Itching yet? You will be.

I should be studying right now. I have to decompress from today first and cart untold amounts of laundry down three flights of stairs to burn them in the washing machine before I can sit still long enough to study. I still have the precautionary eebie-geebies.

Today was going to be "Back to School Night". An evening where friends and family come to school and explore their child's classroom, preferably with their child. Its also a chance for them to meet and talk with the other parents. I was planning on getting to school at 7am to finish some last minute set-ups before school started at 8. I rolled slowly over while untangling my arms from the down comforter and located my phone as I tried to focus on the numbers. 7-4-7. 7:47am!!! Adrenaline temporarily replaced my need for food and caffeine as I threw on my clothes and raced out the door.

I arrived at school by 8:01, discombobulated, hungry and tired. Did the parents notice that one of my eyes was still stuck shut and my hair looked as if I'd just wrestled a bear? I wrapped my head in one of my infamous scarves. If I'd only known how prophetic that would turn out to be. After the arrival of almost all the children we headed outside the playground. I'd been out there for about 10 minutes when my co-teacher, Darla, came out to give me a "head's up", pun intended that we had one confirmed case of head lice and do we know what to do? and did I know what they looked like? and she thought the office was going to send down some teachers to help us clean and quarantine our classroom. Over the next couple of hours, while wrangling preschoolers and making sure no one died I watched the borrowed teachers painfully disassemble, scratch that, destroy my classroom. T-minus 7 hours till Back-to-School night. Awesome. Was anyone going to check the current classroom population? The office was still sketchy about what they wanted to do. Apparently not a whole lot of protocol had been put in place for a time like this. Apparently I was the only person on the premises that even knew what head lice looked like, thanks to my mom and her ambition for the humanitarian of the decade award. Of the many stray people my parents had opened their home to while we were growing up, several had brought us the gift of lice. So, not only had I had it on more than one occasion, I knew what they looked like. I checked my charges. No lice. I moved onto the room next to ours. Discretely checking child after child. Clean, clean, clean, lice, clean. Back up. Yup. Nits. Didn't even take the time to locate any adults. Lice sighting. That child also had a sibling in another classroom. Another affirmative. After finding it in not one but three separate classrooms I became the School Lice Expert. Can't wait to add that to my resume.

Paul's and my clothes, bedsheets, rugs and towels are currently being scalded down in the laundry room whether they need to be or not; shrinkage and color transfer be damned.