Ok, so I was in the car. I was stopped at a red light. And I needed to fire off a text to my husband. This red light happens to be lightening fast. I know this. I drive a lot in our town. Being that it’s so fast, I was feeling pressured. I don’t text and drive, so I can only type when I’m stopped in the car. Hence, I typed quickly, and at the end of said text, I sweetly wrote the words, “I love you” and pressed the send button. Done! Light turns green.

Aw, that’s so nice, you’re thinking. Well, yes, it was sweet to end my text with an “I love you.” I agree. But, that’s not exactly what happened. You see, my “I love you” was auto-corrected by the nice people at Apple to “I lice you.” In my haste, I had typed “I loce you” which was, as I said, auto-corrected. I’m not joking. My husband’s response, “I lice you? Really?”

Now, this wouldn’t normally have elicited a response from my cute husband. He obviously knew it was supposed to say, “I love you.” But, on that particular day, it merited a come-back. Why? Well, I will tell you. Back up two weeks and you would have seen me walking out of our pediatrician’s office with my 8-year-old daughter with a look of utter horror on my face. My daughter had just been told she had lice. Kill me.

Being that it is lice season, I thought it might be nice to post a blog here passing on my now monumental knowledge about lice to you dear readers (assuming more than one person will actually read this — not including myself).

Here’s the deal. Lice suck. They just do. But once you accept that you have lice (and yes, I had it too — so gross), you just sort of buckle down and deal and it’s not that bad. Ok, I take that back. It is that bad, but it’s not cancer. Which is really bad.

For those of you who will encounter lice this year (again, assuming someone is actually going to read this), please follow these simple steps below, and you will come out of it alive, lice free, and have yet another funny story to tell your friends. Because, at the end of the day, it is kinda funny. You have bugs in your hair! If you’re not laughing about that, you may actually go crazy.

First, how do you know you have lice? Well, your head itches. A lot. And not just a here-and-there itch. More like an I’m-going-to-pull-my-hair-out-if-this-doesn’t-stop itch. When that happens, you know to check. And how do you check? You toss your head over (girls anyway) and have someone look about an inch up from the scalp at individual strands of hair. If you have lice, the lucky person helping you will see itty-bitty white dots. Tiny. Like barely there. These are the incubating babies. When they go to flick them out of your hair they don’t budge (like dandruff might — not that I have dandruff). You actually have to pinch that teeny-tiny white dot in between your two fingernails and drag it down the strand of hair until it pops out. For boys, just part the hair and start searching.

Now, if somehow your son or daughter has done a good job in hiding his/her scratching for sometime, they may be harboring an entire town of lice on your scalp (think Dr. Seuss Horton Hears a Who movie). This is easy to spot. Because literally, you will part the hair, look at the scalp, and you will see little bugs. Crawling bugs. Bugs hailing taxis. You will want to pass out, but stay strong! There is a way out of this. I promise.

Step One — Killing the Bugs

You must kill the bugs that are partying on your head. To do this you have to buy a good lice shampoo and nuke the f’ers. I’m a big believer in natural, organic, paraben free everything. Every Saturday I’m at the local Farmers Market buying food from my now good buddies. I’m a big supporter. But, I’m sorry, lice are hard to kill. This is one time not to screw around. Buy the hard-core stuff at your local drugstore and follow the directions. This is probably the only time you will encounter lice (because you will become a certified Lice Police Officer after the nightmare has ended — more on that later), so using the chemical shampoo this one time is not going to kill you. But it will kill the lice. Mission accomplished.

Step Two — The Comb-Through

You’ve successfully killed the lice, but now you have to make double, triple, quadruple sure everything is dead so you need to comb through the hair (and, literally, after all those chemicals, some will still be clinging to life). Contrary to what you may think, lice (dead OR alive) don’t just “wash-out” either. Oh no. Lice are like glue. They stick to your hair (see above). So, you take the lice comb that comes with the lice shampoo and you literally sit there and comb through every single strand of God-given hair on your head. Well, you don’t do this. You sit. You have someone else (some lucky soul) comb through your hair while you watch a movie on your iPad because it takes FOREVER to comb through every individual strand of hair on your head.

Be prepared to pin sections up of your hair once you have combed through it. It’s an easy way to keep track of your progess. I happen to have thick dark hair (thank you Mom and Dad). Our babysitter, bless her soul, was kind enough to volunteer to comb through my hair. I had about 25 sections of hair all pinned around my head. I looked like the receptionisht in the movie Liar Liar. You remember her. Jim Carey compliments her (this is before he can’t lie) on her new hairstyle saying it “accents her facial features.” That was me.

Step Three — Your House

Ok, so you’ve shampoo’ed. You’ve combed. Your head has given the big heave-ho to lice. Now, it’s time for your house.

Please don’t ignore the house. Lice not only live on your head, they live in your house. The sofa. The rugs. Your kids’ stuffed animals. Throw blankets. Pillows. Your clothes. Pretty much anything you’ve touched, sat on, worn and picked-up since you’ve had them. And, really, God only knows how long that’s been. And if you don’t get them out of the house, you will never, ever get rid of lice in your hair. Period. They will jump from your sofa right back on to your head. No thank you.

With that in mind, go to the hardware store and buy the big garbage bags. The huge ones. Pile everything you cannot clean in the washing machine or give to the dry cleaner into the bags. Stuffed animals and throw pillows/blankets were in mine. Even plastic toys. I left nothing out. Seal them with a tight knot at the top and put them either in your garage or your attic. Now, forget about them for two weeks. They don’t exist. It takes at least a week for lice to die if they don’t have a host — i.,e., you. I played it safe and waited two weeks to unseal mine. God forbid there’s one that’s some super-lice something and emerges alive.

Take everything else in the house (bedding, clothes, etc.) and throw it in the dryer for 30 minutes on HIGH heat. Lice cannot survive the heat. Or wash it in HOT water. They die there too. Or take it to the dry cleaners. Done.

Everything else that’s touched your head gets boiled. Brushes. Combs. Rubber bands. Ribbons. Everything. Put a big pot on the stove, boil water, and throw everything in it you can possibly think may have lice eggs on it.

While the washing machine is going (because it will run non-stop for the next three days minimum), vacuum. Again, everything. Turn that sucker (no pun intended) on and get busy. I vacuumed straight for a week. Everyday for seven days that vacuum would come out and the whole house would get a once-over. The good news is you’ll lose about five pounds during the invasion because you will never stop moving with all the washing, vacuuming, cleaning. It’s non-stop.

Step Four — The Aftermath

Congratulations! After following the above steps, you will, I promise, emerge lice-free. Now you just need to take a few more simple steps to ensure this never ever happens again.

I took both my kids (yes, my son and daughter both had lice) into their school classrooms after our heads and house were lice-free and we cased the joint. I wanted to observe with the kids where the lice may have come from (chances are one of my dear children brought it home from school with them).

There happened to be a big futon mattress in my daughter’s classroom. Hello Lice Hotel. We both decided it probably wasn’t a good idea for her to sit on that sofa for the rest of the year (it was actually her idea — she was more concerned about it than me!). My son’s classroom had fabric reading chairs in it too. Banned. If you’ve ever had lice, you’ll understand. One can never be too careful when preventing a re-infestation.

We also implemented a “no sharing” rule when it comes to hair brushes, hair rubber bands, anything having to do with your scalp, in our house. Now, everyone uses his or her own stuff. Before lice we all used whatever we wanted. But, as it turns out, not such a hot idea. Because once one kid brings home lice, uses your hair brush, and then hands it back to you for your turn, guess what? You now have lice. It transfers that easily. At least with the “no sharing” rule, if, God forbid, one of my kids brings home lice again, we will contain it to just one head in the family. That’s the idea, anyway.

I also make the kids shampoo with organic lice prevention shampoo. The brand we use is called “Jolis Cheveux” by Lice Treatment Center. You can find them on the web at licetreatmentcenter.net. We use all their products and have been very happy with them.

Last, lice have this nasty reputation of being a “dirty” kid’s problem. Not true. Lice actually prefer clean hair. Heck, if I were a louse, I’d go for the fresh smell of Pantene. So, please, don’t be embarrassed if you have it. Some parents don’t tell their school their kid has lice. Not cool. Because then the kid’s teacher doesn’t know he/she has to clean their classroom. Hence, the lice continue to live on the favorite futon mattress all the kids sit on during circle time, and before you know it, every kid in the room has lice. So, again, please be kind and say something. It’s the right thing to do.

On that note, a little side story. My 8-year old niece just told me she was in her classroom the other day, and a little boy came up to her and whispered in her ear, “I have lice!” Obviously, his parents did not want anyone to know. Luckily he had spilled the beans to the wrong girl. My niece ran up to tell the teacher. And the little boy was sent home that day. My niece is a hero.