Days That Don't Belong to Dogs

My kids were all sent home today with head lice. All I've done since 4 p.m. is wash sheets, wash hair, and wish that I had more than one son whose badly buzzed hair may look bad right now; but will be one less head to worry about during the next two weeks of literal "nit-picking" that lie ahead of me. I feel so bad for them that I've let them all camp out here on the floor tonight. They've also been allowed to watch endless Pokemon and play Gameboy on a weeknight. They had Sonic for dinner and I got myself a Sonic Sunrise to drink while wishing mightily for some "real" ingredients to go in it. (Granted, it's been about 15 years since I've had any tequila and, if memory serves, that didn't work out too well for me back then either.)

So far, I've had to tell all their teachers, be checked myself by the school secretary (I'm bug-free/nit-free thank you very much), tell the parents of the two kids who carpool with us (long-time friends of the family), buy that "special shampoo at Wal-Mart," and get my Dad to come and help me use that shampoo on the two little girls so they didn't get it in their eyes while jumping around in protest. This means that my mom knows and that the rest of my family will soon find out too. Oh, and using the clippers on Tristan? Not fun. The end result? Not pretty. It's a good thing I passed on beauty school. Tomorrow will bring more laundry, more vacuuming, and more combing and picking than any one mom or three little girls should have to put up with. I've done this before, I know what's involved, and it all pretty much sucks. But what's REALLY making me mad is that two weeks ago Dave found the lice in Tristan's (and ONLY Tristan's) hair and I said "Cool! Just clip his head and we're good to go." Of course, because I told him to do it, he refused and swore up and down that he got them all out. Did I really believe it? No. But I really wanted to...I was still writing my paper at the time and trying to get everything ready both for graduation and The Big Event at work. I knew he would blow off everything I told him to do to take care of the problem, but I trusted him anyway because I HAD to. Over the years, I've learned better than to do that, but just once I'd like to be able to ask my husband to take care of something and actually have him do it. But now, as usual, the mess has multiplied by four and I'm going to have to handle it all by myself.

Lanie, Chris, Wendy-instead of hanging out at my house this weekend, how would you feel about The Mont and a movie? I could really go for some time away from this house accompanied by a swirl and some queso. I promise I'll bring a note from the health dept. declaring my head a lice-free zone if that's what it takes to get out of here for a few hours.