"It's A Hard Nit's Life For Us...It's A Hard Nit's Life..."

"Please don't blog about this" my sister begged several days ago.

"Why not?" I asked, knowing full well what was coming next.

"Because it's disgusting...and everyone will think you're dirty hippies...and they'll always remember."

"But it's true.  And I have to be honest...I'm always honest on my blog."


(I could feel her sighing, wondering how we could be sisters...)

"Umm yeah.  But this is too honest.  And honestly, it's so gross.  Just trust me.  Don't."

So I hearkened to her wise words for some days (because she is usually right about these things...and after all, there are some things that I don't blog about - either because it's inappropriate, I forget, or because the husband might divorce me...) but eventually I caved in.

I confessed to the world at large (well, 'my world' at any rate:  friends, family, readers, and randoms) that our family had come down with our first ever plague of NITS (that's for you Sis...in bold and caps).

The worst part is that my sister is fastidious about cleanliness, and even though I told her that things like fleas, nits, ringworm and bedbugs are pretty much unavoidable somewhere in the tropics like Goa, it's still off-putting enough to have scared her senseless about her upcoming visit.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when she and my mum turned up with not one but two industrial strength 'Nit Treatment Packs'.  Soon clocking that every embrace and head scratch was met with a grimace, the husband and I obediently decided to do our third treatment in a week...the first night they were here.

Unfortunately this coincided with an impromptu cocktail party we invited everyone to on our front porch after dinner.  We thought it would simply be a matter of a quick shampoo, a run through the hair of the special comb and bam - Nits be gone!

Wrong.

When everyone showed up a little while later, they found us towel clad, in our bedroom, trying to painstakingly run these impossible combs through the monsters hair...and nowhere near ready to mix drinks.

So after a polite (and mildly horrified) half hour of voyeuristic 'entertainment', our family and friends slipped off with a "We'll do this another night okay?" and were gone.

(I'm sure it must have been off-putting to witness the yelps of glee which followed discovery of a squirming bug and the subsequent smashing of it between fingertips as it exploded in little bits of blood.)

In hindsight it could have been the bickering between the husband and I which prompted their swift departure.  One look at my tangled long locks and the smurf-sized comb that needed to go through it and the husband was like, "No way."

"But you haaaaave to," I whined.

"No."


"But if you don't do it then this is all in vain and they won't come out and we'll just all get it again!"


"Can't you just do your own hair?"


"No of course I can't!  I can't see anything in my hair...how am I supposed to find and kill them?!"

(and so on...and so on...)

And so once again, we found ourselves alone.  With Nits.  And monsters.