Thursday, January 29, 2015

It strikes again, and then some

I am sitting on my bathroom floor smearing pantene on my head and combing my hair with a fine tooth comb. Lice, it turns out, is a hearty creature, and is not actually gone from my house yet.

Silas and I went glamping in California for the weekend with a bunch of old friends, which meant heated cabins to sleep in and campfires to cook on -- perfect -- an easy walk to the beach for sunsets and moss covered boulders for the kids to climb on, and handfuls of smooth stones to skip into the silvering water.

Somewhere along the path through the woods from the beach to the campsite, Silas's towel must have brushed (and brushed and brushed against) poison oak, the towel he then used to dry off after a shower.  Our first morning back in DC found his trunk covered, and face and arms blotched with angry rash. For a couple of days and nights Silas spent most of his waking (some nocturnal) hours in a hot roaring shower or oatmeal/baking soda bath.  

In the meantime, Maeve struck up a case of conjunctivitis, and this morning we found Eden's head had been harboring a handful of (now poisoned) bugs. Disgusting.  And it of course raises the question of where else might these bugs be hiding... 

They do not appear to be anywhere but on her head, but have we missed one? one teeny little egg that will hatch to wreak further havoc and make us begin again at square one, meticulously combing each morning and daily loading the dryer with sheets and blankets?

So here I am, combing out my own hair on the bathroom floor (because there's a heat vent here and our house is drafty), guessing that one day we will be free of lice again.  Because we will, won't we  And poison oak?  And conjunctivitis?  And.......  

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