When we last left Mighty Girl, she was breathing into a paper bag and assuming yoga poses while Melissa gave her instructions on killing the hungry bugs in her hair. What will happen next?

Next we spent hours and hours and hours and hours washing with chemicals, combing with olive oil, blow drying with Cetaphil, rinsing with tea-tree oil, emptying our closets, washing and dry cleaning every fabric item we’ve ever owned, bagging everything else, vacuuming the entire house a hundred times, and smudging.

Bryan wouldn’t let me vacuum Hank’s head because he was all, “psychological trauma, blah, blah, blah,” but Bryan and the baby fortunately were not afflicted. After countless nights combing, and rocking in fetal position, we appeared to be bug free. Free of bugs at last!

It was about this time we decided to head up to the cabin — the blessed, lice-free cabin. We packed our lice-free clothes, invited our lice-free pals, and piled in the lice-free car.

We arrived to find the cabin infested with giant flying ants.

Flying ants chaining down from the ceiling! Flying ants, congregating on the moisturizer bottle! Flying ants playing poker and smoking tiny cigars!

I hung my lice-free head in our ant-infested living room. And after that I don’t remember anything, because I was drunk.

OK, I made that up. It took at least twenty minutes for the vodka to take effect, and in that time, Bryan suggested we crawl up in the attic to see if the ants were nesting up there or something. I nodded, considered that calmly, and then responded.

“Icannothandlethis! Icannotdealwithanymorefuckingbugsinmyhair,ormybed,orcrunchingundermyfeet! Iamcompletelylosingmyshit! I! Am! Losing! My! Shit!

…I will be out on the deck.”

So Bryan husbanded up and drove to the hardware store to explain our situation:

-We have a bunch of flying ants in the living room.

The counter guy nodded.

-Do you have anything to kill them?
-Yep. It’s that time of year.
-What the hell are they?
-Flying ants.

Bryan nodded.

Bryan returned home to kill all the crawlie things with hippie, don’t-kill-the-baby spray. It was made of organic lavender and vegan DEET. I downed a pitcher of greyhounds on the deck and apologized repeatedly to our eerily understanding guests. In addition to being extremely polite people, Bryan slipped some Valium in their drinks. Just to take the edge off.

Thanks to Bryan’s efforts, we ended up having a pretty relaxing weekend overall. And then, a few hours after our guests left, Bryan came in from the deck holding a plastic deli container.

Inside the container was a scorpion he’d found on the deck, where the baby had been crawling around all weekend. If you’ve never seen one in real life, they look kind of like this:

photo source

I’ll tell you what, friends. It’s becoming clear that my karma is aaaaaall out of whack. I clearly need to spend the next month meditating on wrongs I may have committed in past lives. It’s possible I offed some prophets or something.

Anyway, when we got home, we found our apartment had been overtaken by locusts and frogs. Weird, right? I guess it’s that time of year. Fortunately, I hear tea-tree oil is a natural repellent.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

So, there’s this thing going on where I’m allergic to everything. For the last year or two, I’ve been dealing with many bumps that look and itch like mosquito bites. Sometimes a few of them pop up on my face! It’s fun. It’s a 24-hour party with go-go dancers, and laser effects, and shirtless men who bring you martinis.

Unfortunately, we’re not here to talk about my allergies — mostly because I’m not 122 years old, and therefore have not yet exhausted all other avenues of conversation. I mention the allergies story as a precursor to the real story. The story about the bugs in my hair.

Yeah. You heard me.

A mom friend recently sent an email letting me know that a kid at school (probably a nasty, horrible bully who enjoys name calling and stealing decorative erasers) had given one of her utterly adorable, perfect children lice. Since we like to cuddle her adorable kids regularly, she thought we should check our heads. Of course, my head began to itch upon reading the first sentence of her email, so I asked Bryan to check my hair whilst I shuddered uncontrollably.

Nothing, he said. I bleated with anxiety. Please check again, I said. He agreed. Nothing, he said again, rather more impatiently.

The next day, still obsessing and still vaguely itchy, I insisted Bryan check my head again. He did. This time he did it with the forbearance of someone who must regularly deal with hysteria-induced itching. No, he said wearily. There are no bugs in your hair. I skulked away — a pouty, bitter, hypochondriac.

Over dinner that night, I grew reflective as the itching grew more intense. Clearly I have begun to get allergy hives on my scalp, I thought. I may crawl out of my own skin with the discomfort. Perhaps, I thought, I should stop eating all the things to which I am allergic. Farewell, booze. Goodbye caffeine. Wheat? No more wheat for me. And then I sobbed quietly over my pasta. My teardrops made concentric circles in my red wine, and be-salted my after-dinner tea. My desert, garnished with a fine dusting of crushed Vivarin, went untouched.

A while later, I was washing my itchy hair, and looked down to find bugs on my hands. Exactly two bugs, in fact. They were each 4 feet long and had jaws like Drill Baboons.

photo source

I’ve no idea how they’d been hiding so successfully. Perhaps I have a very large head.

I emerged dripping from the shower to email Melissa, whose kids had lice a few years back. I told her I planned to strip the family naked and use a flame-thrower to destroy our apartment and everything in it. She noted that using a flame-thrower without protective clothing was imprudent, and might raise eyebrows, even in San Francisco. I agreed naked flame throwing was more of a Burning Man thing.

So what happened next? You can’t wait to hear all about it, can you? Well you’ll have to, because I’ve been spending a lot of time with the washing machine lately. Not to mention all the hours I’ve wasted scrubbing my skin until it was raw.

Tune in tomorrow to hear more exciting adventures! To whom did I loan hats? The baby! Good lord! What about that innocent baby? Is this where the swarming ends? Don’t miss one action-packed minute of infestation!

I’m always mildly freaked before I present, and then surprised afterward by how much fun it is. This time around I was presenting some new material, and I was really happy with the result. This was in part because of the extra-welcoming crowd — a few people even drove well out of their way to come say hi, which made me feel all aw-shucksy.

Anyway, it’s time to start taking this show on the road more, we’ve been having a blast. If you missed us this time, but want to come say hi, the next place I’m scheduled to present is at SxSW.

Now I’m going to bed. Tomorrow, Detroit! I’m hoping they’ll have cocktails there.

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On my wedding day, I was blindsided by jitters. After my flower girl freaked about all those strangers watching her, I realized they’d be watching me too. Monitoring me, really. Attentive to my every motion, examining each fleeting facial expression, taking bets on whether I’d fall on my face and tangle myself in a profusion of tulle.*

My stage fright was so extreme that it was not eased by the bottle of champagne in the bridal suite. One of my bridesmaids finally sent for the groom’s bourbon. Two shots later, I was unattractively flushed and on my way to get hitched.

A few weeks ago, Liv had a similar case of stage fright on her wedding day. Sara and I entered Liv’s hotel room to find her pale and still, listening to a recording of the wedding recessional. Sara gasped and plugged in a Johnny Cash CD, while I arranged for room service to supply us with Maker’s on the rocks. Twenty minutes later, Liv was upbeat and ready to wed.

Incidentally, Biz and Liv eloped, which meant I got to make a wedding bouquet (this is getting to be a hobby for me). I’d never seen Liv’s dress, so I made her two bouquets, and she chose. Oddly, the one that incorporated weeds I’d picked last-minute from nearby fields looked awesome with her ensemble.

I’m in favor of any wedding where I get to be in a hot tub an hour before the ceremony. The wedding was so laid back and fun that I’ve decided everyone should elope from now on. I’ll make your bouquet.

*My fears in this area were not unfounded — falling dramatically at weddings is a personal tradition. I’ve fallen while descending church stairs in my bridesmaid’s gown, I’ve fallen while jitterbugging with the bride’s sister during our attendant’s dance, and I’ve been dropped on my head by drunken, dancing uncles too many times to count (drunk people like to dip). I did eventually take a nosedive on the dance floor at my own wedding, but I made it down the aisle just fine.

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We arrived in Vegas fresh, hydrated, and well stocked with penis-shaped party supplies and outfits too slutty to wear at home. The Las Vegas airport greeted us with an enormous banner featuring Carrot Top in pancake makeup, surrounded by women in bikinis. The text read, “Carrot Top Fantasy.” I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that prhase somewhere before.

ox·y·mo·ron [ok-si-mawr-on, -mohr-]
–noun, plural -mo·ra
Rhetoric.
a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “deafening silence,” “poor little rich girl,” or “Carrot Top fantasy.”

Every square inch of Vegas is decorative. There’s fabric on the ceiling, crystals on the tabletops, tassels on women’s nipples. In the evening, as I removed my tassels to pump breast milk in the private massage room of our suite at the Wynne, I thought to myself, I need more agate doves in my life. Where can a girl get her hands on some agate doves?

The answer of course, was the lobby. So we swiped a few on our way out to see KA, which was magical. Seriously, people, if you haven’t seen any Cirque du Soleil, you must. Those shows will make you dream better.

I’m joking about the doves, of course. They were glued down.