Recipe of Love

1 huge box of garbage bags
1 gallon of vinegar
2 jars of mayo
5 shower caps
4 large bottles of Nix shampoo - Nit combs included
4 cans of Nix upholstery spray
1 gallon of bleach
1 very brave, loving friend
1, maybe 2 chill pills! - more or less depending on your stress level

We have started new office hours at church, 10am-2pm - the awesome thing with that is that I am no longer responsible for answering the phones every day so I can get my hours in when its good for me. Instead of 5 days a week partial days, I can do 2-1/2 days in the office and 2-1/2 at home. I have decided to go in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and then pick up my 1/2 day on Fridays at some point through the day when it works out. I'm pretty excited about this because the every day was hard for me. If you know me at all, you know that the daily housework thing is just not my cup of tea, so I'm happy about the new arrangement.

Last Monday I was so excited to get the kids out the door - and Tim! I'm relaxing around here getting laundry going, picking up, making my plan for the week when I get it - the call from school saying I need to go pick up Emma . They tell me that over the weekend that had received a call from a parent saying their child had head lice so they had to check the whole class and Emma had them! I said, "Oh, thats just great, I've been itching for 3 days now!" The school nurse was kind enough to check me too and sure as anything - I had them too!!! They pulled Lindsey out of class and she had them as well. So, after some choice words and many words of wisdom from everyone in the office we left to go pick up Kurt - had to assume he and Tim had them too. We never did find any on the boys but we treated them anyway.

We pick up Kurt and much to my surprise, he's happy - excited even. He says, "This is so cool, I never got to have headlice before!" As we drive home I hear the girls telling Kurt all of the home remedies we have been told so far. Emma tells him we are all going to put mayonnaise on our heads and he just gets more and more happy about the whole thing - they all are! The more excited they get, the more mad I am. Then it happened, that small still voice that speaks to you when you sometimes don't want to hear it, tells me to chill out. There is nothing we can do now but press on and get the situation taken care of as efficiently as we can, and if they are in a good mood about it - whats it hurting??

So we plug away at bagging everything up, and start in with the treatments for the humans - luckily animals can't get it! Our steps so far have been to bag everything stuffed or made of material that I can't wash. We turned the water heater to high and I began washing. We got the Nix stuff at Walmart, actually the Walmart brand, its the same and it included the spray and comb. We sprayed beds and furniture, vacuumed beds and furniture and sprayed them again. We soaked our heads with the special shampoo, rinsed it and rinsed again with the vinegar and applied the mayo and a shower cap before combing through with the Nit comb. Not sure it was all necessary but it was everything I heard and read so we did it. Now 7 days later we have all shampooed again and I have washed sheets and sprayed beds and pillows one last time.

I gotta say the kids were awesome about the whole thing. Helped with everything and were very patient with me going through their hair. Not sure it was as much fun as they were thinking - at least they now know they don't want to have to do it all over again! I hope and pray we got them all. The girls were allowed back to school the next day after the nurse went through their hair, I wasn't so lucky - Tim sucks at Nit-picking. The shampoo kills everything but you still have to get them out. By the time I left school I had to let Tim know he had to come home and do it again, something he wasn't too happy with. I was not surprised, he had gone through Emma's the day before and I found more after him. He gladly came home... but I could not stop itching - to the point that I ended up shampooing again, something you apparently shouldn't do. Pretty much destroyed my scalp and - you guessed it, made it itchy!! I did not sleep at all that night and finally came to the conclusion (aka GOD!) that I would call my friend Amanda. She works at a Preschool and I didn't think she'd be too creeped out by helping me. She came over the next day and sure enough found a bunch more to come out. But I was so glad she did! Mentally I was loosing it. The good news is that she checked again yesterday and it looked good so now that we've all shampooed again today we should be out of the woods, right???

Ok, I'm done - you can stop itching now!