I had a teeny, tiny breakdown over the weekend. Those around me would claim that it was more of a medium-sized breakdown, but all agree, I lost my ever-loving mind for most of the day.

As a parent, few things push me over the edge. With babies, major poop disasters were no problem. Also barf; no big deal. I can clean up puke without puking myself and it no way makes me feel as if I’m having a nervous breakdown. I can deal with gross bodily fluids. I can even deal with frightening situations, not freaking out in the least when the girl had three different surgeries before she was five years old. I also calmly held her split and bleeding eyelid together as my husband drove us to the ER one memorable evening (she slipped and fell in the shower, landing her face on a ledge).

Bugs, however, can unravel me with alarming speed.

Saturday morning, I took the girl for a haircut. (Foreshadows at twilight, seven feet tall.) I was informed, post shampoo but before the trimming, that the girl had a condition that prevented them cutting her hair, and a trip to the drugstore might be in order.

ACK! BLECK! WAH! I shouldn’t have been surprised at all since no less than three of the girl’s best girlfriends had the crud in recent weeks, but still was mortified, horrified and dismayed our weekend wouldn’t be what I’d planned. Instead, I spent the next five hours washing, combing, cleaning, vacuuming, laundering and painstakingly examining each of the millions of strands of hair on the girl’s head. Somewhere in the middle I called my husband, said something about “my worst nightmare” (not overstating too much, eh?) and bursting into tears. To his credit, he came to my rescue for a bit, providing some relief in a day that was just overwhelmingly bad.

Even now, I’m still recovering, trying to get my spirits back up to normal. The girl was not as traumatized; it all seemed like a rite of passage to her, since her best friends had recently gone through it. If anything, she thought I was a total freak with my OCD behavior of the next few days. Leave it to me to go the brink of insanity over something microscopic. Sigh.

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