After the move, an excited Vee headed back to her SK class. She loved her new home, and excitedly babbled about how she and her baby bro got to share a room, and how much more space there was for her gigantic lap dog.
It had been such an eventful holiday, and it had also been a while since we’d spent some mommy-baby girl time together, so that Thursday I decided to spring her from school 20 minutes early to run some special errands. As we shuffled into snow pants and 10 000 pieces of outerwear, I was given a note about a lice outbreak in the class.
“Don’t worry, we didn’t see anything on Vee, but just keep your eyes open,” said her teacher.
I nodded dismissively and folded the note, smashing it into the vortex of my purse. Lice, shmice.
That night after her evening bath, we all relaxed in front of the fire. My sweet girl sat on my lap, and I gently brushed her hair before bed.
Well that’s weird, I thought. Why is there a sesame seed in Vee’s hair?
Sesame seed?
Hold on.
Oh god. Oh godohgodohgodohgod…
A full body shiver enveloped me and my eyes grew wide. Instantly I became wracked with an itchiness that a complete immersion in calamine lotion couldn’t remove.
Please tell me it was just a randomly placed object…tell me that it was just one of those things that ends up in kids’ hair because they’re kids and weird things end up all over them. Just don’t let it be what I think it might be—
“Oh no. Is that a nit?!” Asked Cap. My stomach felt gripped by icy cold.
The next 10 minutes were a blur of wails and hair parting and the next 10 hours (never mind the next weeks of compulsive checking) were a blur of sore scalps, lice combs, and laundry.
My whole body was crawling with shock and invisible bugs and all I could hear was the lice and their evil pizzicato violin plucked horror soundtrack. Because they were obviously all out to get me. All of them. Every last one.
The end of the week was welcome. Sure we still had mountains of clean laundry to fold and 10 sealed garbage bags stuffed full of random things to suffocate invisible bugs. But Vee was at Supergrans, Kid Vader slept in a charming milk coma, and all of us were finally assuaged of being louse-laden.
We relaxed for the first time in forever. Cap and I broke out the good wine and settled comfortably on the sofa to watch some movies. Ah yes. This. This was it.
No packing. No Allen keys. No screaming. No moving. No boxes. No infestations. Just —
“ROLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!”
Just liquid dog diarrhea all over 1000 sq ft of pristine hardwood floor.
Mantra: I will not get itchy or scream silently when I hear the L word.
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