I was abducted by aliens. Hence my long absence.

Wouldn't it be awesome if I had some great reason why I haven't written anything in such a long time? Sadly, there were no aliens. Unless you count some of the interesting characters I came across in my recent travels.

No, I've just been super blah. After the drama and the scratching of the Lice Epidemic of 2010, regular life has just not seemed so regular. My scalp (and Griffin's) still smells like Listerine, thanks to the Listerine/shower cap trick I tried one day. I chased mine with a vinegar/shower cap treatment but spared my poor son the vinegar. Who knows if we even had lice at that point, but I'm not taking any chances.

A friend of mine has a daughter who came down with the dreaded creepy crawlies a few weeks ago. Apparently they're running amok in the parochial schools as well as the public ones. Maybe it's the time of year? Who knows. I even heard from a friend out of state (two, actually) whose kids got it right around the same time Griffin did. So there. I don't feel quite so disgusting.

Well, that's not really true. I still do feel gross, but I feel gross in good company.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some more contraband Halloween candy to eat so I can collapse into a sugar coma. I'm sure I'll be back to post adorable Halloween pictures of children in store-bought nylon costumes (the horror!) soon.

- H

So anyway

The lice are running scared, friends.


Either that, or we never had any to begin with. But I swear, even if there wasn't a lice and only some eggs (huh?? I was an english major but still that doesn't make good biological sense) I have managed to disinfect every surface of random things that my kids may come into contact with, including them, myself and my hubs. And dogs. Even though lice don't like animals other than human ones. So that's good.

And after talking to no fewer than four parent friends today, I learned that every single one of them has dealt with at least one round of lice. Their kids are all older than mine, which makes sense. I am seriously re-thinking the fancy new school that Cooper is catching all these communicable diseases from. Seriously re-thinking it.

Oh let's share a little good news about the universe, shall we? I was reading a funny blog tonight, the Friggin Loon, and came across this story.


Friends, I am here to tell you that no matter how crapbag things seem to get, that story takes the cake.


- H

Back to school with head lice and ringworm

Wheeee!!!! And the roller coaster ride continues.

Cooper started his new school about six weeks ago. Four weeks ago he came home with a fresh and pretty round patch of ringworm on his face. Score! Cause I've always wanted ringworm in my house. Nothing super gross about that, no sirree.

Now, I know ringworm isn't really a worm. It's a fungus. But the word worm on anything suddenly makes me itch and gives me nightmares about tubes under my skin and bumpy red rashes you can't stop touching.

So, we treated the ringworm and now it's gone.

You can imagine how warm and fuzzy I was feeling towards the kids in his new class after that experience.

Then a few days ago, Griffin started scratching. His scalp.

I inspected as best I could, considering my subject was a two-year-old who felt that scalp inspection was something similar to home grown torture. I didn't see anything.

He kept scratching. I still didn't see anything during our nightly shampoos.

Then Cooper scratched once, and THAT'S IT. I DO HAVE MY LIMITS, PEOPLE.

This afternoon I convinced Griffin than scalp inspection was super! fun! and he could even have some gum if he let me look really really close over and over and over again.

I never saw anything move, ok? But I did see some little tiny things that I have come to learn are affectionately termed nits. I think they're like the lice babies or something. They get cemented to the hair shafts, just waiting to grow up and be SO SUPER GROSS YOU CAN'T STAND IT.

My skins started to crawl. I'm pretty sure I was immediately infected with scabies the second I had that skin-crawling ah-hah moment of recognition. And guess what? My hubs and I had to go out to dinner twenty minutes later with an older distant cousin of my dad's who was in town for a visit. Drat!

Dinner was lovely, but we practically raced out of there at record speed to douse the louses with lice-killing shampoo on everyone and everything moving in this house. We all now have squeaky clean scalps and brand new sheets on the beds.

Scratch scratch scratch. Just talking about it makes my skin crawl.

Oh, and you know what is so super awesome I can barely get over it?! I get to do it all again next Friday night! Whoo-hooooo!!!!

- H

Elaborating

This is the dilemma with blogging. How much can I share without sharing too much? What do I really write for, if not for sharing? If I didn't want to share it, I'd put it somewhere no one would know to look for it, somewhere private or anonymous. Or I wouldn't put it anywhere, just push it all down and swallow it and complain to someone on the phone who can stand to listen to me for longer than five minutes.

I feel conflicted about this blogging thing sometimes, because I can't seem to reconcile writing about my life or just about things in general with knowing that everyone isn't on board. Everyone involved isn't really down with me telling everyone else what the hell is going on, eh? So I don't.

But man, is there some whacky shit going on. A friend of mine suggested I take a little getaway, take a break, come visit her, yadda yadda. Step away from the insanity of my household and get my wits about me. But I can't. I honestly have rolled my current situation (our current situation) around in my head six ways from Sunday and the best I can come up with is to keep on keeping on.

I love my job. I really really do. In the thirteen years since I've been in this industry, what I do now, what I've done for the last year, has by far been my absolute favorite thing ever. And sadly, it's also the riskiest. I liken what I'm doing now to swimming upstream. In quicksand. Dragging other people along behind you, except they're pulling in the opposite direction because they either don't understand why you're swimming that way or don't agree with it.

It's fun!

But it's not secure. Sadly, the Powers That Be aren't entirely comfortable with what I (not just me, my whole team) am doing. They like the results, but they have a hard time making the decisions to support us. So it's a touch stressful to have my current job situation shake and rattle while my hubs is no longer working. And my kids neat to eat. Every day, can you believe that? And apparently we need to keep a roof over our heads. And so I keep on keeping on.

That's about as clear as mud, but that's good for now. Maybe I can learn to write in code. Igpay atinlay.

- H

Poof!

I'm in the midst of a crisis. Crisis-eeze. Whatever the plural of crisis is. Are.

Hubs is out on sick leave.
My job is rocky.

OK, I thought it was more complicated but that kind of sums it up. I made an impulsive decision to take down the sewing side of my blog life this morning, although if things change in the next 90 days I can bring it up again.

When If I run away from home, at least you'll all know why.

If I sew again, I'll post it here. Things will change, right? Right. Right.

Right.

- H