Kharmic Heebie-Jeebies

Yesterday was an eventful day for us. The first part of the morning was spent getting ourselves ready and heading to London on a coach to meet up with one of my best friends who deliberately caused herself a layover just to see us. The afternoon was filled with sight-seeing, posing for pictures, and lots of hugs. But before sunset, those feel-good vibes had been replaced by panic, tension and horror.

Once upon a time, a letter came home from Julian's school. 'Please be advised that head lice is going around the school... Check your child's hair regularly.'

"Head lice? Gee, thanks. Let's just hope Julian doesn't get it. Julian, don't go near other children's heads at school. Don't share your hat or anyone else's hat. Promise me!"

"I promise."

Soon after the letter, I had myself thoroughly convinced that it would just not happen to us. I hated having lice when I was six years old, and I was determined not to let them in this house. Not on my watch you don't!

For about two weeks we thought we were pretty lucky. There was no sign of the little critters, life went on steadily and everyone got to where they needed to be on time. Everyone including Julian, who needed to be at kickboxing at six o'clock sharp on Thursday night.

While the name 'kickboxing' may not immediately imply head-to-head contact, there are some instances in which the children's heads might meet as they practice certain moves. And when Julian came home and took a shower after class, he wouldn't stop scratching his head.

At first we thought nothing of it. "No big deal, surely it's just a dry scalp from too much shampooing. He's had quite a few showers this week anyhow. The water is hard in this region, too. We'll use different conditioner next time.  No time to fuss over it now, we need to be out of the house tomorrow by eight!"

When we woke up yesterday morning we were so busy getting ready that we didn't pay attention to whether or not Julian was scratching his head. It was the last thing on our minds at that point. It did get a bit annoying when Julian would take off his hat and stop walking to do it, so we hustled him along and told him to keep the hat on his head and stop messing with it.

"Can I have a piggy-back ride, mom?"

"No, Julian, we don't have time for that right now. We have to get to the bus station on time. Maybe later."

We made it to the station as planned, and as Julian sat next to me on our bus journey he rested his head on my shoulder from time to time. Once in London, we took lots of pictures where we were smiling and posing with our heads close together. Our friend hugged each one of us extra tight as we said our good-byes and when we got on our return coach, just when Julian had rested his head on the back of the seat, I made him trade me places to make it easier to manage the baby.

As a matter of fact, I am not a fan of buses at all. I am always concerned that the person who sat in my seat before me may have had head lice, especially when I see a greasy hair-print on the window next to me. Yesterday was no exception, I just didn't ever imagine that the lice-carrying greasy person who passed out on the bus would actually be a very clean, seven-year-old little boy who I love so much.

After the bus had pulled into the station and we were on our way home, Julian asked me again for a piggy-back ride. I didn't refuse him this time because I knew he had been so patient all day and really deserved to get off his feet for at least part of the way home. Once on my back I told him to climb onto my shoulders instead, where I carried him for about a third of a mile before I had to put him down. He even got to run (his favorite thing to do) for the home stretch; what a perfect day it had been so far.

Once inside our home sweet home, we were ready to relax for the remainder of our lovely day. Hubby was brewing tea, I was donning my sheepskin booties, Emerson was playing with the toys he hadn't seen all day, and Julian was...

...scratching his head.

"My head really itches, mom, I think I have head lice."

"You think you have what? Let me see your head!"

I immediately got out the flashlight and looked through his hair, only to be horrified by the sight of things on the back of his head... crawling around... and... moving... "There's... there's one there! There! Get it! Get it!"

As I squirmed like a little girl and tried not to empty the contents of my stomach on the floor, flashbacks began to haunt me of all the different times during that day in which my head came close to Julian's. I was getting increasingly panicked. What if the baby has them, too? What if he gave them to our friend? What if British lice aren't supposed to go to America? I HAVE LOTS OF HAIR!

Meanwhile, Hubby was taking a much calmer approach to the whole thing.

"It was going to happen. We knew it would."

"I didn't! I really thought we wouldn't get them!"

"Well that was silly. We'll get some stuff for it in the morning."

I wasn't sure I could wait until the morning. However, given the hour and the time required for treatment, it was going to have to wait. It was pure coincidence that we had rice with our dinner, right after I had been getting queasy over lice and nits for some time, but I managed to keep it all down despite fears that it was moving. Shortly after, I thought I started noticing some itching.

I couldn't tell if I was paranoid or if I really was infested, but I seemed to be freaking out just in case. All night long I had a bad case of the heebie-jeebies, complete with nightmares at bedtime. Not exactly the type of ending I would have chosen for that day.

It probably doesn't help that I'm afraid of spiders and ticks, especially after Hubby found a tick crawling on me last year, or that I've seen one too many episodes of Monsters Inside Me. I'm afraid of quite a few micro-menaces, actually, such as wasps, earwigs, red ants, bedbugs, mosquitoes and even dust mites. There is just something about tiny things making me unhealthy without my permission that really "bugs" me. Plus, I can still feel the nit comb yanking through my super-long hair back in the first grade, which only added pain to the trauma for a mental scar that is sure to last a lifetime.

While researching more information on the little buggers, it became clear that it is important to stay calm in these situations. Stay calm? Excuse me? This is so that you don't over-treat the children, and probably also so you don't traumatise them. So I tried to remember to keep cool.

 "Julian, next time you decide to bring some new pets into this house, you make sure to ask permission first, okay?"

"What? I didn't bring any.... oh. Well I didn't ask them, they're invisible so they just... got on me."

When Hubby came back from the store this morning with the treatment gel, I was quite excited to use it. It is a product called Hedrin, which is supposed to suffocate the lice and penetrate the eggs to kill them all. When finished simply shampoo, condition and comb out, and voila! No pesticides or harsh chemicals, can be used on the baby if necessary. I saturated Julian's hair with it as directed and after fifteen long minutes of "How long is it now, Mommy?" and "Has it been fifteen minutes yet?" it was time to douse him with shampoo.


When I put the conditioner on him and started combing his hair, dozens of little brown flecks kept showing up on it, turning my stomach with each stroke. Only one was as large as a sesame seed so it's difficult to tell how long he's had them, but if they have to reproduce sexually and there were lots of small ones and quite a few eggs, hatching every seven to ten days,  and they only lay up to ten a day... how many did he have and how long had they been there? Should we only be concerned with head-to-head interaction from the past two days or the past two weeks? Some friends of ours watched the boys for us one night and their little girl was playing closely with the boys. So I sent her a warning, too.

"No worries, thanks for letting me know. Got all the gear to treat it already."

Wow! That wasn't the reaction I was expecting!

"...the first time I got them from my niece and nephew I bleached my hair to get rid of them! This won't be the last time Julian brings them home, don't worry."

At this point I am feeling much better about the way I reacted. I felt awful at first, but after talking to our friend I realized that if we just keep some treatment stuff on hand, we'll be fine. My reaction was totally normal, and all was forgiven anyhow. No bleach involved.

After Julian's hair was done I treated my own, and now that we have both been treated I can let him near me once again. Julian's hair only required about a fifth of the bottle of Hedrin while mine required three fifths. That leaves just the right amount to treat Hubby's hair and possibly the baby's so we should all be good. But what the Hedrin won't remove is the memories of looking through the back of my son's scalp to see things crawling around on him, sucking his blood. It may be weeks before the nightmares and the phantom itches stop.  

I can't help but be suspicious that this may be karma getting back at me for scaring the crap out of Julian with his very own plastic spider a few weeks ago. I put my arm around him and pretended I just wanted to hold him close when I put the thing on his sleeve and shouted, "Julian! There's a spider on you!" The way he squirmed... seems awfully familiar.

That Little [Turd]

Everywhere. Little turds are everywhere, interrupting our attempt of a quiet life in Oxfordshire. We walk Julian to school, run our errands, all while watching out for turds every step of the way. Some are from little dogs, which are not too bad, others are large plops from some ginormous mastiff. Some, like the ones on the sidewalk today as we walked to get our groceries, were evidence of a big dog trying to do his business with his owner dragging him along because he needed to rush to church or something. A fifteen-foot trail of half-finished turds left behind like the crumbs Hansel placed to help him find his way back home. Only hopefully nothing will be eating these...

After a full day of turd watching and sole scrubbing (old toothbrush and cold running water works great for getting dog smut off my son's shoes) it is time to put the baby to bed. Our seven-month-old boy is quite the trickster when it comes time to sleep, he has devised the cleverest of plans that a boy his age could possibly execute. Usually when we put him down to sleep, he may cry for just a while but he soon realizes that we aren't going to come in and pick him up. Most of the time, he doesn't make even two seconds' worth of fuss before it's lights-out, and we like it that way. However, we have recently started him on solid foods and that has thrown a huge spanner in the works!

In case you didn't know, when babies are on milk-only diets their bowel movements are mostly fluid. But as Emerson is now of the age where we have to give him solid foods as well, the consistency of his movements has changed drastically. For a while, it was once every three days. We could handle that. That was great. But coincidentally, he has also begun to express a healthy amount of separation anxiety that is normal for his stage in development. What could that possibly have to do with poo? I'll tell you. (Heh, that rhymed!)

Instead of listening to the heavenly sound of the baby gently cooing and drifting into sleep, we hear straining grunts and "kkkeeeeeen" (which is Emerson's word for "clean") reverberating out the bedroom door. When we finally decide that he's definitely trying to tell us something, we open the door to a wall of stench bad enough to shout, "Honey... could you open some windows?"

"Do you think he pooped?"
"Well it certainly smells like it!"

When we go to change the child who is now grinning ear to ear like he knows something we don't, what we find inside his diaper is oddly praiseworthy. But not in an encouraging sense. Like a perfect crime, we are in awe of what he has accomplished but we do not find it acceptable. These "nappies" cost around 10p each and I have to come in and throw each one away for this? A tiny turd the size of a piece of candy corn? At first we thought it was possibly due to constipation, but that's definitely not it. What we have here is a baby boy who has simply learned from experience and applied his knowledge to get what he wants. He wants "ma-ma." Isn't that sweet.

If it were a one-off kind of thing, I think that would be fine. In fact, I hardly noticed the first few times he did this. But it has become largely evident that he is now just doing this on purpose to mess with us. I cannot even recall how many nights we spent trying to get him adjusted to the crib for naps and nighttimes, and we really deserved the cooperation we finally got. Now we are just wasting money; these things add up, you know. Not to mention that this behavior is rapidly making all our previous hard work redundant.

Disgusting as it may be, I think a lesson can be learned here. If nothing else, all these little turds have been reminding us to step a little more carefully, take the time to notice the little things (even if they are turds) and to spend more time with our children. They want it so badly they will even s*** themselves to prove it. That may be the strangest way to go about teaching this lesson, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Oh, and for heaven's sake let your dog stop for a minute to finish his business. You wouldn't want someone to rip you off your throne in the morning, so don't do it to your canine buddy, okay?

Staring at Spoons

"Mommy, I just know that that's not real."
"What's not real?"
"Bending spoons. People can't really do that."
"Actually, some people can."
"Have you ever seen anyone doing it?"
"Well, no..."
"Then how do you know it's real?"
"I don't know, I just do. Let's Google it."


Step 1: Think of an event with some extreme emotion attached to it. First kiss, first performance, something vivid.
Step 2: Concentrate on that emotion while holding the spoon (or not holding it, that's personal preference). Tell the spoon repeatedly to bend. ("Bend, bend, bend, bend...") If you need to shout or make other noises to help you with channelling the emotion then you can do so.
Step 3: Spoon will bend. Supposedly.


As I go to the drawer to get out a cheap-o spoon, Julian, my seven-year-old son, isn't even paying attention to me anymore. He has gone back to watching his cartoons. I stare at the spoon, thinking of all the emotional stuff I can possibly think of, making faces which are indescribable. The boy has asked me a question, I'm going to do my best to show him the answer. How cool would it be if I could say: "Yes Julian, humans CAN bend spoons with their minds, and I can prove it. Watch me do this."


Unfortunately, my attention span is way too short to stare at any spoon for long enough to make it bend this way. I tried for a while, but the thought of myself making strange faces and staring at a 25p spoon while also whispering to it was just too distracting for me to concentrate on my emotional output. So I put the spoon down and walked away. Perhaps I should have tried for longer and got angry with the spoon, now that's some emotional energy that should be easier to harness!


While I may not be a spoon-bending expert at first (or second, or third-ish... okay so maybe I've attempted this a lot, so what?) attempt, there is still further evidence I have experienced first-hand that emotional energy can have a noticable effect on material objects. This isn't just the normal threw-the-thing-at-someone kind of effect, I see no point in discussing the obvious, but a real, unexplainable effect on something. You ready? Get this:


During a very emotional time in my life, I was upset to the point of shaking and sobbing and hyperventilating. I was extremely angry and distraught, speaking to a friend of mine on a cell phone for support. I honestly do not recall ever being so upset before this point, and this was a relatively brand new Motorola I was using, that I hadn't even dropped yet! I ended the call with my friend and closed the phone in the usual fashion, not smashing it or anything because I wasn't angry with the thing itself, and that was the last time my phone ever worked properly. When I went to open the phone again, it was frozen, permanently. None of the buttons or functions worked, not even when I took it to the phone shop to have it fixed. They tried all their tricks, but they were stumped.


I wholeheartedly believe that my emotional energy broke the phone. I may be biased because I was raised by a hippie who can do some weird things or because I grew up listening to Coast to Coast radio, but I tend to be a skeptic more often than not so that can't be the whole reason I am so sure of this. I am mainly a realist, always searching for the most simple answer. In this case, my answer does feel like the most simple answer.


See, emotions are very powerful. Hence, when you go to a really great movie that "moves" you and makes you cry, critics will have proclaimed it a "powerful" film. And it is my personal belief that humans have a much larger potential than we think. With enough passion, amazing things can happen. People lifting cars off the ground to save children, things like that. Einstein shared in this belief, saying: "If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves." Perhaps he, too, would have enjoyed Coast to Coast AM if it had been around in his day.


I already know how channelling my emotions can affect other people, like in fourth grade when I was an actress in the play at our church. Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames was the title, and I was so good at making everyone cry with my scene that the directors, who routinely took the production on tour, taped my performance to train all future little actresses to do it properly. It was no effort to me at all at that time, to turn on the histrionics and plead for the angel to save my stagemother's soul, I said every word as if it were coming from my own heart. And not even the manliest of men, (who I have known for twenty years and have never seen let out even a hint of moisture from his eye) dressed as an archangel and trying to remember his own lines, could resist the waterworks. I was an eight year old girl, making packed audiences sob their hearts out night after night. Some people may have even changed their whole lives as a result, and if that's not emotional energy creating movement then I don't know what is.


But a spoon? Use emotion to bend a spoon? Well, now that's a little different. Most of the strong emotions we feel are usually in more serious settings than staring crosseyed at flatware, and it is in those other settings that amazing things usually happen. So to be able to direct such energy at a spoon would require intense concentration, something I'm not sure either of us can manage on a Saturday morning.


While I ponder how I am going to go about explaining the whole concept of harnessing emotional energy to Julian, he is already going into the kitchen to find a spoon for himself to bend.  He doesn't know I'm watching, but I observe quietly as his face contorts while he whispers, "Bend, bend, bend bend..."  If he is anything like me, which I know he is, this will not be his last attempt.