Lice crazy and Too Much Information (after the pics)

Did I neglect to mention in my last post that after we thought Mary was the only person with lice, Abe discovered a ton of nits in my hair Friday night? Yeah, I thought so. Between that time and now, my hair has undergone: RID (scary, ineffective pesticide treatment), multiple sessions of nit comb-throughs, LiceFree! Spray, three blow-dry treatments (so hot and long that I thought my scalp would burn off), two tea-tree oil shampoo washes, a priesthood blessing, and right now: I have soaked 1/4 cup of pure tea tree oil into my scalp. Tome gave me an 8 ounce bottle, bless his heart. Oh, and I’ve laundered my sheets every day since Thursday.

From Amazon, arriving soon are these three exciting products: A Robi comb (a battery charged comb that zaps lice with electricity so that they die on contact), a Terminator comb (best lice comb on the market!), and a giant VAT of tea-tree oil shampoo.

All of last night’s dreams revolved around picking lice off of my head. Do I sound crazy and obsessed? That’s about how I feel. Poor Abe just wants a break, but every time we have a spare moment, I hand him a comb and order him to get to work on my hair. While he does that I pore over the Amazon reviews of different lice products and read them like it’s therapy. Most people write their terrifying lice stories into their review and send words of encouragement and support to the review reader. The reviews make me feel like I have a global support group.

When I am not actively combating lice, I perform tasks in a distracted state and have several times thought I might be losing my mind. Case in point: Yesterday, after forgetting a bag of groceries at the store, I went out and climbed back into the passenger seat of the car and sat there for a minute before I realized the car wasn’t going to drive itself back to the store.

Okay, enough about lice (even though, honestly, that’s basically all I think about). Today was General Conference! A welcome, uplifting, four hour distraction. One of my favorite talks was Elder Holland’s about caring for the poor. I also liked Elder Bednar’s talk on missionary work. He pointed out that the reason we do missionary work is because we have felt that power of the atonement in our own lives and desire the same blessing for others. That’s kind of how I feel about LiceFree! Spray and tea tree oil–I want to share the info with EVERYONE so no one else has to go through the panic and icky pesticides I used before figuring out which products worked. Oops! I wasn’t going to write more about lice…

I’ll just cut to the pictures:

Lydia and I made this plum cake today. I needed a pick-me-up. I should have taken a picture...but guess what? I have enough plums to make it again tomorrow, so maybe I'll just do that since this one disappeared.
Lydia and I made this plum cake today. I needed a pick-me-up. I should have taken a picture…but guess what? I have enough plums to make it again tomorrow, so maybe I’ll just do that since this one disappeared. Also, doesn’t my hair look like a perfect home for lice? I would chop it all off, but no salon can legally do that for me until this ordeal is over, at which point I will probably reconsider.

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I discovered Mary reading Each Peach, Pear, Plum while the plum cake was baking.
I discovered Mary reading Each Peach, Pear, Plum while the plum cake was baking.
Abe must have taken this one.
Abe must have taken this one.
Tom and Suzanne came over for dinner. Tom gave Abe a blessing afterwards.
Tom and Suzanne came over for dinner. Tom gave Abe a blessing afterwards.
Tom reading to the girls.
Tom reading to the girls.
I love the mountains in the background. Of course, I also find the little girl in the foreground quite endearing as well.
I love the mountains in the background. Of course, I also find the little girl in the foreground quite endearing as well.

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Also, here’s a daily dose of Too Much Information: After I spent all that time in the hospital with my friend Andrea, who had to deliver her stillborn daughter, I decided I wanted to get pregnant again. Maybe it’s because I wanted the baby to be alive, or maybe it’s because I love spending time in Labor and Delivery (really, I love that floor of the hospital), but I emerged from that experience wanting, for the first time in two years, to be pregnant again. Didn’t happen the first month (which was really about two weeks before my period came), and now I have soaked my hair twice in pesticides, so I think I’ll give my body another couple months to get these chemicals out of its system before trying again. Sad.

On the upside, I have a couple classes left on my Bikram yoga pass, so I can at least use those up now! (I can’t while trying to get pregnant because the heat isn’t good for in-utero babies).

Food and family

This morning we had a relief society lesson on the nature of God. Our teacher referenced The God Who Weeps in class, a book I started but didn’t finish last year. It was a wonderful, beautiful book, and maybe I’ll get around to finishing it this year! I, um, hope.

In Sunday School, we talked about our premortal existence. Somehow, the lesson got translated into this: Life is painful, but hang on and have faith! …A far cry from the outline in the manual, I’m sure. Also, lessons where the teacher and class sink into how hard life is always make me feel slightly uncomfortable. I mean, I know I complain a lot, but at no point in time am I so deluded by self pity that I actually think my life is hard hard. Sometimes I wish it were harder so I could exercise more faith and endure, but seeing as it’s not, I am most interested in keeping the flames of faith burning and keeping apathy at bay. Lessons where members of my beloved little class all seem to agree that life is about Endurance make me feel like I should suffer more.

Then I came home, ate, napped, and cooked dinner. Tom and Suzanne came over tonight, and that was so fun. I made the usual: stuffed squash rings, steamed broccoli, cheese souffle, rolls, and baked pears. It all got eaten before we could take a picture.

But here are the pictures we did take!

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When she’s not picking her nose, Lydia is picking her lip. Sigh.

Abe got a blessing from his dad today for his new job, and I got a blessing for the new semester. I feel really good and peaceful right now, and I guess at the end of the day, I’m really glad there’s a void of serious suffering in my life (at least right now).