There is hell on earth..

.. and it is called lice.

Actually I shouldn't say that.  Lot's of worse things happen to people, so really what is lice compared to a heart attack, death, cancer or layoff?  Just a minor inconvenience really,  but boy does having lice suck.

Day 1

Son 2 is complaining of an itchy head.  I think that he just hasn't rinsed his head well from his shower and has soap residue.  Nope, Nadim checks him and sees lice.  I start freaking out.

I know people that have had lice and my sister is the health coordinator for a head start preschool that sees stuff like this all the time.  I know what is coming my way.

First stop, call my sister for all the details on what I should do, make a list and freak out some more.

I've now decided to treat lice as if it was the Ebola virus.  I'm going for defcon 5 or whatever the highest defcon thingy is.  I'm going nuclear.  I have a huge freaking pile of laundry.

I'm in full blown panic, work like a machine mode.  You know like you do when you have a newborn baby.  No stopping to think, just work, work, work.

Bags, bags and more bags.  It is possible to have any more soft surface toys in this freaking house???  Daughter has way, way too many stuffies!  I pretty much have to quarantine her whole room.

these shelves were full of toys

Nadim runs to the store to buy more bags, Nix lice hair treatment and a flea comb.

He comes back with bags and lice spray for the furniture.

Nadim goes back to the store and comes back with one box of Nix family hair treatment.

Now, Daughter has long, long hair and I have thick, thick hair.  We need at least 2 boxes and where is the flea comb?

Nadim goes back to the store and brings back all my requested supplies.

I continue to bag stuff, strip the beds, and vacuum every surface in the house.  Towels, bedding, curtains, pillows, back packs, all the kids clothes are thrown into my side yard ready to be laundered.

There is a literal mountain of laundry in my side yard.

Laundry still remaining after 2 days of constant cycles

Nadim starts treating the kids.  Son 2 is up first.  He is patient zero.  The Nix creme rinse stuff isn't that bad, but it stinks.  Open up all the windows.  Trying to figure out how to rinse the kids heads without the pesticide going into their nose/mouth/eyes is a challenge.

Nadim combs out Son 2's hair with a fine tooth flea comb that works great.  This comb is my new best friend.  Comb, comb, comb out the lice.

this is the best lice comb ever!

Repeat with Son 1, Daughter and then me.

I'm now thanking my lucky stars that I went defcon 5.  I NEVER EVER want to do this again.

My washer/dryer has been running for 12 hours and when Nadim and I call it a night.

Day 2

Start the washer/dryer going again.

I have a stroke of genius and decide to put the bike helmets in the dryer.  After a loud clunk, the dryer stops working.

I almost stroke out, maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

I take out the bike helmets and bag them, who needs to ride bikes for the next two weeks?

I make myself walk away from the dryer while Nadim comes over and tries to fix it.  SUCCESS, Nadim is my hero and the dryer is working again.

More laundry and bags in quarantine

I am now re-evaluating my attempt to launder every single thing we own.  Nadim and I start bagging more and more items.  We vacuum the house for a fourth time.

We comb out the kids hair morning and night, the number of lice are cut dramatically and they are almost all dead.

We are making progress and the laundry outside is shrinking.  Twenty four straight hours of laundry will do that.

Day 3

I start up the laundry again, and I'm finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

My office :)

I comb out all the kids' hair with some good news: Daughter and Son 1 are completely clear!  Nothing!  Son 2 still had a few dead lice coming out, but it's about 10% of what we found on day 2.

I just got a call from our neighbor that her kids are infected as well.  Nadim and I conference and we decide to keep the kids home from school because I don't want them exposed again.

I continue to clean, process the laundry and sterilize all the brushes and hair rubber bands after each use.

sterilized hair supplies

I call the school to see what they are doing.  My kids have reminded me about all the stuffed animals and pillows in the library and that the computer lab has soft cushioned chairs.  If I think to much about sending them back to school I start to hyperventilate.   Can you say re-infestation??

Home school is starting to sound doable.

The Principal calls and the home school idea fades into the background.  I feel reassured that the school has things mostly under control.

I might actually send my kids to school.

The laundry is going so well I consider un-bagging some of the stuff I bagged yesterday and washing it.

Day 4

The kids are back in school.  Hats off to the lice police front office staff, for being vigilante on sending kids back home that still have an active infestation of lice.

I'm beginning to un-bag laundry and wash it.  Somewhere along the line I've lost Nadim and my laundry bag, hopefully it'll show up in one of the bags.

I checked in with my sister who very helpfully reminded me that lice have a short incubation period and that if I missed even one egg I'll be back to square one.  I guess that lice comb isn't going any where yet.

The adrenaline rush has officially worn off and I'm exhausted, but feeling like I have things under control.

Is there such a thing as Lice related PTSD?  I might have it.

Five weeks later

No lice, let me say that again, no lice.  Ahh, that feels good.  Everything is unpacked and put away and the house is back to normal.

I'm still running the back packs and jackets through the dryer on high every day when the kids get home from school.  I'm not sure how long I'll keep that up, maybe the next year or two.

Things I learned

The very most important tool you can have when dealing with lice is a good comb.  The ones that come with the shampoo are absolutely worthless.  Buy yourself a good one.

The CDC has a ton of great information, but when you google lice the CDC website doesn't appear on the first page.  Check out these links:

CDC info on lice
CDC info on getting ride of head lice

By the way, after the lice epidemic was under control, I researched the defcon system.  Apparently Defcon 1 is the highest level of alert.  I guess I had the numbers backwards :)

Oh, and not to worry, I found this missing laundry bag.

Smells like..

nope not Teen Spirit, am I dating myself? It smells like Honey Wheat Bread.

Fresh bread, can you smell it??

A couple of weekends ago Nadim and I went out to dinner at Outback Steakhouse.  We usually don't eat at chains like this, but we were in the mood for a cheaper steak dinner.  Anyway, we really enjoyed the bread they served before the meal.  I searched around for a recipe and found this one.

So today the kids and I had a food science day.  We started out with the yeast and a thermometer to measure how warm the water was.  I was looking for a temp between 110-120 and it took a few tries to get it right.

Finally warm water

We added 2 packages of yeast to 1 tsp of sugar plus the warm water and watched what happened.

yeast producing carbon dioxide

The kids were amazed at how foamy the yeast got.  While the yeast was activating we put together the rest of the wet ingredients, butter, honey, molasses and salt.  I specifically looked for a recipe that had molasses in it.  The molasses makes the color darker and also adds a deeper note to the sweetness in the bread.

Initial mixing

Next we added the flour.  It is important to note that this recipe makes 4 loaves of bread, and that translates to a lot of dough.  I mixed it using my Kitchen Aid Mixer and my bowl was a little bit small.  At one point I turned the mixer up to high and a bunch of flour flung out onto the counter top.  I managed to get it mixed though.

Adding the four

After the dough was mixed I turned it out to knead.  This was probably the most difficult part.  There was really a lot of dough, it was very sticky and hard to work with.  We managed to do it though.  If I had to do it again I would probably make only half of the recipe.

proof round 1

After the dough was kneaded I put it in a large buttered bowl and proofed it in my oven for about an hour.  

dough has doubled in size

The kids were amazed by how much the dough grew over the course of an hour.  The most exciting part though was "punching" the dough down.  Then it was all hands on deck to try and cut the dough into  four pieces.

hmm, how to split this into 4 pieces

At the suggestion of Son 1 I used a pizza cutter and that seemed to work well.  I wrapped up two pieces of the dough to freeze for later.

packaging loaves for the freezer

Next we buttered up two pans and put the remaining loaves into the oven to proof for another hour.  

proofing round 2

The loaves weren't the prettiest thing, but I was going for educational value here.

finished proofing round 2

An hour later the loaves were finished proofing and ready to be baked.

bread is out of the oven!

After baking for 40 minutes we had finished loaves!  The house smelled great and the kids kept running to the oven to see what was happening.  We learned some interesting things, like making bread is quite a bit of work, yeast working is what makes air bubbles in bread, and fresh baked bread is yummy!

slice of bread with butter, the crusts I removed for Son 1 and Daughter

Once the bread cooled off we all had a slice and enjoyed the fruits of our labor.  I sure am glad I can buy bread instead of making it.