FOR CARMEN: A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS: PART 1: THE STORIED SAGA OF THE HAIR-SHAVING INCIDENT!: (i will relay Part 2 in an upcoming blog post)

Once upon a time, the Danielson family embarked on a journey never taken before in the history of their family...they bravely took their four children, ages 7 and under, to Elbow Bible Camp. All was well as the children skipped gaily through the fields and forest pathways with their cousins and little friends. Songbirds were chirping, flowers were blooming, and Mr. Sun was shining, as the children innocently spent their days going to Bible class, singing, doing crafts, and collecting toads. Meanwhile, in the warm dark recesses of the roots of Jemma's long, blond, clean locks, an evil insect was busy, making itself a cosy home, and taking the shocking liberty of munching on Jemma's scalp (and probably drinking her blood too). One dark and starry night in the girl's bathroom, I, her mother, was softly brushing Jem's freshly washed hair when i noticed something was amiss. It appeared that my daughter had run through a cloud of little fruit flies, and they didn't wash out in the shower. "How strange", i thought, but "oh well, they are just tangled up in there, they'll fly out or fall out eventually". And i did not think about it until we returned home, only to find out they were STILL THERE! Even more strange......then a growing nagging suspicion began to arise in the pit of my gut as i came to the horrifying realization that it could be...HEAD LICE!!! And, after a visit with our friend, Google, found out the awful truth. Well, almost 4 weeks (and 2 shampoo treatments each, on now 3 kids with the little critters, and a bazillion tonnes of laundry) later, my loving husband finds me THOROUGHLY INFESTED (worse than the kids), one late Saturday night, and this mommy just starts to bawl, a WEE bit overwhelmed with the thought of ME having it too, and Duane having to spend hours on my hair, after i've just spent hours nit-picking the kids' hair!!! YIKES!! "Take it off!", i sob, "just shave it ALL OFF!".............................
And so, with trepidation in his razor-clad scissor-hands, Duane, sadly and rather unwillingly, shaved us all as bald as the day we were born! I told the girls they didn't have to do this....but that mommy NEEDED to have her own shaved FOR HER OWN SANITY!...and IF they wanted to, they could. Well, lo and behold, as D was shaving mine, he started to comment that it looked kind've neat and funky, that i had a good shaped head, that he actually kind've liked it, that i was brave, etc., (which, let me tell you, did me a WORLD of good...encouraged me IMMENSELY!), ......and suddenly Jemma blurts out, "Daddy, can i be next?", then Siri too. (Nate, however, was sitting in the corner, UNUSUALLY quiet, almost with tears in his eyes, saying, "I don't like for your pretty hair to come off, Mommy." It was very sweet... he didn't want the girls to cut theirs either!). Anyway, after all was said and done, i felt a huge sense of RELIEF that these yucky critters were GONE!!!!...and that my laundry load was again back to normal, that we didn't have to keep our kids away from people, that we could all go to the pool again, that they could go to VBS with no worries, and no more HOURS of nit-picking in the summer heat!! We had our summer back! YAY! HAPPY DANCE, HAPPY DANCE!! And THAT is the unfortunate saga of the "hair shaving incident"!



THE END. :)