Parasitic little monsters... lice and children.

I forgot all about lice.  I vaguely remember getting them in 3rd grade when an infested child in my class was caught throwing her lice at other kids.  Or at least that's the story my mom likes to tell, who knows.  Maybe there was a disgusting filthy in my class throwing her parasites on other kids.  I also recall that most kids who became infested suddenly returned to school with blunt bobs for the girls and shaved heads for the boys.  I wasn't so lucky.  I had long hair, mid way between waist and shoulders.  I didn't get a cute bob, I ended up covered in Rid and spent the better part of a day having the lice comb rip enough hair out of my head I could have made my own Furby.  I need to stop thinking about it, I wonder if that is why I took the scissors to my own hair and kept it short until about now.


I digress, which seems to happen a whole lot more than I remember.  Andy got lice and being the helpful wife I am, I called, "not it."  I got the medicine, quarantined stuffed animals and washed ALL bedding and clothing.  Hubs got stuck with the delousing duty.  And so off we send him to school, which pretty much sent him right back home.  So I had the mister shave his head down to about an inch of hair, re-poison him and delouse again.  I went about the mission of re-washing bedding and what not.  And the following day off he goes to school again; and right back home he came.

At this point, I figured I would enlist the help of my aunt and sister.  My sister has school aged kids and my aunt helped with my torturous delousing when I was a kid.  I wasn't going to touch Andy's infested head and the hubs just didn't know what he was doing wrong.  So this is day number three that Andy has been sent home from school for lice.  After a long day at work I went to pick up Andy from my aunt.  My aunt was kind enough to get him Lice Shield and looked triumphant.  I sighed with relief, took Andy home to get his school work finished and ready for bed and school the next day.  I thought I was never going to be rid of the foul parasites!

My victory was short lived because the next morning Andy got sent home AGAIN!  I told my husband to go down to the nurses office and insist they show him the mystery lice.  As it turned out there were no lice at all.  There were nits clinging to the hair shaft that all needed to be removed.  Though I am sure after 3 days worth of poisoning they were probably dead, they had to be removed.  Fucking great!  So when I got home we bagged up every piece of bedding and clothing from the house.  And I promptly took it to the laundromat to get everything done in one shot.  As soon as I got home I poisoned everyone.  My head didn't itch but I was done playing these 'no school' games because of nits, lice, whatever!

Then I spent well over an hour and a half combing teeny, tiny, thorn-like things from Andy's very short hair. This task was less than easy on my back, eyes and sanity.  What made matters worse is my husband, it would seem, is going blind.  I thought I could do the combing and Joey could pull them out of the hair.  My husband wasn't seeing the majority of the nits I was trying to point out.  So I pretty much ended up removing a zillion nits from Andy's head by myself.  Andy does not stay still for long and insisted I was torturing him by yanking his hair.  -_-  I think I have mentioned before that parenting was something I never wanted to be a part of right?  So the next time, IF there is a next time, this happens I am moving to Bermuda.  But not before I leave my husband a pair of glasses and more Rid.

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Andy is insistent that he brought home lice from Santa Ana back in July.  Which I know is not the case.  He either picked them up at school or at the batting cages.  (Note to self: Check Andy's head immediately after batting cages.)  When he first moved here, we took him to get his hair fixed.  I thought he had given himself a haircut, turns out the mother thought herself a barber and really liked the Chucky 'do.  Any salon you visit immediately checks for bugs, if you have them they refuse your service.  So we know he caught them here.  I also found out cleanliness has nothing to do with catching lice.  It just happens if you are around them.  Gross, I hope now he will listen to keep to himself and quit picking up random items he finds.  He still insists the lice magically arrived with him when he got here from Santa Ana.  I looked at myself in the mirror and noticed I looked haggard.  Maybe it's my perception given the exhaustion I have been feeling lately.  Or maybe kids do really suck the life force out of you.