What I Didn't Mention on Facebook or How to Get a Head in Lice

Whenever we move (by choice or not), I wash all of the bedding.
I like the new place to smell fresh and clean.

So, I washed all of the bedding and we began moving into this lovely little farm house.

The house sits in the middle of fields of sheep, corn and cows (yes, they're growing cows in the field).
The idyllic country setting brings sometimes easily forgotten pleasantries like biting flies, mosquitos and "thunder bugs". Yay.

Day two of the move, the daughter begins scratching a vicious attack upon her scalp...

(oh dear, not a good sign with our school's lice problem)

While the husband carries furniture up the stairs, I begin the comb-through on the child's hair to discover many black pterodactyls and tiny black dots. The friend helping with the move assures me the black dots are "Thunder bugs" "...and they really bite, no wonder she's scratching".

Oh, ok. I know lice look like small grains of rice, so I'm not worried now, but just for good measure, I wash her bedding and then request everyone's bedding that she has cuddled with- which ends up being everyone. Five beds worth of bedding. Again.

A couple of days pass, and everyone is scratching.  

Ripping my scalp off is sounding more and more appealing since it's got to be more comfortable than what we're going through at the moment.
That's when my good friend exclaims, "Oh, didn't you know? There was a terrible case of lice going about that last week of school and I found loads on my children's heads".

You know, her children's heads that my child's head spent the night with.

Further checking verifies that the infected daughter's other close friend (who also spent the night there) was also blessed with it. "...and the strangest thing, they're black!" They say.

Thanks for the heads up (no pun, really) ladies. I can imagine that prevention would have been a little easier than what we face now.

Everyone gets deloused.

Everyone's stuffed toys, pillows, outside gear etc... get smashed into air-free bags and thrown into the freezer. Everything else gets washed. Again.

Moving sucks.

Oh, yay, we just got an invitation to camp!
"Brilliant!" we say, and off we go to the coast for four days. Really needed that break from the stress.

Six people, four days. One always forgets that unpacking and washing bit that comes with traveling or camping don't they...
I begin the laundry when we get home. Nearly finish when the itching begins again...

Not joking.

Everyone is deloused. No need to worry about the pillows (etc) since they never made it out of the freezer, but a LOT of clothing and bedding has been by these six heads in the last week. So I wash. Again.

The people who live near us must think I'm a compulsive clothes-washer trying to single-handedly deprive Great Britain of it's water resources.

And for some reason, I chose to leave all of that interesting information off of the social networks.




What are you not saying on Facebook these days?