The Day After

We had a lovely Thanksgiving (and I hope you did too). The brined turkey was far and away the best turkey I ever cooked. I am now all about the brine. Our dinner was relatively quiet and festive. We talked about all we're thankful for and although The Kid is mostly thankful for defeating the elite four in Pokémon Diamond, Lefty and I are thankful to be healthy and happy. ( I am thankful that Lefty went out and got the parts to fix the toilets. They've both been running intermittently for a few weeks now.)

Our morning consisted of looking for nits (again) in The Kid's hair and finding (gasp) more lice in his hair. This is FOUR days after using the insecticide shampoo that we are not supposed to use again for THREE MORE DAYS. ( Imagine about ten exclamation points right here please. Thank you.) The lice we found were smallish, baby lice I guess, but WTF are we supposed to do now?! Besides wash all the sheets and pillowcases again and ban the boy from our bed which he crawled into this morning pre-scalp-check. Argh.

We googled and decided to try the conditioner and comb method. This consists of slathering a half bottle of cheap conditioner on The Kid's head, wrapping his noggin in plastic for half an hour and then combing the whole gooey mess out with the little plastic nit comb. The Kid, he is losing patience with this whole gig. He just wants us to leave his head alone and has said so forcefully, repeatedly. After this, which did produce a few gooey insect bodies, we shampooed and I threw in a few drops of tea tree oil for good measure – hoping that lice won't enjoy my tea-tree-oil-infused boy's scalp.

This took up almost the entire morning. Really, my life now revolves around insects. If any of you would like to share any little bit of lice advice (see how that rhymes?) please do so. I am really within a foot or two of the end of my rope.

Oh and speaking of insects, here's the praying mantis that's hanging out around our back door.