Wednesday, July 13, 2011

When I was young I would watch Degrassi and be completely in love with Liz O'Rourke. Her hair, shaved crown with the rest long and straight, was inspiring to me. Since watching her I wanted nothing more than to shave my head, or at least part of it. So now, many, many years later I have done just that. I shaved one side of my head. I took it one step farther and tattooed it as well.

The tattoo, in honesty, was not the most painful one to get, and it is less of a big deal, to me, than the shave job. It feels rather strange...my head is kinda cold, but the hair falls against my scalp differently and it tickles. I am so happy that I have *finally* done it.


Sunday, May 1, 2011

Tiny Invaders

Two weeks ago my husband went away for a week for work, and thanks to the schedules kept around here with work and child extra-curriculars we decided that the oldest girl, Banana, would go and spend the week at her friends house with whom she goes to school with and attends the same outside school functions. On the Thursday she came by my office to see if she could spend one more night at her friends house. I had mixed feelings about this, I missed her, I wanted her home to spend some time with me before her dad came home and monopolized all of her time so I told her that I would see what her sister said. If Jelly wanted one more night with just me then we would not force Banana to come home. Jelly missed her sister almost as much as me so in the end Banana came home.

A few hours later I had got them settled into bed when Banana came out of my room, where she insisted on sleeping, complaining that her head was itchy. I had figured that perhaps her hair had been in a ponytail for too many hours and she just needed a bit of a head massage. I was quite surprised to see her head covered by little invaders. I will admit I was not just surprised by freaked right out. I am not normally squeemish about bugs, but they do not belong on people. We then spent the next hour and a half combing through her hair with the school-issued lice comb. Perhaps this is where I mention that her hair is down to her waist.

When I was done I went into the bedroom and check Jelly’s hair and did not see any lice, which made me somewhat relieved. I still called the houses of where they had both been during the week and let them know what was happening at our house. I dutifully kept them out of school on Friday to keep them from giving them to the other kids in their classes. We had done a second full comb through on both their heads in the morning where Jelly turned up with four, and again that evening and I was satisfied that that were no more lice left.

This is where the real battle began. The lice themselves were relatively easy to get rid of. That Friday was the last I saw of actual lice. The nits however, I was literally picking them out of their hair for two weeks. Everyday before bed we would sit down and while they watched television I combed through their hair with that useless lice comb looking for nits and pulling them out with my fingernails. We tried to oil them out, vinegar them out, lotion and excess amounts of conditioner. The girls were tolerant of it the first few days but they started to complain more and more as the days went on.

I was washing their bedding everyday. I do have to say even if I have to pay for the electricity I am really glad we live in a place where we don’t have to pay for water. I had boiled all their hairbrushes and hair bands, ruining a few in the process. Then it happened again. Last Friday I was doing my nightly check of their hair and they both had little tiny lice, they looked like they had just hatched. So I figured maybe this was a blessing in disguise. The lice are easier to get rid of than the nits I’ll just slather their hair in olive oil and put them to bed for the night. We washed the olive oil out of their air in the morning and I did another lice/nit check afterwards and again that night. The lice were gone and sure there were a couple of nits, but they were white. I had assumed we were done.

I was wrong.

I have been doing small checks of their hair everyday, pulling out whatever ‘dead’ nits I could find, which were few and far between, but today I found one. One very large louse. And so it begins again. We are all sporting olive oil in out hair, the bedding is stripped of all the beds, which really is not that big of a deal as it is laundry day. I am supposed to have houseguest this weekend but I guess I am going to have to call them and let them know they need to make other arrangements. These lice are ruining my life.