The Good, The Bad and The Buggy #lice

The Grinch Who Stole Nit Mas

There's a reason the cliches, nit picking and going over it with a fine toothed comb have entered our collective word base to describe something tedious and thorough.   Add in a few descriptors like nit picking super thick hair down to one's waist times 3 plus 1 head of thick, long cork screw curls, and you have an insanity inducing show stopper!

Yes, we got the dreaded call from school yesterday and my daughter was one of 8 in her class sent home with head lice.   Gaaaaah!!   We do a daily, herbal preventative spray and it helps.  We've only gotten the call twice (3 times now) in 13 years of kid rearing.  But the spray isn't foolproof and every year there's a veritable winter invasion of the little buggers that rips through the schools.   This year there's an infestation in BOTH kids' schools, so I wasn't that surprised to get the call.



So, everything ground to a halt as we lathered up the kids with Licefreee! Gel non-toxic (No-I didn't get anything to endorse them.   We've also tried Wild Child, DIY tea tree oil, and a host of other all natural remedies, store bought & home made that are less toxic than RID.)

I spent hours yesterday and today bagging bedding, combing heads, spraying down the house, and doing copious amounts of laundry.   My kids bagged up 6 large trash bags full of stuffed animals, down comforters and pillows from their room.   SIX?!   Things were lookin' like The Grinch came to visit around here and stole Christmas!



And we're far from finished.   We'll be washing, treating, retreating, but not retreating, until the lice are defeated.   Apologies, but this can't be put off, and that means a big chunk of my dedicated blogging time will temporarily become debugging time.

And the good news...

Good news is, our $2,500 new fridge arrived yesterday, that I won from Kenmore!   You can click here to check out our past coverage for the basic back story.  I'll have lots more to say about that in the near future.   Thanks a zillion Kenmore.   I DO believe in Santa Claus.   Best WIN ever!!!!

Something old... something new. 

This ultra modern stainless French door fridge with bottom freezer goes surprisingly well with our quirky old kitchen.   We kept the funky wall paper, original sink unit, plastic 50's wall tiles & metal cabinets, but painted them bright blue instead of the canary yellow they were when we moved in.   I'm going to share our vintage doggy wall paper 'cause it amuses me and is one of our fav weird things about this old house.   It's 4 scenes depicting dogs... Yep, DOGS, shopping, cooking and entertaining doggy guests!  I'm blindly guessing circa 1950's?!

  

Kenmore also featured my holiday Tiramisu Disaster Story on their site!   Click here to check it out.  It's pretty funny if I do say so myself (Thanks Mom!).   I'd love to hear yours.






Curious what's in my new fridge?   Take a peek.   It'll never be this clean again!  Don't worry that we only have apples & baby carrots in the produce drawers so far.  I do plan to hit up the Logan winter market and the Dill Pickle Coop but we also keep most of our fresh fruits in hanging baskets in the kitchen.   I find the kids pick 'em more often then.   It's kinda like a sudo-tree that way and I love picking Clementines and apples off our basketree.

More good news...

Sage placed 10th all around and came home from state in gymnastics with 3 medals & a ribbon... and all with an injured hand.   Considering 5 days before she was getting x-rays in ER at the hospital, and we didn't even think she'd be recovered enough to compete, we're ecstatic.   

And the bad news...

Dug's been working out of state a LOT with our family business, Dug Production Sound, Inc. and so far he spent most of the month in Florida and then Vermont on a network shoot.   He got snowed in and flight delayed 2 days, stuck first in Vermont & then Cleveland.   He missed Sage's state meet, which caused a lot of tears and heartache on both sides.   We kept him posted as the meet progressed.   

He finally made it home late yesterday morning just in time to put in a 12 hour day at home on fridge and lice detail.   We have a 100 year old home with narrow doors and had to take the doors off 3 fridges and our house to effect the change yesterday.   Our old old fridge went to the great beyond.   Our less old fridge is now relocated to the enclosed back porch and will debut on Craigslist this week for a reasonable price.   Anyone?

It took a crazy lot of time to empty and fill the fridges, clear a path through the backyard snow, porch & kitchen, unpack, and reassemble everything.   A zillion thanks to the 2 amazing warehouse guys who picked up and carried 3 fridges with a STRAP for us.   They didn't even use a dolly.  You were rockstars!

More bad and good news:   
ChiIL Holidaze Giveaways

We're still awaiting our giveaways from Freshii which should have arrived already.   We WILL be announcing our winners for this set of DVDs & Freshii tomorrow.   Last call to enter through midnight for both tonight.

Click here.

The good/bad news is we have 10 more rockin' giveaways for our readers which we'll be posting in the coming weeks.   I've made the executive decision to extend our window for entries through Dec 31st with winners announced January 1st.   

I've been feeling rushed & stressed and between illness, lice, incoming fridge, and the general chaos of solo parenting, and I've realized the best gift is time. So here's to more time with family.   More time to sleep in a bit.   And more time to enter our giveaways for 2013 at a more leisurely pace.   We like to do interesting, in depth video and photo features that take time.   We're picky about who we partner with and rushing is overrated.   So, thanks for your patience.   One of the joys of being self employed is being able to be flexible.   Now back to the laundry room...