Everything, it hurts

I made a terrible mistake, which began, as it so often does, with me venturing outside. To the gym, specifically, where I made the second mistake, which was to work out with great vigor and enthusiasm. And now my body is wrecked.

My schedule went all to hell in the spring, with the book launch and subsequent tour, and ever since then I have been less than disciplined about gym-going. I know this is a problem for many of us modern peoples, with our careers and families clamoring for our love and care, but I really don't have valid excuses. I live three blocks from the gym. I work from home. My son is in school. Surely, you would think, I could cram an hour of exercise into my schedule at least a few times a week. Especially knowing how much exercise benefits my delicate moods! Not to mention my bones, which will soon have the density and strength of meringue! (Thanks, osteoporotic ancestors!)

And yet.

The need to get back into it really hit home when I was on a plane a couple of weeks ago. I lifted my suitcase to get it into the overhead bin, and I got…stuck.  I got it three-quarters of the way toward the overhead bin and there was no way my arms would lift it any higher.  I just stood there, frozen, my suitcase in mid-air, desperately commanding my arms to continue upward but they WOULD NOT GO, until a nice fellow passenger helped me out. A beefy man took pity on me. I was furious. Why, I had lifted suitcases MUCH HEAVIER than this one, back in the day! The day being only a few months previous! I bet once upon a time I could lift that young man right over my head, by gum!

Anyway, I've been TRYING, you guys, trying so hard, to get back into the routine. And so Wednesday I went for the second time this week, and until Wednesday I'd been going fairly easy on myself because I knew I was out of practice. I don't know what shifted inside me, this Wednesday.  I went a little nuts.

Weight-lifting dramatically lifts my mood while I'm hoisting away. I was having this fantastic endorphin rush, the kind I hadn't had in a long time--I missed it so!--and I went into automatic and chose weights I had been using when I was lifting all the time. I was holding my usual weights while LUNGING! And SQUATTING! And then I did some chest presses and inverted rows and etc.! In my enthusiasm I forgot that I was now a wasted spindly shell of what I had once been!

I woke up yesterday fairly sore, nothing remarkable, but as the day wore on, every time I stood up I felt even more sore, and then even more, and today I am WORSE. Every time I get up I want to cry.  Walking down the stairs is the worst thing ever. What monster invented stairs?

As uncomfortable as I am, I refuse to relive what happened yesterday when I was sitting on the toilet and realized there was no way in hell I could stand. Just no way. I decided to slide myself off the toilet onto the floor, and fortunately we have a full-length mirror in the bathroom so I got to watch my pathetic descent onto the tile, with my pants bunched up around my knees. That tile was cold. It took a while to shimmy my pants back up. There may have been some whimpering. I will never let that happen again. I don't care if my thighs rupture when I get up. I WILL HAVE MY DIGNITY.

Sorry about that west nile virus, Brooklyn

For a few weeks we've been having a mosquito problem in our apartment, which is not something one generally expects in mid-November, but thanks to climate change, every season is now an adventure in the unexpected!

Still, though, this many mosquitoes in one apartment points to a problem … somewhere. Somewhere nearby. We tried to get to the bottom of this problem by scratching our wounds and bitching about it. Then one night, as Scott and I were preparing for sleep (translation: reading erotic poetry aloud to one another; flossing--erotically) the cat jumped on the bed and stared at the ceiling. I assumed, as one does, that there were ghosts hovering up there--because everyone knows cats can see ghosts and it drives them crazy that they can't pounce on 'em--but I looked up and instead of glimpsing a floaty ancestor I saw approximately 1 billion mosquitoes.

As you can imagine, this was not a sight one wishes to see before one drops off to sleep.

Now that I'm picturing the scene a little more vividly in my mind's eye, it was maybe less like 1 billion and more like twelve. Even so, one does not like to share one's bedroom with more mosquitoes than zero. Much less A DOZEN WAITING UP THERE FOR YOU TO DOZE OFF SO THEY CAN DRAIN YOU OF YOUR DELICIOUS BLOOD.

Scott and I immediately leapt up and murdered each of the mosquitoes, or maybe if you want to be accurate Scott murdered them while I helpfully pointed out the stragglers and shouted, "Kill them! Kill them ALL!" Or, okay, maybe I just shuddered and rocked back and forth. At any rate, I made sure to keep out of his way until his spree was complete.

He felled all the mosquitoes that were waiting above us, but there were more. As soon as I began dropping off to sleep that night and for several nights after, I was treated to a series of those horrible ear-fly-bys, like they were saying, "Guess what, asshole."

We were baffled. Where were these mosquitoes coming from? What was going on? And then my brilliant husband, oh, he realized. It was a few nights later when he was awakened to another mosquito-party--this time going on on his body--and that's when it hit him: the roof deck. Where we had planters. And there had been rain. And we had not gone up there, because it was cold, and who goes up to a roof deck when it's cold? Smart people do to make sure there's no standing water, that's who. Smart people who are not us. Oh no, we had created a mosquito haven up there, and it was a short distance downstairs to our place, and I have no idea how they were arriving en masse into our apartment with our windows closed but I just hope we were the main victims and that everyone on our block was not similarly afflicted.

Anyway, Scott got up, in the middle of the night, and went up there and drained every inch of standing water SO THERE TAKE THAT MOSQUITOES HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAaa. HA. BAM. WE WIN.

Then we were still under attack, kind of a lot, actually, for another couple of weeks, and it finally occurred to us that the big giant planter up on the roof, the one that had plenty of soil in it, not water, so it didn't need to be drained, maybe was the problem? And come to think of it was kind of muddy? And maybe mosquitoes like mud? (Spoiler alert: THEY DO.)

Oh, I'll tell you, we are always learning! So it only took us 14 days or so to figure that out. We're really doing quite well for ourselves. This is why we're better off not owning a home. You're welcome, New Jersey.

More about...the intruders

I can just tell that you're all dying to know how Apocalouse 2011 is coming along. And I am dying to tell you.

The update is thus: having read the entire Internet in a matter of hours, I figured out that the best method was the ol' Pantene-conditioner-and-comb shimsham. I mixed in some baking soda, because someone somewhere recommended that, and I figured it couldn't hurt. Baking soda never hurts! And always helps! Is there anything baking soda can't do? I take it for my nerves! 

I also ordered this fancy German lice comb, the Nisska, because that's what the pros use. And LICE LAUGH AT AMATEURS.

The first night I combed out my son's hair, it took about two hours, and I spent most of the time crying and screaming. This is not at all true. Actually he watched Pirates of the Caribbean, and I gave Scott significant looks every time I wiped the comb clean and found colonies of nits. But no live lice! So that's something….?

We did it again the next night, and there were definitely far fewer nits. That there were any at all amazes me. But fewer, that's something! Right? Oh, God!

The day after that I checked my own head, and what do you know! Nits! I smashed the apartment until everything was rubble. Then I did the conditioner-and-comb routine on myself. By the way, Pantene smells like the worst perfume you could ever imagine. I'm used to my all-natural, touch-of-rosemary conditioner, and this stuff smells like I'm putting my grandma on my head. Actually both of my grandmas smelled better than Pantene.  Scott went out and bought another cheap white conditioner, and what do you know, it smelled just as much like a funeral home. Why?

ANYWAY. Once I found out that I was horribly infested as well, I figured, let's be thorough, and after taking a hefty dose of tranquilizers, I combed out Scott's hair. Need I tell you what I found? I had already spoken to one of the Lice Ladies of Brooklyn, and she was lovely and caring and seemed to think that I didn't particularly need her help, now that I had the fancy comb and the mental illness required to obsessively groom one's family. She had mentioned that men rarely get lice, because of the testosterone. I found this logic specious, to say the least, especially because I know plenty of men--virile specimens all!--who've fallen victim to lice, but while I combed out Scott's hair he was crying like a little girl, so maybe she had a point?

I'm joking, of course. When I showed him the nits in his hair, he merely grunted, poured lighter fluid on his head, and asked where the matches were. Good thing we couldn't find them! It turns out that lice love fire.

So that's where we are now. Tonight we will embark on another family-time combing adventure, while we watch several movies. And we will do the same tomorrow. And the next day. I don't see this ever ending.

The L Word

No, not lesbians. These L-words are currently camping out in Henry's hair. I WISH there were lesbians in Henry's hair. That would be so much more fun! I bet they'd keep the place really tidy, too.

I'm sure you've figured out by now that I'm talking about lice. You're smart that way.

Henry returned from sleepaway camp happy, worn out, filthy, and itchy. He mentioned that he had asked a counselor about his itchy head, and the counselor had looked at his head and saw the myriad bug bites and naturally assumed that the bites were troubling him. (Kid is festooned with bites. He is more bite than child. Their cabins were outdoors, and obviously he never used the bug repellent we packed for him. Also? It took him a week to find his shirts. His SHIRTS. He wore the same shirt for seven days. Fortunately he found the shirt-stash we had cleverly hidden in his footlocker before the Big Dance. I am glad he did not attend the Big Dance in the same filthy shirt he had been wearing all week. Actually I bet no one would have noticed, because kids are kinda dumb that way. Sorry, kids.) So the lice went unnoticed. Until he got home.

He was complaining and scritch-scratching like mad at his head, so I took a look, as parents will do when their kids are clawing at their scalps. I fervently hope that you guys never have to see the horrors that I saw there. I will be forever haunted by that sight. I'm going to go ahead and guess that he picked up the lice on his very first day there. They had clearly reproduced, and colonized, and erected statues, and then fought a few wars, and buried their dead, and then their children's children's children were told tales of the wondrous planet on which they were so lucky to live, where none of their ancestors had ever suffered from the mysterious Lotions and Combs that had, the stories claimed, felled so many of their kind in centuries hence. Because his scalp was moving. MOVING.

I may never sleep again.

We have coated his scalp in many salves and chemicals, we have been combing and picking nits off of him every single day and will continue to do so until we are satisfied it's all gone/he's in college; we washed and re-washed everything he brought home from camp in the hottest water that wouldn't actually disintegrated the fibers; we've vacuumed and sealed things in plastic and prayed to all of our gods. We even invented some! You can't have enough gods if you want to defeat lice.

I wanted to call one of the famed Lice Ladies of Brooklyn, but Scott thinks that's unnecessary. HAHAHAHAAA he has no idea. Well, he'll learn. Oh, he'll learn.(Or maybe he's right. Maybe.) (We all know I'm right, right? Of course.)

I spent an hour yesterday combing through my own conditioner-coated hair, and although I found nothing, I have to tell you, my scalp is itching like crazy. This is probably not surprising. I should add that my scalp has pretty much been itching ever since lice was rampant in his kindergarten class, two years ago. So it COULD be psychosomatic. Either that or the lice are extremely tricky. And I have been their unwitting host for lo these many years.

No need to give me any advice, as I have read/followed every bit of advice I could find on the Internet and beyond. I just wanted you to share in my horror. There. Now you have it, too. (The horror! Not the lice. I HOPE.)