Reflections of a Highbrow Hillbilly

Don’t bring home dinner mommy we are coming home with crabs.

Head lice that is, itchy heads, strip the beds.

So today started off well. Good moods all around, even me! Took the twins to school, survived the ____________ mothers that poorly maneuver the school parking lot. Dale Earnhardt didn’t design it or build it ladies and besides, children walk through here…could you please slow the hell down? Back home, I was knee deep into my new book and my second cup of coffee. The sweet and wonderful man that I am legally bound to for better or worse, in sickness and in head lice called and threw the mother of all turds into my punchbowl! “Honey, I kinda have some bad news, well not really bad, its kinda bad but its all ok but………….(spit it out mother f**ker I am aging as we speak here) Um, you are going to have to come get the kids because their whole class has come down with head lice.” ………………….”Hello” Yeah, I say, I’m here. My first thought was well if the whole class has it then why the hell can’t they stay there with it? I think I actually asked him that. He then says “ Well not the whole class but a lot of it anyway can you come get the twins and hurry? My gut was telling me to say. Hell no honey you keep um, this one is flying out of the coo coo’s nest. I have had enough with the contraction of this sickness and that illness and I just don’t have one more incubation period left in me!

I leave the house JUST as it starts to rain. Great, now I am going to have to walk lice infested children through the rain, hitting every yellow puddle, getting soaking wet, then into my car. I go to the drug store first because I certainly did not want to walk lice infested children around a drug store full of candy not to mention sick tickets that hang back there near the blood pressure machine (you will meet sick ticket extraordinaire further down). Cutting through my neighborhood, I pass the same damn gaggle of geese, of which I have already hit and killed 3. My car is the place they go to die but this time I only wounded the sucker. There is always the trip home right? I hate them, they stink, they bite, they have shifty little useless sideway’s eyes and they shit all over EVERYTHING. They are always there, do nothing but make a mess and waddle around getting hit by cars, namely mine. Are these things why Canada has a bad name? I have no issues with Canada but these geese = issues! I go into the drug store and ask a druggist what I need for TWINS with head lice. She has a Speech impediment so I can barely make out what she says but it went something like…”two of everything”! I look at her to see if she is serious or thinks that is funny. She thought it was funny! Twin jokes, How freakin original there Gomer Pyle! Really, two of everything? For twins? Never heard that before you half wit….how bout…slow down harelip, Ever heard that before, know who Elmer Fudd is? Got marbles in your mouth? I have a ton of um bitch so tell me where the lice spray is before I really piss on your day! She takes me to the section, offers me no help but tells me to read the box and see which one I like. I tell her “I do not LIKE any of them, I NEED them”. “You are the professional YOU read and me which one I should get, it’s called your job now do it!” She quickly realizes people carry guns so she helps me and I am on my way to the counter.

Enter the sick ticket. He is at the counter stumbling around complaining about how expensive his lithium has become. Three of us hear this and 2 back up slowly. Not me, I have him by head lice and a bad attitude, I aint scared. I look him up and down. He is filthy, tweaked out and he stinks, so I sure hope he is crazy. He has on no shoes; two black eyes, and is wearing an ankle cuff. Side note: the cop standing beside him must have been WITH him. He continues to complain about his medicine then asks the clerk for a cup of coffee. One of the clerks behind the counter mumbles, “Does he think this is McDonalds?” I start to giggle and sick ticket tries to talk to me so I start to type on my blackberry. He leaves; I pay and head to the crab shack to pick up my little Petri dishes.

We are home and I am trying to bathe twins that have a more raging case of head lice than a whorehouse has of crabs! I feel like mommy of the year for having missed them this morning. I mean these things are as obvious as an elephant sitting in your living room. I decide to wash the girl child first. She strips naked and jumps in the tub. I slather her head with step 1 of the lice abatement kit, and then read that it has to sit ON HER HEAD for 10 minutes…I am like in dog years or what? She of course manages to somehow get it into her eyes so I have to hold her down to clean out her eyes, AND THEN convince her that I have to rinse her to get the rest out. She screams “NO MORE WATER” much like Joan Crawford did in mommy dearest about the hangers. Step 2, the gel and comb out step (I tip the box upside down to see if there is a bonus valium in there)…I am just to out of energy to even write about this step but it took almost 2 hours and I am now prone to think my daughter has anger management issues. Given the choice, next time I would rather sandpaper a lion’s ass than rid her of lice! People going through water boarding take it better than she took this. Time to do the boy child. He was so traumatized by her experience that he decided to sit still so it would end quickly. It did however, he was so pissed that he had to come home early AND have his hair washed that he did little things, little passive aggressive things to make me well aware. Lets see, where to begin. He made me chase him to get him in the tub, I slipped in water and fell and he laughed, he pissed in one of their pretend kitchen cups and waited for me to find it (after setting it up on the counter like one of the regular cups) he pulled every towel out of the linen closet and threw it down the stairs. (I think he wanted me to bust my ass) Ran away from me in K-mart while I was buying new pillows, flicked a bugger at me (has never done that, didn’t know he knew how), came in for what I thought was a kiss and bit the shit out of my lip. Visited my bedroom, rummaged through drawers and for good measure crammed a lot of toilet paper into my toilet then rubbed it down with toothpaste. Shank’d his sister with a pretend knife 3 or 4 times. Finally and my personal favorite (although not passive aggressive at all), he walked up to me and said “mommy, I am so angry at you that I don’t know how to explain it to you” “you have bothered me all day and I am really tired of listening to all the things you are saying” “But mommy, no matter how mad I am at you, I still love you and I will always love you, because you are the best mommy that has ever come in this house”! That comment, 4 Cadbury eggs and a big glass of milk, I would say still finished out the day as stellar! All in a days work!