Waging War

Okay, I've been slightly embarrassed to post this, but it's soooo all consuming, and I need to vent. One of my lovely children brought home head lice from school and infected us all. It's the most horrible thing! I've spent probably about $150 on head lice products (and I still have to retreat everyone in a few days). We've done more laundry than I've done in the whole of my married life. Well, I'm sure that's an exaggeration. I've been rewashing everyone's bedding every single day. I'm going through everyone's closets and drawers and removing everything. Some things I seal up in a bag for a month, everything else I wash, then I spray out their drawers with cootie spray. I've been treating everyone's mattresses over and over, we'll probably all have cancer when we're done with this. I've been spraying and respraying the couch and carpets. Vacuum, vacuum, vacuum. I've spent hours upon hours upon hours picking through everyone's hair for nits and having my hair picked through. I spent 5 hours the other day just getting my hair picked through, and yet there were still nits in there! The first couple of nights, I spent about 5 hours going through my families hair. Mark alone took 2 hours. We've given all of the male members of the household short haircuts, this helps. I'm seriously tempted to cut my hair off chin length and just let someone professional fix it when all this is over. The kids and Bruce have been clean for a few days, except for an occasional nit that I had missed before, but my stupid long hair keeps turning them up. I've treated my head three times in the past four days with different kinds of products. I'm pretty sure that there is nothing alive in there anymore, it's just a matter of finding all of those nits. It only takes one to hatch and then you start all over. Bruce has gone to the laundromat twice because we can do a bunch of loads at once. We've spent about $60 at the laundromat, not including detergent. Then of course, I haven't had time to cook, so we've spent money buying food. I haven't been to the grocery store in forever, so we have nothing to eat. And I still have so much work to do to rid this house of the pests, that I don't know when I'll ever get it done. Then when that's all done, I'll have to fold all of that laundry. It makes all of my other laundry mountains look like a cinch. Oh my heavens, NEVER EVER get head lice. It's a bloody nightmare!