night night sleep tight

well i suppose it had to happen eventually. bedbugs. saturday morning i woke up with bites all across my shoulders and arms. in the early hours of sunday morning i actually felt the biting and put the light on to find two or three of these little blighters happily cavorting on my pillow and in the bedclothes, after a tasty supper of me. wide awake now, frantic searching revealed four or five more including some babies. cute eh. i gave them all a good blast of insect repellant and watched with a sort of horrified glee as they slowly curled up, then stretched out, and then died.

i have bites on my hands, face, neck and feet now too. also they are probably living in my luggage. i put it all through the tumble dryer set to very hot for half an hour -- but i wouldn't be surprised if they somehow lived through it. apparently they can live for up to *a year* then come out and get right back into sucking blood.

in other news, i was shocked to read today that 22 people were killed in a tornado in kentucky and indiana on sunday. it seems nearby (although it's not: 500 miles or thereabouts) because we *weren't* that far from there, only a couple of weeks ago. travelling has made the world smaller already.

also, i'm starting to get heartily sick of rich white self-obsessed shallow privileged college kids. charleston is definitely a beautiful town. but the 'college town' thing is even more sickening here, in a place with a lot of poverty, and a very blatant black/white divide. it appears to me, against my expectations, that america has bigger class divides than britain. perhaps because i'm confusing wealth with class.