We are supposed to be out today, but we're not. We're in.
Shark, Squirrel and Tiger were booked at a crime and punishment workshop in Nottingham, probably getting it all muddled, hanging good Robin Hood and praising bad King John.
But at 5am this morning I suddenly woke up with a nightmare. No matter how much I thrashed about and tutted and grumbled I could not get back to sleep. Then I began to have wake-dreams that the paint on the walls would climb down and eat me. Normally this would be OK, and we could still go, if we were travelling on the coach with the other home educators, and if I didn't have to do nearly a two-hour drive with a screaming fit in Nottingham city centre, and if the weather wasn't quite so appalling, and if I didn't have to drive home again on the same day.
Outside doesn't help. It's lashing gales. I may have to go and tie the house down with ropes just to stop it being blown away. Then at 8am Dig doesn't help either. 'Do not go' he says, and adds the weather is awful, the M1 will be chaos, and we will all die horribly. Just as I think he cares, he whines 'Is there any coffee?'
Dig, I argue, let's face it, I have driven in worse. Do you remember that time we set off for Warwick castle and there was a cyclone outside Birmingham? Or the hailstones that nigh on dented the car roof outside Bury St Edmunds. And Cornwall, only last week, when we drove around with a screaming three-headed monster in the car.
But he's right. Eveything's against me, there is no coffee, and I am weak and fed up. So while gales blow around the country and everyone crashes on the M1, I don't drive to Nottingham. I stay at home and brush fleas out of my daughter's head. She keeps asking, Are you done yet? Is it finished? and I keep saying No. Shut up. Keep still. Watch Walking with Dinosaurs. Stop moving, because I just have to get this one here, and then wait. Because when I get it, I'm going to do a crime and punishment workshop. I'm going to pin it down on the kitchen table and shoot off its arms and legs one by one and them I'm going to stick its head on a pole outside the front door to serve as a warning to all its kind.
By five o' clock in the afternoon, just as I'm thinking for the millionth time what a great time everyone else will have had, stringing up Robin Hood, I relent, and let Tiger take a wee. Even the most dedicated nit picker has to take a break sometime otherwise really, this splitting hairs business could drive a judge mad. I swear I have been round every single hair on Tiger's head. Twice. Not one of these criminals will escape me. I feel such anger and outrage. How dare they violate my sweet Tiger's little scalp? How dare they even look at her and think her curl laden head might be a groovy place to live? How dare they even exist? Do they do any good in this world? No. They should be hunted down and killed.
I am sure my psychosis is suffering. Apart from the paint, I dreamed of an exploding camel.
Showing posts with label head lice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label head lice. Show all posts
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Vinegar day
We spend the day putting vinegar on our heads so there is not much to report.
We could sprinkle ourselves with salt and have our photos taken posing as a giant bag of chips.
We could sprinkle ourselves with salt and have our photos taken posing as a giant bag of chips.
Monday, 7 July 2008
Washed out
It's 9am and here we all are, bagged up with Tesco carrier bags wound round our heads to stop the Listerine dribbling down our backs.
Mummy Grit has already got four bottles more of Listerine lined up and they are not even on special offer. How dedicated is that? When we've done with the Listerine, then I unwind everyone's hair and start combing. I cannot find anything alive or dead in anyone's hair, except Tiger's, so that's either bad news or good news depending on whether you are Tiger.
And Dig. Poor Dig, who has been nit examined too. Come on, big boy, says sexy wife Grit, sit down and be examined like the rest of us. Do you know there are some elements of the bondage sado masochism group that finds this sort of thing erotic? Shall we join them, you and I? After all, isn't this just about the most romantic thing we have done together since those evenings we spent on the Lake Palace in India when we watched the elephants crossing the lake while we sipped gin and lime soda? Doesn't this experience equate to that? This nit picking business could be exactly what it takes to kick our marriage back from that lonely place where it took refuge precisely eight years ago.
When everyone's been examined with Dr Grit's not very erotic nit technique, it's Tiger who has to sit still, watching two films on DVD back to back while I nit comb her hair, dragging out lice eggs with my fingernails. The whole front room looks like a surgical operating theatre with buckets of water, towels, Listerine, combs, jugs and Dr Grit with a Tesco bag on her head in case one of Tiger's troupe develops super louse skills, and jumps.
After three hours of nit combing and shouting die die die over the cute lion in Madagascar, Grit is ready for a turn outside in the fresh air. Actually the air's not very fresh because it is raining, but the alternative is to go insane. Anyway, common sense and wisdom have been combed out of Grit's head as well as most of her scalp and all her dandruff in the search for head lice, so I pour some more Listerine over us all and get everyone in the car to go to the farm. Here there is comfort because we go to dig up potatoes, collect onions and gather strawberries.
It is only half way down the A5 that I wonder am I mad? Am I mad? Yes I am. I am mad and bloody furious and possibly deranged and crazy because now it is thunderstorming and I am lost because I always get lost on the way to the farm and now I really should go home and cry but I am not going to. I will not give up. This is grit in the face of all disaster. I am Hilda Ogden with my bagged up hair and gritted teeth in the face of all woe and fallen about life.
And you would think that it could not get worse, wouldn't you? Let me just say to Shark, that when I am on a farm, miles from home, in the middle of a thunderstorm, in a field, that when I have just realised we have five minutes to walk the 15 minutes to the entrance if we are to make your drama performance tonight at 6pm which I had forgotten about along with everything else, that we have lost the potatoes, that we are late, having got lost on the way because I always take the wrong turning, no matter how many times I make this journey, that I am soaked to the skin, up to my knees in mud, and have discovered both my boots leak, that I stink of Listerine, that we are alone on this farm in this awful world of despondency, misery and despair, that this is not the moment to shout out Mummy! For drama tonight I need a pair of black leggings and a frog costume.
Mummy Grit has already got four bottles more of Listerine lined up and they are not even on special offer. How dedicated is that? When we've done with the Listerine, then I unwind everyone's hair and start combing. I cannot find anything alive or dead in anyone's hair, except Tiger's, so that's either bad news or good news depending on whether you are Tiger.
And Dig. Poor Dig, who has been nit examined too. Come on, big boy, says sexy wife Grit, sit down and be examined like the rest of us. Do you know there are some elements of the bondage sado masochism group that finds this sort of thing erotic? Shall we join them, you and I? After all, isn't this just about the most romantic thing we have done together since those evenings we spent on the Lake Palace in India when we watched the elephants crossing the lake while we sipped gin and lime soda? Doesn't this experience equate to that? This nit picking business could be exactly what it takes to kick our marriage back from that lonely place where it took refuge precisely eight years ago.
When everyone's been examined with Dr Grit's not very erotic nit technique, it's Tiger who has to sit still, watching two films on DVD back to back while I nit comb her hair, dragging out lice eggs with my fingernails. The whole front room looks like a surgical operating theatre with buckets of water, towels, Listerine, combs, jugs and Dr Grit with a Tesco bag on her head in case one of Tiger's troupe develops super louse skills, and jumps.
After three hours of nit combing and shouting die die die over the cute lion in Madagascar, Grit is ready for a turn outside in the fresh air. Actually the air's not very fresh because it is raining, but the alternative is to go insane. Anyway, common sense and wisdom have been combed out of Grit's head as well as most of her scalp and all her dandruff in the search for head lice, so I pour some more Listerine over us all and get everyone in the car to go to the farm. Here there is comfort because we go to dig up potatoes, collect onions and gather strawberries.
It is only half way down the A5 that I wonder am I mad? Am I mad? Yes I am. I am mad and bloody furious and possibly deranged and crazy because now it is thunderstorming and I am lost because I always get lost on the way to the farm and now I really should go home and cry but I am not going to. I will not give up. This is grit in the face of all disaster. I am Hilda Ogden with my bagged up hair and gritted teeth in the face of all woe and fallen about life.
And you would think that it could not get worse, wouldn't you? Let me just say to Shark, that when I am on a farm, miles from home, in the middle of a thunderstorm, in a field, that when I have just realised we have five minutes to walk the 15 minutes to the entrance if we are to make your drama performance tonight at 6pm which I had forgotten about along with everything else, that we have lost the potatoes, that we are late, having got lost on the way because I always take the wrong turning, no matter how many times I make this journey, that I am soaked to the skin, up to my knees in mud, and have discovered both my boots leak, that I stink of Listerine, that we are alone on this farm in this awful world of despondency, misery and despair, that this is not the moment to shout out Mummy! For drama tonight I need a pair of black leggings and a frog costume.
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Listerine and vinegar
I am getting bells to put round our necks. Because today, when the laundry, the chaos, the upset, the rain, is all not quite enough, we discover head lice. There they are, dancing about in Tiger's hair. In fact I am such a partying mother myself I do not even know we have guests until these lice start jumping out of Tiger's head at bathtime, shouting Hey! Look at me! I can do a double backflip into the swimming tub using this hair as a springboard!
When these vile little creatures start coming out of Tiger's hair at bathtime I am dumbfounded. I am speechless. At first I cannot believe what I am seeing. What has my daughter done with her head? Did she stick it down a rabbit hole? Did she walk through treetops and get caught up in a nest of things? What did she do? And then we realise. These must be what lice look like. And she does not even know these things are here. Jumping up screaming from the bathside, pointing in horror into the tub she's sitting in, is not exactly going to make her feel good about this moment. So instead I try the calm approach. I shriek to Squirrel and Shark, Get daddy! which I agree is responding a bit like someone just entered the front door swinging a machete, and not much better than shouting Oh My God We Are All Doomed!
Now, instead of the cosy, comfortable hour I expected after bathtime, supping red wine and reading blogs, I am scouring every internet mention of headlice ever made. I resolve upon a Listerine and Vinegar method first of all. And combing, combing, combing.
When these vile little creatures start coming out of Tiger's hair at bathtime I am dumbfounded. I am speechless. At first I cannot believe what I am seeing. What has my daughter done with her head? Did she stick it down a rabbit hole? Did she walk through treetops and get caught up in a nest of things? What did she do? And then we realise. These must be what lice look like. And she does not even know these things are here. Jumping up screaming from the bathside, pointing in horror into the tub she's sitting in, is not exactly going to make her feel good about this moment. So instead I try the calm approach. I shriek to Squirrel and Shark, Get daddy! which I agree is responding a bit like someone just entered the front door swinging a machete, and not much better than shouting Oh My God We Are All Doomed!
Now, instead of the cosy, comfortable hour I expected after bathtime, supping red wine and reading blogs, I am scouring every internet mention of headlice ever made. I resolve upon a Listerine and Vinegar method first of all. And combing, combing, combing.
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