As the title suggests, things have been kind of, uh, gross around here lately.  While the girls were down in Corpus Christi for a few days over the holiday break, I came down with the flu.  I had the flu shot a month or two ago, so I guess that limited the “severity and duration” of the infection but still, ouch!  I had three terrible days where I could barely sit up, etc. and watched enough TV for a year.  It was either great timing (since I didn’t have to take care of the kids) or terrible timing (I was planning to get a lot done while the kids were away).  Then a few more days gradually recovering.  A few days on the bench was a big kick in the pants.  Damn you, flu!  Kit never got the flu, but she did spend night after night awake coughing with allergies or a cold or something.  We were a barrel of laughs for New Year’s Eve!

When the kids got back from Corpus, Claire was complaining that her head itched.  We decided to take her to a “lice salon” called Madcaps Salon to literally have her head checked.  Claire did, to our surprise, have lice.  On a positive note, Claire loved the lice salon.  She got to watch Netflix on an iPad and eat Doritos while they massaged her hair.  She said she loved it and wanted to go back.  Luck for Claire, I took her back the next afternoon for the full treatment, and also took Molly in to see if she had lice.  Molly did not have the lice.  Neither did I.  So that was a relief, and sort of a miracle.  Claire’s treatment took 2+ hours.  They have to do it by hand, strand by strand, since the lice are resistant to all the easy treatments.  Molly sat with me and watched The Rescuers on an iPad provided by the salon while I tried to work on my laptop.  Molly loved it too and asked many times to go back in the succeeding days.

So we’re doing lots of extra laundry and disinfecting around home and trying to avoid sharing our various bugs with each other.  Plus a comb-out routine for Claire and some other lice prevention.  No more gross things shall infect us going forward!  I can’t wait to get back to just simply hugging the girls without worrying about transmitting something awful.