They're He-e-e-re...

"Mama, I found two bugs in my hair today at school."

So said Avery Tuesday night as we ate dinner.

Five chairs simultaneously pushed back from the table, staring in shock and horror.

"Ewww!" yelled Ian, Jamie and Emma.

Brian and I stared at each other, at Avery, then back at each other.

"Well," I said slowly.  "I'll take a look after dinner."

And promptly began scratching my own head...

Shortly afterwards, Avery stood in our bathroom, while I picked through her hair.  I pulled two flat, long, oval-ish bugs out of her hair and dropped them in the sink...

"Is that the same kind you pulled out of your hair this afternoon, honey?" I gently asked, trying to quell the shudders rippling over my body...

"Yep," she cheerily exclaimed.  "They looked just like that!"

I stared at the creatures helplessly...

Was it lice? Some random bugs that had somehow made their way into my daughter's hair? (I had a sinking/sneaking suspicion that it was lice, but I kept hoping against hope I was wrong)

"I'll call Shelby!" I declared.

When Avery asked why, I told her it was because our friend Shelby has had to deal with lice many times over the last few years (she's the resident "go-to" expert in our old neighbourhood...got lice? See Shelby)

And so I called and asked Shelby to tell me what lice looks like...I described what had come out of Avery's head...

"I'll be right over," she told me...(pretty dang sure that's the equivalent of hearing "uh-oh" from your family doctor...never a good sign)

In less than ten minutes, Shelby was at our house, lice comb in hand.

Avery sat on a chair in the kitchen, while Shelby looked through her hair. "Hate to tell you this," she told me. "But she's infested."

Yay!

Brian stared in horror at his oldest daughter (briefly; he was trying to make sure she didn't feel bad about bringing the plague into our house), then grabbed his wallet and left to buy some brand of lice remover...

Meanwhile, back at home, Shelby was going through my hair...and after 45 years, I found out that I had my first case of head lice...

Not a happy camper, was I...

Brian came back with the Nix, I applied it to Avery's head (and then mine) and we went to bed...well, after stripping her bed, combing through her hair with a fine tooth comb, then setting her up in the spare room (wasn't going to vacuum her bed while Emma was trying to sleep), then combing through my own hair and setting Brian up on the couch ("What?" I said to him. "You don't want to sleep next to your lice infested wife?" "Um, no," he replied.  Couldn't blame him, I didn't particularly want to sleep with me either).

The next morning, Avery was kept home from school so we could check her hair again (we had checked Ian, Emma, Jamie and Brian, but couldn't find anything on them)...she and I went over to Shelby's, who sat, with Avery on the floor in front of her, for nearly 5 hours, slowly going through Avery's hair, 20 strands at a time, looking for eggs...

"There! See that?" Shelby asked me, pointing to a strand of hair. "That's an egg, that's what we're trying to get out."

I stared and stared, trying to see what on earth she was pointing at.  Finally, I saw it.  A teeny, tiny little black speck...about a quarter the size of a poppy seed...

"How the hell is anyone supposed to see that?" I demanded.  "That's stupid!"

(See how I reverted to grade 3?)

Which is why Shelby is the queen of lice removal...because she can see those little bastards, and people like me cannot...

Last night, we used a Robi-Comb (which zaps any bug and/or eggs/nit in the hair...kind of like one of those outdoor bug zappers, but for your head...it's a non-chemical way of killing them-and no, I don't want to think about bug guts being all over our hair, so keep those comments to yourself)...anyway, we used one on all of our heads, and found nothing on anyone, except Avery...even after everything, two of those little suckers had managed to survive! 

And so we went old school...all four kids (and me) went to bed with our heads completely saturated with hair conditioner, then wrapped in plastic wrap, then a plastic bag tied around that (ok, I slept with a shower cap on, very sexy)...the kids all went downstairs to say goodnight to Brian and to show him their "pope hats"...towels on the (clean) pillow cases, and everyone was off to la-la-land...

This morning, I kept everyone home again, while I spent two hours going through five heads of hair (mine included...Brian has somehow managed to escape the whole bloody mess)...luckily, we seem to be egg and bug free...hopefully it stays that way...

Once that was done, every bed was stripped, every mattress was vacuumed (thank goodness for Dyson!), every piece of furniture suctioned three ways from Sunday and 16 loads of laundry started (had no idea how many freaking pillows this family used!)...

And the joy and bliss of it all is that I get to vacuum everything every day for the next two weeks like this! Yay!  And we get to look for bugs in hair every day, and we get to retreat again on Tuesday! So lucky!

I need a beer...