Sleeping into the Sunset

It's been 16 days since my last blog post.

You know what I've been doing? Aside from working, raising three kids, managing Christmas and New Year's, and - oh yeah - dealing with a resurgence of head lice (which, fortunately, struck over the holidays when the risk of contagion was low and the time available to nitpick was high).

I just distracted myself. Wait, what was I doing? Oh, right!

I've been sleeping. S-L-E-E-P-I-N-G. Which deserves every capital letter I can find.

I meant to be on vacation, so the sleeping thing would have maybe made sense. Except for, you know, the raging insomnia. But that vacation didn't work out quite as I planned, and I wound up working. I did my work the easy way, though. Started late. Kept it to the daytime. Didn't bring out the computer at night. And you know what happened? I got tired. I got tired, so I got up off my sofa and I went to bed. I made myself horizontal by midnight every single night. Well, except Christmas Eve. But that's only because I was tracking Santa with NORAD and couldn't go to sleep until he was finished.

I'm well rested. Which means I'm not blogging. And I hope it doesn't offend you if I hope for more of the same in 2011. I'd call it a New Year's resolution, but I'm not so good with those.

Since I'm awake now, though, I proudly present my 2010 Done List.

In the past year, I have ...

• Said good-bye to a beloved friend - our dog, Moose, who passed away in January. We still miss her. 
• Survived the 80+ inches of snow dumped on our area last winter. With help.
• Got my kids eating real food, at a real table, with real manners. They put their napkins in their laps and only talk with their mouths full when they have something really important to say.
• Saw my diva into - and then back out of - vegetarianism. Along the way, she learned there's not a veggie grown that she does not love. Even better - she dragged her brothers kicking and screaming into the veggie madness with her. Now I can serve broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, brussels sprouts, peas, corn, cucumbers or carrots ... and everyone eats them. Last week, I introduced sauteed spinach and lima beans - on different nights, of course - and got nothing but yums from the peanut gallery. Hats off to Veggie Girl, because I'm pretty sure none of that would have happened without her.
• Fixed my plumbing. And my car. And my lights. And my computer. And my microwave. I got jiggy with the home repairs.
• Made new friends - a few who actually live near me (yay!), and one who lives with me. I've had lots of great au pairs, but only a few have become true friends - and the one who's living with me now is among the best of them. 
• Hired a boy. That's right - our next au pair is a fella! And he's got the URL to my blog, so if he's reading this - we're pleased as punch that you're coming, and the kids can't wait to make you play soccer with them. Every. Single. Day.
• Got my oldest into the Right School, with the Right People. Which means he's now attending a school where every single person on staff understands Asperger's Syndrome and not only accepts my son but loves him for exactly who he is. So far he's brought home straight A's and a girlfriend and a few best friends who call him just to chat and sometimes to invite him to the movies. His joy at getting on the school bus every day is palpable. (And, a nod here to the local middle school, because they did everything they could to support him and make sure he got where he needed to go.)
• Left my heart in San Francisco. And brought some yummy chocolate home.
• Saw my redhead off to Kindergarten. And only cried a little. And now he's reading. Kindergarten is magic.
• Knit stuff. This year I finished - yes, I said finished - my knitting Olympics project and a handbag, plus the three hats and a scarf I just gave as Christmas gifts. And I finished those last four on time. Barely. But it counts.
• Picked hundreds of nits from the heads of various of my children. And thanked my au pair for doing the same, for them and for me. (Ew.)
  
• Wrote another 57 blog posts. Which seems to be about all I'm good for in any given year, seeing as that's the exact number I wrote in 2009, too. 

Happy New Year, folks. I walked out of 2010 with a smile and my rose-colored glasses decidedly intact. I hope that you can say the same.

My Blind Side

Sorry for the long bloggy break. Lice, as it turns out, are massively time consuming. I've done approximately 67,000 loads of laundry, bought 9 new pillows and spent at least 40 hours of my spare time (yeah, right, like I have spare time) picking nits and combing insecticide onto the scalps of my children and myself. I think we won, at least I hope so. I really hope so. But to be honest, once you've had lice, you are wary to a point of paranoia seen only in victims of PTSD. Because that's exactly what you are.

And now, all of a sudden, it's Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how that happened. But today at 6:00 p.m. my ex showed up and drove my crying kids off into the sunset. Well, okay, just my diva was crying. The boys were head down over their respective DSes.

I still miss them. A lot.

I miss them because it's Thanksgiving, which is about family even more than it's about turkey. And the pre-turkey turkey fest we had last Saturday, wonderful though it was, really wasn't the same.

And I miss them because even though I took three extra days off this week, I spent so much time catching up on work and laundry and vacuuming that we didn't get one single moment of quality time. Not one. Unless nitpicking counts. (Trust me, it doesn't.)

And I miss them because this is my first big holiday without them.

Of course, Netflix picked today to send me The Blind Side. No mother who just sent her kids off to spend a major holiday without her has any business watching a film about a boy who really, truly needs a mommy.

Because, at least in my case, I think it's the mommy who really, truly needs her kids.

Lice, the Universe and Everything

There is a certain, very specific brand of ooginess that washes over you when you're brushing your hair and notice that the little gray speck that just floated down to your shoulder, and which you thought might be a dandruff flake or bit of dust, is moving. All on its own. In fact, the damn thing has legs. Six teeny tiny oogy little legs.

We have lice. And that speck was a nymph.

I squished it. And I flushed it. And then I dragged my itchy, scratchy kids upstairs and bathed them in pyrethrum.

Did you know that stuff is made from chrysanthemums?

You learn a lot when you start a war on blood-sucking parasites. To wit:

• My diva has the patience of a saint. As long as I put the Wizards of Waverly Place on an endless loop, she will sit still for up to three hours at a pop while I comb and pick and pull individual hairs out of her head by the root. She's my hero.
• Redheads have less hair. Little known fact. (Ignore the picture on the link. It's really kinda gross.)
• ADHD really does mean you cannot sit still. Even with the aid of a Nintendo DS primed with relatively new birthday games. Given that my kids get only 30 minutes of screen time a day and that nitpicking screen time is a full-on freebie, that's saying something.
• My kids have waaaaay too many stuffed animals. All 8 million of them are now bagged, thanks to my au pair, and waiting for any little lice babies to die a sad and lonely death. Many of them will not be coming back. I mean the stuffed animals. And, of course, the dead lice babies, too.
• Reading glasses also make good nitpicking glasses and are a vital part of the home war arsenal.
• So is a flea comb. If you pick one up, buy one labeled for dogs. They're cheaper - and not a whit different - than the ones labeled for cats.
• Cats can't get lice. Maybe that's why they need pricey flea combs.
• Apparently, neither can au pairs.
• Moms can, though. Yay for that. And yay for my au pair. This would be another one of those times that I wonder what the hell I'd do without her. Because it's not like I can pick nits from my own head.

Oh, and now I'm feeling all oogy again just talking about it.

Hey, the good news? At least we don't have the swine flu.