The Vaulted Files: Infestation??? Horrors!!

Tags

head lice, Logic Products Group, natural lice remedies

I have a rather insane storage vault of unpublished posts, both for this blog and for my life and love ramblings over at DomAndLori.  Some of them are not just unpublished, they are unfinished.  But I intend at some point to publish them anyway. Here is the first to come out of the vault: 

 

Let me be honest at the start, here: this is not something I want to be talking about.  For the second Christmas holiday in a row, my family is battling head lice.  Go ahead and gag now.  I’ve made a morning of it, myself.

I truly had hoped that we would be done with all this nonsense once the kids got out of elementary school.  Oh, sure, I had seen many a note come home in their backpacks about a lice sighting in their wee years’ classrooms, and I was smugly grateful that it never struck us personally.  Until 2012.  There we were, minding our own business, settling into the new home, enjoying Christmas and BAM!!  We were hit with a one-two punch.  Vic and me.  E-gad!  This is what I get for snuggling my kids?  I took roughly five days off of work to deal with 1) the infestation of those little unseen buggers and 2) my personal trauma/embarrassment/failure as a parent.  Overdramatic much??

To debunk any misconceptions of the nastiness that surely must exist in my home and on my person, I learned the following during that horrific week of wanting to claw my own eyes out:

1. Lice attaches itself better to clean hair.  Yes, folks, contrary to popular belief, you do not have to be a filthy person to suffer the injustice of head lice.  Clean hair holds the eggs better, so I guess, Yay, we’re clean!
2. You don’t just have to share hairbrushes with someone or sleep on their pillow to get head lice.  Lice are sneaky, creative travelers and sometimes where it came from and how you got it is only a guess.
3. There is a proliferation of chemical-laden treatments on the shelves of our local pharmacies.  None of them are natural or holistic, and very few of them are safe for repeated use.  Granted, I almost don’t care if it burns my scalp off, I want to use whatever I can as often as I can to make the hell pass more quickly.

Last year as I was confessing the horror to a coworker, she knowingly stated, “It doesn’t matter how natural and against chemicals you are, once you are dealing with head lice, you will practically douse your kids in gasoline just to get rid of it.”  Omigosh, having now been through it twice, I can tell you…truer words were never spoken.

For months afterward, any time either of my children itched above the neck they would run to me and blurt, “Check me!!” and I would commence to combing through their hair to make sure they were not infested again.  And fortunately, they never were.  But there I was this morning, unassumingly stroking my son’s hair as he slouched on the bathroom floor, nauseated from what we would determine four hours later to be the flu.  The flu, people.  My son is wrestling the flu and I’m thinking out loud, “We need to cut your hair soon, sweetie.  Wait a minute, what’s this in your hair? WHAT THE %$#@! IS THAT?!!!!!!!”

But I knew exactly what it was.  And I was nearly sick right beside him.  Within minutes I was checking the Hubster, my daughter and myself, determining whom to treat and whom to all-out quarantine, practically in tears with the memory of last year.  But I sniffed the tears back, grabbed my keys and a ponytail holder and sped off to WalMart at 6:30 in the morning to begin my journey:

Step 1: Drop well over $100 on every kind of lice treatment on the shelf.  Throw in some homeopathic cough meds and several packs of Ricola, and hope something gives the kid some relief.

Step 2: Treat every head with gawdawful pesticides while Hubster strips beds down and begins the laundry cycles.  I love the Sanitize feature of my washing machine.  It’s great for making sure my stuff is clean when we’re dealing with crap like this.  Forget that it takes four days to wash two loads.  Sheesh!

Step 3: Send text messages to family members whom we have been around during the holidays.  Pray that they don’t have it too.  This brings up a touchy point:  Yes, it is highly embarrassing to admit to someone that you have head lice.  I get that.  I’ve had it twice now and sharing the news hasn’t gotten any easier.  You will feel like a pariah.  But hear me on this one thing: You must let others know so that they can treat and/or prevent the malady in their own households.  Yes, it sucks to call someone up and say, “Hey, great seeing you the other day! I’m so glad we got to spend those eight hours together!  By the way, we have lice, so check your heads.”  There’s no easy way to do it.  But you have to.  And when that person you’ve called is dealing with head lice later, hopefully he or she will remember your honesty and pay it forward.

Step 4: Run to the pediatrician’s office for flu test on a Saturday morning.  Thank God they are open on weekends!

Step 5: Take a moment to actually breathe and read the label on the spray can for the furniture.  I had forgotten why I didn’t use it last year.  Dear goodness.  We would have to sit all four of us plus the dogs outside in the cold while the stuff dries on the furniture, then ventilate the cold into the house so that we can once again breathe indoors.  Who the hell created this stuff?  Monsanto?

Having two dogs and one flu-ridden son prevents me from opening windows and spraying toxic chemicals in my home on a December day.  So I took to the Internet, hoping something somewhere would provide some measure of treatment for my furniture and non-washables.  Vacuuming, steaming and scrubbing just doesn’t seem like enough.  In the five days I took off work last year last year I wiped down, scrubbed and cleaned every surface to the best of my ability.  I was exhausted.  I’ll do it all over again out of necessity, but I’d like some help.

And so I stumbled upon the Logic Products Group, founded by a mom just like us.  She too dealt with the horror of head lice and discovered that there were no natural, safe treatments available.  She has remedied that.  I ended up on her site because of her household spray, which is reported to be safe for repeated use around pets and people, unlike any of the spray products you will find at the pharmacy.  I ordered a bottle straight from her site and another bottle from Amazon with my Prime membership.  Unfortunately, I won’t have the product until next week, so I’ll be vacuuming and scrubbing until then.  Without the benefit of trying the products yet, I am impressed by what I see on their site.  They have general products for the home as well as flea and tick treatment for pets. (Update: I purchased the furniture spray and the lice shampoo.  I sprayed everything down and was pleased with the spray, but did not have the opportunity to use the shampoo, as it arrived a week after the trauma had ended.)

The Nourishing Gourmet also wrote a great post on natural treatments of head lice.  Neem oil and tea tree oil are top choices for treatment and prevention in her post.

So – quick recap – we have head lice, flu and now (oh joy!) a puking dog.  There simply is not enough wine in this house.  I seem to recall a bottle of tea tree oil in my bathroom cabinet, so I’m off to mix that into some water and spray on all our heads for good measure.  Hey – better than gasoline!

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“I’ve Been ‘Yes’ and I’ve Been ‘Oh Hell No!’” – The Homemade Shampoo Review

I have recently had more bad-hair days than I care to admit.  Anyone who sees me regularly will tell you that my hair pretty much always looks the same.  (Style-wise, that is.  Dontcha go talkin’ ‘bout my color!!)  Last week my hair was pulled up, pulled back, and lopsided on various days of the week. Every morning was a struggle to settle on a ‘do that had a chance of lasting through lunch.  And the problem was that I have finally run out of conditioner – a conditioner that I did not want to replace, despite the fact that it worked just fine.

(Side note to my dear co-workers: if you didn’t notice my bad hair days, thank you.  You are too, too kind.  If you did notice and privately wondered what was up with my hair, well, now you know.)

The conditioner, while promoted as “eco-chic” and even borderline “organic” had more twenty-letter ingredients than I cared for.  I could pronounce less than a third of the listing, and my conscience was working overtime on what that might be doing to my hair.  Likewise for the corresponding shampoo.  There has to be a better product.

This brings me to what I have wanted to try for a year now…making my own shampoo that will cleanse and condition my hair all at once while preserving my un-natural color so that I don’t end up looking like a copper kettle on legs.

(And about that hair color:  I am far too vain to go THAT damn natural.  I am pushing both 40 years and 40 gray hairs.  I can’t do nuthin’ about the years, but the gray hair is another matter entirely!!!  I use Naturtint permanent color about every 6 weeks – I should use it every 4.  Although plant-based, it too has ingredients I’ve never heard of.  But it has no formaldehyde, no ammonia, and no burning or funky smell.  It’s a win for the natural-yet-vanity-obsessed.)

In the vast majority of my research, I ran across one problem:  many promoters of homemade shampoo tout its awesomeness by cheerily proclaiming that they can go up to five (or so) days without washing their hair.

Dear goodness.

Friends, I cannot go a single day without washing my hair.  Not because it gets nasty and funky and such, but because I CAN’T STYLE IT WORTH A DAMN IF IT’S NOT WASHED AND FRESHLY BLOWN DRY.

You’ve never seen me on a weekend morning, have you?  There’s a reason.

So while I am anxious to try some homemade shampoo recipes, I am going to need a lot of support from those of you who have to see me.  Sure, there are some great sounding natural shampoos that I really would love to try, but they are $20/bottle.  That’s not a price I can experiment with, ya know?

This morning I tried an egg-yolk, coconut oil, lime rinse concoction and PRAYED that I wouldn’t end up smelling like a happy-hour special, or worse yet, breakfast.   It felt okay in the shower, but afterward…

You guessed it.  Oh.  Hell.  No.

My hair was remarkably easy to comb through, but no matter which direction I combed it, it stayed in that position.  This is not a good thing.  Plus, after I managed to rid my hair of all the lime pulp (the lime was a bad idea…just a really, really bad idea…) and blow-dried it, it still looked wet.  And unnaturally “shape”-able.  Ick.  It reminded me of the time I used jojoba oil to condition my hair.

I emerged from the bathroom to be greeted by the shocked looks of my children.  “Mommy!  What did you do to your hair?!” asked Victoria, her eyes alternately wide open and then scrunched shut.

“I made my own shampoo, sweetie.”

“Did it work?  Why does it look like that??”

My thoughts exactly.

And this brings me to my next thought…how in the heck do some people manage to go five days with hair like this when I can barely manage to go five minutes?!  I foolishly thought it might somehow get better as the minutes passed, so I put on makeup and plugged in my rollers.  And then I just couldn’t take it anymore.  I got back in the shower and used the Giovanni shampoo to rid myself of this horrid memory.

So now it’s time for you to enlighten me.  Do you use a natural shampoo?  Do you make your own?  Do you feel the need to wash your hair every day like me?  And finally, is there any hope that I will ever find a shampoo or a recipe that makes me both pleased and proud?

Happy Birthday to The Story of Cosmetics!!!

In case you couldn’t tell, I love anniversaries, milestones, and special celebrations.  So I was super-pumped when I checked my email this morning and read that today is the FIRST BIRTHDAY of The Story of Cosmetics.  You may recall that I featured the video on this blog a mere 364 days ago.

Here is the email message I received:

One year ago today we released The Story of Cosmetics to build support for national legislation to regulate personal care product ingredients.

For years, the multi-billion dollar cosmetics industry had been largely left alone to decide what was safe to put in their products. You know, things like lead in lipstick, neurotoxins in body spray and carcinogens in baby wash.

Now, one year later our partners at the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics are making significant progress.

One big reason the Campaign is more hopeful than ever about our chances for getting this serious public health threat addressed is the increasing support for reform coming from this country’s community of small personal care product companies.

We’ve posted a blog today about the incredible work the Campaign has done to incorporate the concerns of this community-among the best actors in the market already-into the newly introduced Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011.

This groundbreaking bill would eliminate the most harmful chemicals from cosmetics (as Europe already does!), and ensure that personal care products are reviewed for safety before they end up on store shelves.

If that sounds reasonable to you, why not help us celebrate The Story of Cosmetics’ first birthday by sharing The Story of Cosmetics with your friends and family and then letting your elected officials know that you support the Safe Cosmetics Act.

You can watch and share the movie on our site. Let’s get that viewcount up to 1 million!

Then make sure to visit the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics site to send a message to Congress.

Thanks for your support and for all you do to make this a better world.

Onward!

Annie, Michael, Allison, Christina and Renee
The Story of Stuff Project Team

So, why is the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011 so dog-gone important?  Well, I learned in the blog post that is mentioned and linked above that the current law governing cosmetics was last updated in 1938.  NINETEEN THIRTY-EIGHT, people!! My grandmother was younger then than Victoria is now!!  The current law basically says the cosmetic companies do not have to test their products for safety, and they don’t have to tell us all the ingredients. (That’s one of the reasons the ingredient “fragrance” is so dangerous…it can be a combination of literally dozens of harmful chemicals and no one is required to disclose those chemicals!)  As the post states, “[The FDA] can’t even require product recalls—as we recently learned when a popular hair straightener, called the Brazilian Blowout, was found to contain dangerous levels of formaldehyde.” 

It is my sincerest hope that this message will spread to consumers everywhere, and that everyone will begin to read and understand labels…and cast those increasingly-important votes at the checkout in favor of safer products.  

What a wonderful reason to celebrate!

A Little Salt, a Little Lime, and… Pumpkin?

My Facebook status this weekend shared the fact that Mabel the dog does not like salt and lime, these being the first and only things I have seen her turn her nose away from.  My FB friends thought Mabel and I were shooting tequila together.  And while I think Mabel would probably be a lot of fun to watch with a tequila worm, I should hope I could score a more discriminating drinking buddy.  I had to burst the bubble (and a few happy images) and confess that I was exfoliating my feet with the salt and the lime.  My friends are now scarred forever.

I read somewhere that a good, quick DIY skin smoother was half of a lime dipped in salt and rubbed on the knees and elbows, etc.  With me and Vic dressing up our toes with our new polishes, I decided this was the perfect time to try this trick on my feet.  Sort of a beachy, wish-I-had-a-margarita-right-now pedicure, if you will.

It wasn’t half bad!  My feet were really soft when I was finished. But the salt (I used sea salt first) trickled away pretty quickly during the scrubbing and the lime was holy-crap-why-didn’t-I-plan-ahead-and-and-set-this-fruit-out COLD.  But otherwise, a fine little homemade scrub nonetheless.  The next night I decided to try it again, but this time I would use kosher salt (a coarser variety) and add enough olive oil to make a stiff paste.  Then I used the lime with the olive oil/salt mixture to exfoliate my legs and arms (getting my tan from a bottle makes regular exfoliating extra important!)  I liked it with the olive oil so much better.  Olive oil has great skin conditioning properties, plus it keeps the salt in the general area to be worked on.  It was recommended for use in a DIY sugar scrub, but the proportions of that recipe made it way too drippy, hence my using  considerably less this time.  (But no, I didn’t measure anything out.  If I had to guess, I’d say I used 2 T kosher salt to ½ t oil.)

Sunday I came across an interesting DIY hibiscus hair pack.  If I ever give my hibiscus plants enough water, they will probably bloom enough for me to try this recipe.  In the meantime, this made me want to make my own conditioner with whatever I had on hand.  Looking through the fridge I spied some leftover pumpkin from a facial mask recipe I tried a while back.  So I googled a pumpkin conditioner recipe and voila…I found Cassadie and her recipe which is ½ cup Pumpkin, ¼ cup yogurt, and 2 tablespoons honey.  Stuff I always have on hand.  Cassadie warned her readers in a follow-up post that it is highly important to puree your pumpkin so it is easier to rinse out.  Can do! (Mine was actually already pureed because it came from a can.  I think Cassadie had used fresh pumpkin.)

Anyhoo, I mixed up the conditioner which, minus some egg whites, bore strong resemblance to the facial mask I had made.  I slathered the pumpkin through my hair, being sure to massage it into the roots (this stuff, too, was refrigerator fresh and appropriately c.o.l.d.) Since it was soooo similar to the pumpkin facial mask, I decided to slather the leftovers on my face before rinsing the bowl.

I have to say, this is the tastiest skin care treatment I have ever used.  😉

I left the conditioner in my hair for 20 minutes, wrapped in plastic wrap, with orange goo all over my face and neck.  Victoria laughed out loud, shouted, “Mama! Look at you!!” and took my picture.  I was instantly grateful that she does not have a Facebook account.

I found the mixture pretty easy to rinse out, but I rinsed extra long just to be sure.  I could tell a difference in the feel of my hair from the time I put the mixture in to the time I rinsed it out.  It felt softer.  And since it’s still wet as I type this, here’s hoping for a good result when I style my hair in the morning.

Otherwise Mabel and I are cracking open the tequila.

Day 113: Props to Dr. Bronner’s

Remember my posts about the Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castille Soap that I didn’t want to use as shampoo because it is made from so many natural oils and made my hair feel over-conditioned?  WELL…

I stopped using it on my hair around the last time that I mentioned it, and shortly thereafter I had to reapply the artificial color that keeps me from looking every minute of my true age.  (I said “minute”…don’t get all you-really-do-look-38, technical!)  After that last coloring, I noticed that my hair was much more dry than normal.  I conditioned, but it didn’t seem to help.  I’m not sold on deep-conditioning just yet…my hair goes limp in seconds, so I never want to over-do it.

And then I remembered that the Dr. Bronner’s made my hair so relaxed.  And, seeing as how that is exactly what I was needing, I started using it again.  I only had to use it in my hair for about three days and voila – I’m back to normal. Still using the Apple Cider Vinegar as “conditioner.”  The jury is out on its direct impact, though.  I’m going to implement a self-study comparison between that and regular conditioner over the next couple of weeks. 

Just had to put in a plug for the Castille Soap.  It has some very redeeming qualities.