LICE!: The Sequel

In October of 2006 we had the pleasure of dealing with a lice outbreak in our very own home. It was not a fun experience. Although I didn't get infected personally, my scalp still crawled for weeks afterwards. That was definitely something I could have lived without.

Well, after 15 months lice has come back into my life.

It all started with my favorite person, the kid down the street. #1's friend, Kate.

She hadn't been over too much since the sleepover ban took affect.

I was about to link to my post concerning the sleepover ban when I realized, to my disbelief, that I hadn't even mentioned it on this site yet. It seems we get a blog within a blog today. Here is a quick summary:

It all started one Thursday night. #1 slept over at Kate's house. We had already said that she couldn't sleep there anymore due to the partying that goes on, however #1 assured us that she only did that on the weekends. OK, we said. One more chance.

Friday at around lunch time they showed up at our house. (Kate has a real knack for showing up about 5 minutes before lunch). The first thing out of #1's mouth was, "can Kate sleep over?". Jules replies with a big fat NO!

As the day progressed Jules had to go out and run some errands. This meant that Kate had to go home. But guess what? Nobody was there. So Jules got to cart Kate around with her while she did her errands. Friday is usually Pizza Night at our house so Jules decided to drop off the excess baggage at her house before she got the pizza. Again, nobody home.

Jules picked me up from work and I noticed that she still had Tag-Along with her in the van. When we got home Kate ran home to see if her Mom was there. She wasn't. So now we get to feed Kate.

We had Kate check hourly for her Mom. On one of these checks a neighbor came out and told her that her Mom was out for the night.

WTF?!! I guess we should call the cops and tell them that we have an abandoned kid here or something. Jules didn't go for that and we were forced to let Kate spend the night.

This is when we outlawed sleepovers with Kate.

We had two reasons for this ban. The first we didn't want #1 sleeping over at Kate's because we didn't want Kate's Mom getting the idea that we "owed her one" (and we weren't really too enthused about the idea to begin with). Secondly, we didn't want to her Mom to take off for the day with the notion that Kate was spending the night at our house. If it is a known fact that Kate isn't allowed to spend the night this should never happen again.

And now back to the lice.

Kate came by Sunday afternoon at her regular time, five minute before lunch. She hung out in #1's room for about an hour or so. Then the two of them went over to Kate's house for a little while. Then they came back to our house and then back to Kate's again. At dinner time and #1 had come home. Nothing really out of the ordinary happened. It was just a regular day.

After supper #1 asked if she could go back to Kate's house. We said no, because we're mean and because she's not allowed to go over there after supper on school nights. She bitched and moaned as usual but hey, that's the breaks.

When #1 came down from having her shower she was sitting in the chair when she says to me all non-chalently, "Kate has lice."

Nothing will get my attention faster than saying something like that. "She HAS lice or she HAD lice?"

"She has lice."

Jules was in the same room during this conversation but it was obvious that she wasn't hearing any of it, so I said, "Did you hear that?"

"No. What?"

"Kate has lice."

"WHAT?"

Immediately she got our the lice combs from our last ordeal and started checking #1's head. After a short time she'd found what she was looking for but hoping not to find. Lice! GREAT!!

Luckily we still had a brand new bottle of lice shampoo, so off Jules and #1 went to treat her hair. My head was already starting to itch just thinking about it.

While this was going on I check the heads of #2 and #3 and didn't find anything. Thank Christ!! The next step was to toss #1's blankets and pillow cases into the dryer for a while. I remembered seeing Kate sitting on #2's bed earlier so her blankets also got thrown in the dryer.

After about an hour everything was taken care of. There wasn't a lot of lice found on #1's head so I'm hoping that they were just new arrivals. I'm sure glad the sleepover ban was in affect otherwise we might have had a much more serious outbreak.

My thoughts?
What the hell is wrong with Kate's mother? It is certain that she knew that Kate had lice, yet she still let her come over to our house and hang out with #1 all day. Who does that?What the hell is wrong with #1? When someone says "I have lice" you say, "I gotta go." You don't hang out with them for the rest of the afternoon. You certainly don't ask to go back and hang out with them after supper. You don't wait a few hours to mention it. You can be sure that she now knows the proper response to a statement like that.
For now it seems that we are clean of lice, but we still get to deal with a few weeks of paranoia induce scalp itch and nightly lice checks for a party of five. Yay!

Also we have a full scale Kate ban until she gets treated. That's right! Her mom still hasn't treated her lice. She gave Kate a haircut and by the looks of it she did it with a butter knife. Kate used to have nice long hair. Now she looks like a Barbie doll that some kid took a pair of scissors to. This however is not the way to treat lice. Until she gets treated with some lice shampoo and gets all of the lice and nits combed out properly she will not be coming into our house. Jules told Kate what needs to be done and even gave her a lice comb to take home. Will her mother listen and do the right thing? That's the million dollar question.

Yet another instance where Kate has to suffer for the irresponsibility of her mother.

Poor kid.