FAQ : How do I desprinkle my house of Barbie hair glitter?

Credit picture: Ann Post

I have been reading a lot of articles about familes with kids getting LICE. It scares me.  I really dont want to mess around with delousing my whole household or spending an hour every day combing through hair and looking for nits.  Or taking showers using mouth wash as shampoo (urban legend says this kills them) or even harder stuff like Crisco or Kerosene.  Yes, I have read that too.  Ugh, I dont even want to post a picture of the lice.  I was going to, but instead I had to put up something positive and nice, hence the cozy winter picture of a cottage in the woods. Nice. Not lice. 

I was very lucky not to have this condition when I was growing up.  We had a fleas infestation from our dog, but in fact I never even heard of lice until I came to Europe.  Well, in fact before that I read about lice in KIDS during World War 2 who got the critters from sleeping in hay in the barn.  I assumed it was a condition of ancient history or of "poor folks", sort of like tuberculosis.  

Truthfully I have not had the "pleasure" of having the louse experience and I thank my Lucky Stars for that, or the God above.  Though I am not sure it is God that is keeping my family from getting lice, though if it is, I thank the heavenly Father.  That is awfully kind.

That said, I have NOT been spared a 21 st century condition which while not as bad as lice, is certainly up there with menaces such as people talking too loudly on their mobile phones in public or in the park while they are supposed to be watching their kids, or teenagers smoking on the corner under our apartment,  That one REALLY gets my goat.

Barbie for kids with loss of hair due to cancer or diseases

I am talking about the menace of BARBIE R hair glitter.  Maybe even worse than lice  as you can not get rid of them to the best of my knowledge.  They will be there when you sell the house.

Not to make this into an X rated blog, but I have learned that a healthy male puts out at least 40 million spermatozoa in a 2ml semen ejaculation.  Now those little guys are microscopic and all 40 million can easily be wiped up in a little puddle with a Kleenex or easily washed off the hand or just as easily be spit out or swallowed from the mouth.  But imagine if those 40 million were each as big as a pin head and then were put into a little vile and then dumped on said Barbie`s R head, but in fact not dumped on the head, but spread all over. 

Just like sperm, these goobers have some sort of mobility and quickly and easily torqued throughout  said household.  First they disperse in groups of 100 000 or so.  Then 10 000.... down to 1 or a couple anywhere in the apartment from our bed to under the bathtub to a couple on my face.  If I clean one off one side of my face, there is another on my other cheek.  I ride the street car and if people look at me, I wonder if the sunlight caught a sparkle in my eye that they are looking at.   

Now don't get me wrong, most certainly this is a "Western" first world complaint and I know there are bigger problems in the world, no doubt, but if every household with kids were afflicted with this nefarious condition, it would be a national calamity.

plus size Barbie R

My attention was first called to this problem a month or two ago after we got said Barbie R for a present.  I noticed some sparkles in the kitchen on the table and on the floor and just assumed it was some sugary ingredient my wife was glazing on a sweet role or something.  The sparkle was contained.  I wiped it up easily, so I thought it was under control.  Simple.  You can wipe the stuff up.  Besides, the kids didn't really take to the Barbie R doll. 

Huh.  If I had only known. I would have thrown said vile of glitter right then into the garbage and let the local land fill people deal with the problem of 40 million sparkles.  I didn't know.  The problem did not become apparent.

Whoa is to me as this last weekend, my older daughter  gave Barbie R a hair wash (who incidentally bought the Barbie R with said sparkles as a present with her own money for her younger sister.  You know who the present was really for, and who is playing with it right?).   And then she put the sparkles in her hair after I helped her blow dry Barbie R s hair.  I am rolling my eyes if you could see me, but it was fun(ny).  I looked at the sparkle and opened the vile and I opened it wrong because it looks like a lipstick container, but, well, a lot of sparkles fell all over the girls room.  Crap.  Then my younger daughter opened the vile and sprinkled the sprinkles on Barbie R s hair in large doses.  Too large.  It was all over the rug in their room and the sitting area.  I tried to vacuum it up, but it wouldn't.  Seriously, it wouldn't.  In fact, that just blew the sparkles around the room.   And from there, as I already said, they have some sort of mobility method and they could not be swept or vacuumed up.  And for all I knew, they multiplied too!  They each split in two and then each of those 80 million split again.  I feel like this is the sequel to the movie GREMLINS.  The little sparkles are going to grow and multiply and eventually push us out of apartment and from there, who knows.  A national calamity.  Call out the National Guard.      

Don't bother doing the math to figure out how many we have because  at this point the sparkles have kind of taken over  some of our apartment.  In one room it looks like this:


 In other places in the apartment you can just see a couple pieces of something shiny on the floor.  And that would be the sparkles.  Like I said, they are everywhere.  So when I wash my face in the evening.. they are there.  Luckily they haven't taken over our kitchen living room area yet, so we mostly stay in that area, but we have had to combine our bedrooms as the above picture is the original room where the sparkles were first "given water after midnight" and were dropped all over and expanded.

I will be contacting the Barbie R people this next week to ask them how to delouse, deglitter the apartment and I will post their answer, though they may not answer right away, as I don't think it is a "FAQ" yet.  But to be fair, ever since lead soldiers were scrapped as toys for kids (my Father had a collection of them when he was a kid and he kept them in our basement in a locked up metal suitcase for as long as we lived in that house) toy companies have been quick to recall dangerous toys or make changes to toys when it was found they could be a choking hazard, or at least to print on the box a warning that this toy is for above three year olds because it could be a choking hazard to three and below.  So I am confident that the good manufacturers of Barbie R will help me get out of my predicament.  Whether they answer in time will be another question.  at this point, I need a quick answer.   Wish me luck.   However, I would like to warn all readers that in my "limited" opinion, sparkles for Barbie R are in fact, NOT a good idea.  

Here is the update of our 1000 piece puzzle Santa got my 4 year old for Christmas.  Both she and I have been working on it before pre school in the morning and a bit before bedtime.  She works on it herself in the late afternoon before I get home from work.   

No Resolutions

Lentil Soup

Oh ye who have no faith.

I want to believe, I really do, but I don't know,... I have been doing this lentil soup business on the first day of the new year for several years and results have been mixed at best, and downright terrible at not the best.

But once again, on the evening of January First, I dug into two bowls of lentil soup in hopes that it would bring me good health and wealth for year 2016 AD.  

Come to think of it, I have been pretty healthy this last year.  If we count the two months I was sick last January and February to the 2014 year, then in fact I have not gotten sick at all, besides some small snuffles or cough for a week or less. I did not get my usual pre Christmas sickness in 2015, so maybe the lentil soup had some effect.   The thing is, I didn't have the lentil soup last January 1st, so that theory is shot.

For the uneducated, as with every culture and religion there are traditions and suspicions associated with what to do on the first day of the new year.  In the tradition of the Slavs, or perhaps specific to the Czechs, but I think it is all Slavs,  you are supposed to eat two bowls of lentil soup in the evening of the First day of the new year and it will bring you (great?) wealth for the next year.  Some subsidiaries of these people believe you have to have a pickle in the soup too, or with potatoes of some style on the side.  Also in the Czech tradition, three Carp fish scales should be placed under the bowl to be found, or not found by the lentil soup eater.  If you don't find them, then you are out of luck in pecuniary matters for the next year.  If you do find them, you are in luck.  My wife stopped with that idea as we stopped with Carp altogether.  So I guess I am out of luck no matter if I have the lentil soup or not.

The thing is, in the past, it was finally leaked that Mother in law would put the three carp scales under her favorite son or daughter`s bowl, and the others got squat.  So that was kind of a scam of family nepotism.

What does all this have to do with the price of bread you ask?

Well, as many people will know, also in our Western modern, culture we have developed traditions for the First day of the new year.   We call it, making New Years Resolutions.  And the reason I mention the scam of the carp scales and the mixed, usually bad, results of my lentil soup menu is to rationalize my total, unfeeling, lack of resolutions I have made this year.  Ne, even scorn for the thought of making a resolution. In fact a negative resolution to continue on the path I currently trod that is leading me nowhere and progressing me in absolutely no see able forward movement.  At best sideways.  Flat.

Pt oi, phoi, spit, I spit on you, you resolution.

The reality being, that I think that it is a worthless act of self flagellation with the intention of trying to make ourselves feel good and be ambitious at the new year.  It is noted that people are usually more ambitious anyway at the beginning of the new year.  It has been analyzed even in the stock market that people are buying more stocks at the beginning of the new year and feel lucky.

This usually lasts ten days, maybe twenty.  After that we all get back into our routines and lose our shine and ambition and look at our bank account or mattress stash and see that we are deep in the hole from the holidays and we have gained ten pounds (4 kilo) to boot.  Then we realize or start to think that, its all a scam, I aint going to get rich quick.  And you know what?  For the most part you will not.  You know what the odds are of winning the lottery?  Get the picture?  The only way we get out of our personal holes is through steady day to day plodding, not running, not quickly, just plodding.  And sometimes there is gum on our shoes holding us back, or we step in some dog doo along the way.  My neighborhood is well known for its sidewalk treats (Which actually some people think is good luck, but I don't).  Deus ex Machina only happens in Shakespeare.   I rather follow Frank Zappa who said, "Watch out where the huskies go, don't you step in the yellow snow."

And you know what people?  The stock market is really starting out this new year, 2016, by tanking really badly.  Going down, losing percentage.  So you figure this year a lot a lot of people are doing what I am doing and ignoring resolutions also, because NO ONE is investing in the stock market this new year.  Its going down.  They are selling, not buying.  

The one year I made some resolutions and they worked was when I made my resolutions at the Jewish new year which is in September.  I  think I psyched my mind out and confused it so that the resolutions succeeded.  I had the same ambition as most people do at the beginning of the new year, but I didn't burn out by the 20th of the month because I was the only one making resolutions.  So I couldn't talk to other people at the end of the month and say, "oh yeah, my resolution was... was... was... but I stopped it".  I didn't talk to anyone about them.  I just kept them in my own heart and I kept working on them.  And it worked.  That was the year 2013 and although I didn't keep all of them, I did keep the resolution to start a blog which I did by December and another was to go to the back doctor and try to do something about my bad back.  I did and I kept with the back exercises till March of the next year!!

But besides that year, I don`t recall any resolutions that stuck or that got accomplished.  In fact I don't recall any resolutions I have made anytime in the past.

So folks, as I said in the beginning, its all a scam.  Your mother in law is placing the carp scales under her own daughters plate, not yours. You will not get rich overnight, you probably wont even get a raise this year.  At best you will break even.  So, fagetaboutit.  Just keep your nose to the grindstone and do your job and watch where you are walking especially in my neighborhood.  

There is one trick I have always wondered whether it would work, and that is REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY.     

        

Christmas present puzzle progress