The Brighter Side of Lice

Lice sucks.  Literally and figuratively.  Since discovering the fiesta underway on my daughter’s scalp Tuesday night, our lives have been consumed with washing/combing/picking through hair, vacuuming, making/remaking beds, shopping for ninja style lice removal products, and constant  laundry (I lost track at 26 loads and have successfully broken the knob off the washing machine).

Our little hostess finally got the “all clear” today from the school nurse.  If I recall correctly, it only took 3 hours of shampooing/initial combing, another 3 hours with the ninja style comb, and 10 hours of working our way through her hair with toothpicks for us to get to this point… of course, that doesn’t include the time spent driving around looking for supplies, the time spent bagging up all the assorted non-essentials (stuffed animals, sleeping bags, etc), or working our way through the laundry… but point is, we’re making good progress.

I could go on and on about all the absolutely miserable aspects of the past four days of de-lousing… but I realize that the three of you who read this blog have a limited tolerance for my complaining (unless there is a good bottle of wine to accompany it), so instead of going off on yet another lice related rant,  I am instead going to go the “silver lining” route, David Letterman-top-10 style: 

The Brighter Side of Lice

1) Quality time with your infected child: I think I spent upwards of 15 additional hours of uninterrupted time with my daughter this week… I now know absolutely everything about who in her kindergarten class gets strikes for what and why it is that she prefers Wizards of Waverly Place to Hannah Montana.   This is important information.

2) Opportunity to develop mastery as a nit-picker: It’s generally accepted that it takes 10 years to become an expert in something.  You can develop expert status in nit picking in a mere 10 hours.   I’m thinking of adding this to my resume.

3) Opportunity to become well acquainted with your school nurse: Or… in my case, the phenomenal woman who was filling in for our regular school nurse, who – in addition to being a great RN – is also the mom of my older daughter’s classmate (which I assume gives her added incentive for extra thorough checks to make sure my kids are fully clear of this nasty vermin).

4) A jump-start on spring cleaning: Given that all bedding, blankets, assorted throws, etc (including such non-sensical items as bedskirts and decorative pillows) are washed, dried, and ready to be put back on… that should cut down on at least 2 hours of the spring cleaning tasks.

5)  Knowing that your friends will still talk to you after you tell them your child may have infected their child/home with lice: I can’t imagine a better measure of a good friend than she who will still continue to associate with you after you call her and say those dreaded words… “I’m so sorry, but your kid was recently around my kid and my kid has lice”.  It appears I have lots of good friends. 🙂

6) Finally understanding the origin of the phrase “nit picking”: As an added bonus, it’s kind of fun to drag the words “nit”, “picky”, “head”, “lousy”, etc into every conversation you can.

7) A great excuse to have the car professionally cleaned: Those effing creatures can live in the carpets of your car just as easily as they can live in the carpets of your house… best to let the car cleaning professionals handle this one.

8 ) Justification of my hair products expenses: I swear the only reason I don’t have these things running rampant on my head is due to the three layers of hair products on my hair at any given moment… lice don’t like that stuff.

9)  Excellent excuse for skipping the gym for a day: All that late night laundry eventually catches up with you and clearly calls for sleeping past 5:20am at least one morning. 

10)  Discovering that you are now part of a group of women tied together through the ultimate bond of having survived the delousing experience: My friends are amazing.  Truly amazing.  My friends who have been through this have been so forthcoming with information, suggestions, and – get this – even offers to help pick through my daughter’s hair.  They have been so amazing that I’ve decided we need to organize a “Mothers of Lice Survivors” night in the near future.  Invitations to those of you who are both local and deserving of invites are forthcoming.

You may be relieved to know that I am not linking to a recipe on this post.  🙂