NO Again the LICE NOooooooooo

Last year around this time we got a call from the school nurse that the girls had lice.

This was OHMYGODNOOOOO the worst thing ever EW EW EW a new challenge for us, but we burned everything calmly and methodically took care of the problem.  There was a lot of laundry and cleaning and combing for nits.  It was a nightmarish schedule crippling disaster time consuming and inconvenient, but we took care of it.  I figured we'd had our encounter with lice and we could cross that off our life list of gross things many families deal with.

But then this year the itching started. 

A (Dwindling) Crisis of Lice

We seem to have gotten the lice situation under control.  Thanks to everyone who contacted me with advice and sympathy.  Somehow the infestation was contained to just Mona and Aden and I never saw a live louse.  Many dead lice went down the drain after we rinsed out the medicated shampoo, and I've done several thorough combings and seem to have gotten all the eggs.  We have washed many things and bagged the rest for storage in the garage until next month.  (I might slap bows on all those bags of stuffed animals and let the kids reopen them on Christmas.)

Now we're in a routine of prevention where every morning the girls use a lice repelling shampoo and I go over their heads carefully with the nit comb.  (We got Quinn's head a buzz cut which he needed anyway and he looks adorable like he's freshly hatched.)  All kids are back in school.  No one is itchy.

I'm actually feeling like we got off fairly easy.  (I should be knocking on wood or something about now, shouldn't I?  Eh.  It's jinxy but I am going to keep typing anyway.) 

LICE! (Ewwwww!)

I have so much to write about.  I'm suffering a massive case of the Journal Paradox right now.

But the half dozen posts I started all got shoved aside with everything else in my life after a call from the school nurse saying Mona had lice.  Which means Aden had lice.  (Quinn, for reasons unknown, did not have lice.)  Amazing how that kind of brings everything to a halt and makes your world all about laundry and hair washing.

I don't even have enough energy to go into any real detail because I am so tired after a full day of stripping sheets and bagging stuffed animals and going through my kids' heads with a nit comb.

I will say, however, that I felt whatever instinct I posses as a primate assert itself while working on Mona's head this afternoon.  Despite being grossed out over washing lice out of my daughter's hair, something about carefully combing through small sections of her scalp felt natural.  I did not eat what I found like a monkey or a chimp would, but I got the appeal of the activity.  It was strangely enjoyable literally nit picking with Mona.  (Less so with Aden who has much longer and impossibly tangled hair.  The knots were more frustrating than the nits.)

So I am going to sleep and try not to dream of lice or nits or fine toothed combs.  And if I'm crazy lucky tomorrow I may even get to tackle writing about my mom's birthday or taking the kids to see an opera or how my brother and his daughter were stranded here due to the hurricane. 

(Lice!  Ewww Ewwww EW!)