Lice (Or, How to Get Your Husband to do ALL the Laundry)

It was a pretty busy day around here, and we noticed that our oldest was scratching the back of her head quite a bit. Nothing out of the usual, I mean, she’s constantly playing in the sand and we usually assume she’s got a bucket of sand in her hair, like most other seven year olds.

This time though, she was scratching pretty consistently through the weekend and I checked a couple of times for lice, again because she’s seven.

I didn’t see anything suspicious on Friday. We went about our weekend of birthday parties, events and picnic plans at the spray park.

Until this afternoon, when we arrived home and she was scratching again. 

I grabbed the comb, again, parted her hair, and checked. Relieved we were in the clear, I decided to check one last time, one last part – and there was a tiny little critter, crawling about in her thick head of hair. Immediately taken aback, and trying to play the fact that I just pulled my hand away from her head as if were on fire, cool – I feigned that there was a bee in the window that startled me. I took a few minutes to walk around the corner, jump up and down and consider setting the house afire, and regain my composure before calmly walking back and telling her that I’m pretty sure she had lice.

Then, like any good Millennial Parent, I consulted Doctor Google. What the hell was I supposed to know about lice? Who could come and take care of this mess for me? ‘Siri, should we just shave her head?’. I sent a text message to April, my adultier adult. She assured me we probably didn’t need the $75/hour service for someone to come and comb out your hair, and let me know which was the best stuff to buy when I went to the store.

I walked into the store, bought the Resultz, ate an ice cream sandwich and a bag of fuzzy peaches (because I’m a total stress eater) and did a bit more Dr. Googling, while scratching my head.

I drove home, and Jamie had the bedding taken off all of the beds, the laundry started. He had the kids random doll and stuffed animals in bags. He was on a mission. I searched through Violet’s hair while he applied the shampoo to Olivia. We let it sit, rinsed it off and spent what felt like an eternity combing through her hair.

A friend came over, broke the news that it looked like I had succumbed to the lice, and brought over some kind of fancy zapper, leaving me thankful for adultier-adults in my life and itchy. The head massage and combing were sorta-kinda a nice reprieve from the busy-ness of the day, as Jamie combed through my hair, and went back to do another load of laundry.

‘You know, when you wash all the kids clothes and put them away, they’ve got a ridiculous amount of clothes’

So, it’s one am, he’s finishing the last load of laundry, I’ve thrown out every single brush and hair elastic, I’ve stocked up on lice shampoo, and have used a combination of the Resultz  (and then the Nyda that I used because I’m admittedly a crazy person) – and the laundry? It’s done. 

It’s just too bad about the cause.