Today I saw what every mom dreads. My kid was standing on the back patio scratching his head like crazy. I've been waiting for my turn to roll around since Wilmington Island seems to be experiencing a lice epidemic. I'm so thankful the moms who have been through it before me have been willing to share tips on what to look for and how to treat it; otherwise I may have assumed my little Pigpen just needed a bath.
I thought I would probably wretch or at least get a massive case of the heebies jeebies if it happened to us, but the first thing I thought when I saw the dreaded nits was, "Sh*@. There goes my run at the Y today." This thought was immediately followed by dollar signs flipping around in my brain as I tried to wrap my head around the cost of treatment, detergent, and new hairbrushes for all. I very nearly short-circuited once I imagined the energy required to physically hold down four children and treat them with foul smelling chemicals and then envisioned the endless piles of laundry.
My afternoon sucked a big fat one. There was one highlight where an angel in blue scrubs at the Walgreen's drive through pharmacy went and got lice spray for me to purchase through the window, which meant I didn't have to wake Scout up and haul her inside with her three extremely cranky brothers. All three boys have been given crew cuts at Mom's Salon. I am now well versed on what a lice bug looks like (something I have always wondered). I can't open the door to the laundry room because I am in the process of washing everything my kids' heads have ever touched (and basically everything else I own).
I'm sure during the course of reading this you've wondered why the hell I would blog about my kids having lice. Believe me, my husband already walked into the office and said, "Please tell me you're not blogging about this." But the fact of the matter is every other mom I know who has dealt with it in the past few months is a clean, normal mom just like me (yeah, I consider myself clean but the normal part may be stretching it), and I'm hoping the stigma of lice equalling dirty kids is lifting. Do I really need to worry you guys might think we're nasty because my kid had head lice? I certainly hope not because if I've learned anything from today, it's that no one is immune to the pesky little critters. Well, and that my son was WAY too attached to his hair.
My oldest has been growing his hair out for a year in order to have "surfer hair," and he was way more devastated by the haircut than he was by the fact he had freaking LICE. He cried hysterically for over an hour, gave himself a migraine, and puked all over my kitchen floor. This, my friends, was the icing on today's cake.
I hope my Savannah friends won't start avoiding my calls or act like they don't see me when we happen to be at the Whitemarsh Island Wal Mart at the same time. I plan to carry around my lice spray for the next two weeks in order to calm my frazzled nerves and ward off any lice bug that dares to cross my very pissed off path. Be sure not to sneak up behind me because I'm so jumpy I just might spray you by accident.
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