Annus Horribilis, Annus Mirabilis, Annus Shamus

For all our viewers at home, I have an announcement. We have word from the pressbox -- it's official. Things have gotten ugly around here.
--Imagined witticism by Bookfraud while announcing a Cubs game

Thought you'd gotten rid of me, didn't you? Thought you'd seen the last of Bookfraud, that snarky, cynical, sarcastic, nasty bit of unpleasantness delivered to your computer screen once or twice a week? You didn't think I was going to post again, and you celebrated by pulling down my statue in the square of your hometown, didn't you?

Sorry to disappoint.

I thought it might come to pass, as well. If I can't make it more plain, my life just sucks right now. Majorly, bitterly, totally sucks. The last thing I've been desirous of doing is sharing the suckiness with others, "others" being you unfortunates who have wandered here after Googling "Joshua Bell gy."

If you have not suffered the plague of bedbugs, it is hard to convey just what kind of hell this has made my life -- Wife's especially. All of our possessions, clothing included, are in storage or packed in Hefty garbage bags. We have had to leave the apartment overnight six times for spraying. Our free time is taken up with cleaning, washing, and fighting.

We can't have visitors, nor can we visit others' homes. Wife is at home with Baby every weekday, and is stuck there. Taking him outside entails an elaborate procedure with bags and clothes and coverings that resembles brain transplant surgery.

You know things are bad when you watch someone on television lose their home and possessions in a act of Mother Nature, and say, "I guess things could be worse."

Wife and I have not weathered this particularly well. Our tempers are short, our fights close to the surface. We disagree about how to handle the problem, which leads to low-grade arguments (can't upset Baby) that resolve nothing. This is all compounded by the fact Wife is getting bitten but not me, creating a he said-she said tension about the prevalence of the problem.

I suffer from periodic bouts of depression, of which this condition of insects has just exacerbated to the knife-point of suicide. I find comfort in things predictable, reliable: music, sex, Jackie Chan movies, fried food, carbohydrates. But this feeling of dread (of which Wife suffers exponentially) won't fade no matter how many bacon-double cheezeburgers I eat while watching "Drunken Master II" and enjoying the company of a comely, naked co-ed. (None of which is happening -- cholesterol too high for a burger, all my tapes and DVDs are in storage, and...and...).

I loathe talking to friends, because I know bedbugs were all I'm going to talk about. And I've loathed the idea of blogging, because I knew bedbugs were all I was going to talk about.

If I were to summarize 2007, it veered from annus horribilis (surgery) to annus mirabilis (baby) back to annus horribilis (bedbugs). All in all, a pain in the annus.

Wow. I feel better already.