Welcome to Summer

The title should be read with both sarcasm and desperate relief, in approximately equal proportions. The school year is over, the students have all graduated (or not) and I get to forget about teaching for at least a month. Yay! But I was pretty exhausted by the end of it. Between teaching duties (had to chaperone the graduation dance till 11 on Thursday!) and my own stupidity (opened a new book at 8pm one night!) I didn't get much sleep last week. Pretty much kicked my immune system in the teeth, so now I've come down with a cold.

So Friday I finished tidying up my classroom for the summer, then went to a staff party and then a family friend's graduation party, and then packed for an SCA event. Got up before 6 on my first day of summer vacation in order to hitch a lift up to the event with one of my friends :)

It was a good event -- we had at least 30 fighters there, so there was lots of fighting. But I was pretty tired. You think I was a lame soccer player? We foolishly armored up on time, and then ended up waiting around for a hour for the rest of the fighters. So I stretched out in full armor and took a nap. Didn't even take my helmet off -- just laid my shield across my face grill to keep off the sun :) When the fighting started it was good fun, though carrying a sword and shield in a war pretty much means a lot of standing around trying not to be killed by enemy pikes while the pikes on your side are hiding behind your shield trying to kill the enemy shield wall. One of these days I'm going to fight with a Dane ax or something crazy :)

I paid $10 to get my face painted with henna -- no school on Monday (though that probably wouldn't have stopped me anyhow!) I hung out and chit chatted and then dozed in my chair, until I had to admit it was time to head for bed. At 8. Yup, I'm a wild party animal. But just as well as the friend who gave us a ride was up at 5:30 and wanted to head back home ASAP.

So we got home and Haley keeps complaining that her head itches. Nothing new -- she has terrible dandruff. But I look at her hair for lice, just to keep her happy. Nope, no nits. And then A. Bug. Runs. Across. Her. Head. AAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHH! So I calmly collect it and put in in a plastic baggie. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is just some other bug running across her head. After all, we were just camping. The next day we go to the lice clinic. She's not finding any nits either, but when I show her the critter in the baggie, she confirms my dire suspicions. She finally finds one nit, and sends us home with some lice treatment and combs.

Acu-Life Lice Cure. If you've got to have lice, this is definitely the way to treat it. No pesticides, just essential oils. Tea tree oil is the biggie, along with ylang ylang, eucalyptus, and citronella. So, following instructions, I gloob that all over her scalp and then finish up with coconut oil (since there wasn't enough in the bottle) to help smother any bugs in the length of her hair. Oh. My. God. On the one hand, proof positive that this stuff WORKS. On the other, there were a hell of a lot of secret ninja lice in her hair. Who knew that all that time I spent picking fleas off the Grandparents' dogs was in fact training me for parenthood? I must have found and crushed at least 7 (apparently dead and much easier to find) lice. Ugh. And the oil made the nits a lot easier to see too. So we let that sit in her hair for a while (theoretically 15 minutes but really more like an hour). Then we rinsed it off, slathered her hair with conditioner, and rinsed again. Then I combed her hair with a lice comb. And it wasn't a big deal!!! No, really, all that oil super-conditioned her hair, so it was pretty easy to comb. Nothing like last time! And we got a bunch more lice :p I can see a bunch of nits that I didn't get -- I'll need to comb again tomorrow, but we'd had all we could take for one day.

So now she's asleep in her freshly laundered bed, and the pile of laundry to do just keeps growing. On the plus side, I slathered my own hair with a mix of coconut oil and tea tree oil and let it sit for a couple of hours and then combed through it with a lice comb. Nothing. Thank Goodness! I could be missing some nits, but I'm pretty sure it would have found any lice. I hennaed my hair last week, which probably helped -- a bunch of extremely pungent and sticky goop in my hair overnight may have discouraged any infestation.

Haley wants to know what she's supposed to do while all of her toys are in plastic bag quarantine -- I know, let's go visit my parents!