What it is...at least in this tiny little corner of it

The opposite of eloquent is what I am.  The opposite of elegant is what I feel.  (Though, come to think of it, have I ever felt elegant?  Not sure...)

So, we have had our closest known encounter with head lice.  It happened last Thursday evening and drama ensued.  This Friday, on the advice our family doctor, we'll all go in and get our heads checked. 

It turns out what do to in the interim depends on who you are.  I have received lots of personally truthful experience- and evidence-based advice.  And not only have these stories been all over the treatment map, some of them have diametrically opposed each other.

I have been grateful for the tips and advice, nonetheless.  We didn't have internet the first couple of days after exposure and we felt very much in the dark.  We picked up a special lice comb and some tea tree oil, but I haven't actually done any combing.  (For those of you who don't know me, at my best...which I have not been lately...I am extremely reluctant to perform tasks which my brain red flags as "tedious".  Prophylactic combing was setting off all sorts of tedium alarms.)

For now, I am sitting tight on the lice.  Hoping that we have been spared.  Trying not to let my itchy scalp drive me crazy.  (The mere mention of the word lice is enough to get my scalp going.)  I have a tendency to pull my hair out anyway (googled it last night and it turns out to be a thing) and there has been a spike in that behavior.

Oy.

Sag still doesn't feel great.  We think he may have a cold on top of the strep.  And the antibiotic wouldn't vanquish the cold.  I seem to have a cold, too.  Or, we're just more externally symptomatic of being run down.  I am not sure.

It's hard to post, to share, to reach out, when there are still thousands of households right in our small town who remain powerless.  Temps have really dipped and people are cold and in the dark.  Some are friends, some are elderly, some are mentally ill, some are homeless. Expand the circle outward and there are people in our county and state who have lost homes and loved ones because of the storm.  Our community is small and I feel confident that no one is falling through the cracks.  But, it's a much bigger world out there, even right next door in Newark.  Cory Booker is truly a superhero.  He is working his ass off trying to make sure everyone in his city is safe and warm.

It's all hard to reconcile.

Halloween, which had been "rescheduled" for this afternoon has not happened.  Sag was not well enough to go out (he cried), Gem decided he didn't want to go out once he realized his brother and usual trick-or-treating partner, Owen, could not go.  Gem has been more sensitive to the de-occasioning of the holiday by the change of date and the state mandated trick-or-treating curfew of noon to 5pm.

Schools in town have not re-opened.  You can imagine the mass confused energy.  That's a lot of kids home for a week with no regularly scheduled activity built into their days.  In direct and more subtle ways, routines have been broken.  We are lucky to be maintaining some of ours, yet the undercurrent of chaos is strong.

I don't even know what I am saying here.  This cold is reverting my brain back to a shell shocked state...or maybe I never quite left it.  Cap did make me laugh earlier today which felt like a burst of light.  Holding that memory like a precious ephemeral thing.

Peace and love.