Freakin' Lice. Twice.

Summer is finally here!  Alleluia!  I feel like I've been waiting for summer to come all school year long.  By the end I was done.  Spent.  Finished.  If you haven't read Jen Hatmaker's blog entry calling herself "The Worst End of School Year Mom Ever," read it now.  And don't be upset if seventeen people haven't forwarded this to you already.  Your friends must think really highly of you.  Myself, well, let's just say lots of people thought I'd enjoy this.  Pretty sure I shouldn't take that as a compliment.

http://jenhatmaker.com/blog/2013/05/30/worst-end-of-school-year-mom-ever

It is hilarious, timely and so on point.  With the exception of one person (who is clearly organized and energetic), every single person I talked to said, "Oh my God!  That is so me!  I could have written that!"  Yeah, no you couldn't.  You didn't have the energy to write it.  I honestly don't know when Jen mustered up the strength to sit at her computer for that long, attach video and pictures, and write thoughtfully and with that much humor.  I'm pretty sure my sense of humor dropped off somewhere in April.  And I couldn't even gather the strength for Pinterest much less writing something with which thousands of people could relate.  So, yeah, I'm with ya, Jen.  I don't know you at all, but we are sisters in this whole parenting adventure!  And thank you for speaking for all of us who were only capable of head nods and drool in May.

Which leads me to summer.  There was a lot leading up to summer.  Class parties.  Dance recitals.  PTA meetings.  Parent Board meetings.  Dance recitals.  Plays.  Performances.  A parade.  Dance recitals.  Special lunches.  Girl Scout events.  Team parties.  And did I mention the dance recitals?  Keep in mind that they also come with dress rehearsals.  Between the two girls, I spent three plus hours in dress rehearsal and I think seven (or eight?  it's a blur) hours in recitals. I'm sure you've figured out that I wasn't the one dancing, but let me tell you, I was exhausted.  I was literally sore from sitting so much!  Is that even possible?  The dance recitals almost did me in.  Smart people at the dance studio take a huge break before starting up again for the summer.  Brilliant.  It should be enough time for me to forget the pain.

OK, so it's now summer.  All that crap is over for the year, we've started off strong with swimming at friends' houses, having friends over for dinner, sleeping in, watching boatloads of TV and just generally being blobs.  (The kids needed to up their ante on the drool factor.  While I was plenty braindead by the end of the year, they were still kicking.)  So on the night of day four, (DAY FOUR!!!) Zachary complained about being itchy.  Want to know my response?  Yeah, you guessed it:  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!  Sure enough, the boy had lice.  Oh.  My.  God.  This is how I get to start my summer?  Are you freakin' kidding me!?

I need to back up.  Over spring break this year, while in Northern California, after having stayed in other people's homes and visiting NINE other families, we discovered we had lice.  When we made the discovery, we were an hour away from our friends' house, where we were staying.  The lovely people at LoveBugs took pity on us, cleaned us up and sent us on our way.  (That sounds simple, but it was about three hours for two people to comb our four heads and hundreds of dollars.)  Meanwhile I was texting, calling and voxing everyone I knew to tell them to be on the lookout.  If you've ever had to make the call after the birthday party to tell everyone your kid threw up that night, has a fever, has pink eye, whatever it is, you get the feeling.  I've made all those calls.  For some reason this one is SO much worse!  Mostly because lice is a major pain in the ass.  You can take care of it yourself, but you probably won't do a very good job, so it will take a long time to get rid of it, and meanwhile you're risking exposure to everyone else around you.  Or you can pay God-sent people who will come to your house and comb you out.  Obviously this is a great option, but it's expensive!  And the vacuuming.  And the laundry.  And the laundry!  Loads and loads and loads of laundry.  My poor washing machine won't even make eye contact with me anymore.  It just groans, opens up and accepts the inevitable.  Like a baby eating squash.  Or me eating squash.  Blech.

Fortunately the day in Northern California when we discovered lice I had spent the day with three beautiful women (and their children) from my childhood.  I'd warned them ahead of time that Zachary suspected he had lice because he'd become paranoid during the car ride down.  (Mind you, I'd checked him before we left the house, found a nit - which I didn't know was a nit because it didn't look like the pictures I saw on the internet - dismissed it  and got in the car to go meet our friends.)  We had a great day, laughed and laughed and miraculously didn't share our bugs!  One of my friends had just finished up chemotherapy for lymphoma, which was found on a routine ultrasound when she was four months pregnant.  (Yes, you read that correctly.  Read it again if you need to.)  And here she was, at the park, with her two gorgeous daughters, the baby having literally saved her life, beautiful and happy and strong.  (This friend is one of the most incredible people I've ever met and if she doesn't become an inspirational speaker or write a book or somehow share herself with the world after all this is over, I will have to drag her around myself.  The way in which she has dealt with cancer, while pregnant and caring for a toddler, is unbelievable.  She has an incredible spirit, positivity, faith and has maintained the same sense of humor that cracked us up as seventh graders!  And now has no evidence of disease!  She really is a walking miracle.)

I send a text to the friends I saw that day, my head in a shower cap, neem oil stinking up the joint, and right away, this friend calls me.  "Lice sucks, " she said.  And you know what, it totally does.  But to hear that from my friend who had just gone through chemotherapy not only validated what I was going through, but also put things into perspective.  We joked about how much quicker it would be to get rid of the lice than cancer and how, comparatively speaking, LoveBugs was a huge bargain compared to the price of chemo.  We were also pretty sure that she wouldn't get lice seeing as she was sporting what she called "the Matt Lauer look."  She was just the person I needed to talk to that day, to talk me down off the ledge, to keep me from feeling too sorry for myself.

In the days since then, I have not stopped itching my head, constantly afraid of the lice coming back.  (Paranoia runs in the family.)  And of course it did.  Clearly someone in Zachary's world has it, as it is very definitely a new case of bugs.  It sucked to have to make those calls.  Again.  It was a bummer of a way to start the summer for sure, but not the end of the world.  I'm always trying to find the reason for things, the "why?" in God's greater plan.  I have to be honest, I'm still searching.  But I have made an amazing connection down here now with Angel from Lice Schmice.  Her website is http://www.liceschmice.net.  And, yes, I am plugging my lice lady!  She is truly an angel!  If you're in Southern California and you suspect those little buggers are in your home, then Angel's your girl.

So maybe the reason is to keep me humble.  Maybe it's a lesson in forgiveness and learning to not place blame.  (I have no idea where the lice is coming from and this is hard for me -- not in that I want to place blame, but in that I want some answers and I want to know that this won't come back into our house.)  Maybe it's a lesson in appreciating every day life, and appreciating the fact that I have my own washing machine and dryer and that I can (sort of) afford to have someone come to my house to deal with this for me.  Maybe it's just a lesson in lice removal.  (I've learned a lot this year!)  Whatever it is, I'm paying attention.  Summer 2013 has now officially begun.  Instead of spending our days doing nothing other than laundry and vacuuming, we are Legoing, playing board games, scootering, reading, swimming.  And gearing up for dancing to start again.

Mason Jar Plants

Happy summer everyone!  I hope you are as happy as I am that the end finally came!  I can breathe.  I can relax.  All the dishes in the kitchen are washed for the first time in weeks.  My children like each other again.  Granted we are only three days in, but I am a much happier person than I was last week.  More on our end of the school year later.  For now, I want to show you what I made as end of the year thank you gifts for our preschool parent board.

Last year, my friend Amber was president of the parent board, and, feeling generous, she gave every member of the parent board a pair of flip flops.  Super cute.  Summery.  Useful.  But at $5 apiece (at best) times 25 members of the board, that's a little more money than I wanted to spend.  Plus, I couldn't do flip flops again.  I searched all around and couldn't come up with anything cute for more like $2 per gift.  So I decided I'd make something myself.  Of course I went with my old standby: the mason jar!  This is one of the easiest projects I've ever done, and I think they turned out pretty cute.

Hello, old friend!  I went with a cute, half pint size.  I didn't want something too big to take up too much space.  This little guy is perfect for a kitchen window.

I filled the bottom with a mixture of those decorative shiny glass rock thingys that we purchased and some shiny real rocks that Annalise had in her "treasure box" from preschool.  She just finished fourth grade.  She wasn't too heartbroken to part with some of her treasures.  The rocks at the bottom give you a little bit of a drainage so that the roots don't get too soggy.  (These are technical terms here.  Can you tell I'm a real gardener?)

I didn't want to put too many in; just enough to cover the bottom.  OK, get ready.  Things are about to get really complicated.  Jason bought me six packs of impatiens.  I removed each flower, broke apart the roots a bit and shoved it into the jar.

You see what I mean.  It's a good thing I'm such an experienced gardener and I never, ever kill plants.  Ever.  This took some serious skill.

I gently punched down the soil a bit, just so it all fit in nicely, but really I couldn't have planned that any better.  (And believe me, I really hadn't planned for that to be that easy.)  I didn't even have to use any additional potting soil.

I put my old file folders to use again.  This time I traced a small glass to make circles.  (This part made me yearn a bit for one of those circle punches, I have to admit.)  But I LOVE reusing something I already have, especially something that has literally been sitting in a cabinet for eleven years.

They're not perfect, just like me!

Then I just personalized each one.  And got out my twine, my other old standby.

Here's the finished product!  Cute, isn't it?  And not bad for less than $2 apiece.

And here they are, ready to go to the parent board meeting.  They held up better than I did, and I can attest that, two weeks later, they are still going strong!  Woo hoo!  One of our board members is still on a trip to Spain (lucky duck), so I'm managing to keep hers alive until she returns.  And if I can keep one alive, then surely the others are still kickin'.  At the meeting I was a blubbering mess, as you can imagine.  It's not even my last year there.  I don't even want to think about next year.  Puddles.  It won't be pretty.  I'll have to come up with something really clever to give my girls next year.  They are an awesome board, who deserve a little something pretty.