Nit Picking

As no critters were discovered during this morning’s hand delousing session, Miss Katy will be returning to school today with about four inches less of hair because I realized that we couldn’t avoid cutting some of it off. Her hairs is fine but think and curly. I felt terrible about that for some reason. But Katy is more than ready to be done with Rob and I hunched over her head picking through her hair practically strand by strand and dislodging nits with our fingernails because those little nit combs are useless on the fine hair that many children, ours included, have. The laundry is nearly caught up but we’ve decided that until Katy is louse and nit free, her bedding will have to be done daily.

We slept this morning. And then I slept in more because I awoke with a horrible headache behind my eyes. When I did get up my left eye was matted and a deep angry red color possibly as a result of my fingers being in Kate’s chemically treated hair so often over the last two days. I am very sensitive to that kind of thing. I have had to give up showering at the gym because the disinfectant they use on the showers sends me into days long hay fever attacks. I can’t even use the bottled spray to wipe down equipment as it is just a watered down version of the same disinfectant. Rob told me at breakfast - following a bug hunt and nit-picking session - that I slept horribly. Startling easily and talking a lot. I know I have been dreaming constantly the last week or so. Nightmares some but usually just those exhausting dreams about searching for someone or something and hiding and running from someone or something. Not totally unexpected with the second anniversary now less than a week away and with the added stress of the lice visitation and trying to sort papers for taxes (a world of confusion awaiting there) and shredding and storage - not to mention the whole gearing up for Texas thing. I am lucky to be sleeping at all. I will take crappy sleep or insomnia any day.

I told Rob that I am having a hard time find charitable feelings for his sister. You know, poor Widowed SIL - she has it so hard, so I guess I can let the little lice thing go. But he wondered why I was bothering to think about her at all. I should just be like him and forget about her. He’s right. If not for the lice, we’d have forgotten about her already. Lord knows that I don’t waste time or thought space on my own mired in inertia youngest sis. Some people like and need the kind of misery that goes along with victimhood - whatever its original source. I guess if that kind of thing didn’t have collateral damage it wouldn’t be so irritating. I just forgot the critical rule of being related to people like that - all visiting should be done on neutral territory and confined to the phone or Facebook as much as humanly possible.

So today is Jordan’s birthday. She wanted to meet us in the city at the Muttart to visit her mom’s memorial bench before supper out. But with lice and having a lawyer appointment in the afternoon to sign wills and directives and other cheery stuff and then needing to get back home in time to meet Katy’s school bus and the insurance adjustor who is coming to appraise the damage to the car that Jordan was driving in a fender bender last week - well - just another detail that we will have to manage and figure a way to work out. Things will fall into place. They always do.