY. For future reference, find a way to distract the kid when the guy at the booth pulls you aside and says, “You sure bro?” Anyways, the kid was happy, and it ended up on the bed w/ 900 other stuffed animals. So a couple of days later, the kid has bite marks all over her body. Damnit! Didn’t even think about putting the damn thing in the washer! That’s dumb. The unicorn is traveling all over the place and sitting in a storage facility where all kinds of creepy, crawly freeloaders can hop on and get a free ride.
So here I am stripping the bed, putting things in plastic bags, using the biggest, brightest flashlight I have, Google open obviously, searching for signs of bed bugs. If you’ve never had a bed bug scare, these things are devious little bastards about the width of a credit card and can fit just about anywhere on or around the bed. They are stealthy, and vicious, and breed faster than rabbits. And they spread. Needless to say, I'm not feeling great right now about Dadding.
Just a couple of days before, we had a COVID exposure at work, so the week had already been out of sorts. The good news is that after three different tests, I wasn’t positive but ⅓ of the staff was positive so had to close down the studio to prevent any further exposure for two days. Not happy about that either and I’m feeling really out of sorts. Work is really important to me and we have a lot of people relying on us so it’s rough when I feel like I’m not creating and maintaining the atmosphere of success for people to level up.
Back to stripping the bed and searching the kid’s room like a forensic expert on a murder case. Everything has to be washed. There goes the rest of the day. Luckily we made this decision to do the deep check around 10:30 am but that kills any chance of quality family time outside and gets replaced by the tablet and Disney+. We did make it w/o watching any Frozen-related animations; small victories. It’s hard not to be lazy in that situation. The kid is entertained, it lets you deal with the stressor and brings the intensity down. Still not how I’d ideally like to spend my only true day off with the fam though.
By the end of the day, the important stuff is cleaned, we’re putting the bed back together and, most importantly, we have not spotted one bed bug. Must have been a lone hitchhiker on PRICEY the Unicorn, who has been thoroughly washed at this point. The problem now is after getting the kid down and settling, it’s 8:30 pm and well past the time to get anything additionally done. I don’t have any food for next week, my work bag is not prepped, and I didn’t get any meaningful activity to move my fitness goals forward. Not a great way to end the week but hopefully tomorrow will be better and I’m still motivated. ‘Take Imperfect Action’ is my mantra.
