I am Tracy, killer of all things scabies, including myths and wives tales.

Ah clean, freshly-baked sheets!  I have taken to baking my clothing and bedding after washing.  Because if 10 minutes at 130-40 F will kill these little buggers, then 40 minutes at 205 F won't do 'em any good.  And I don't want to leave their fate in the uncertain hands of the "hot" cycles of my washer and/or dryer.  There will also be another round of exfoliating every inch of their natural habitat (my skin) and then covering them with neem, tea tree, and lavender oils this morning.  I think they're almost done-for after 4 days of "treatment," but, like the sign says, "Beatings will continue until morale improves."

Obviously I don't want to take any chances.  But I'm also not going to vacuum the house twice daily or try to spray all the furniture and bag up everything that isn't nailed down for 10 days, like some people out here on the web recommend.  After many hours of reading up on my lee-tle friend the scabies mite, I have learned the following.  It cannot jump or fly and spends all of its time either inside tunnels in the skin, or crawling on the surface looking for a mate, after which the males die (as they should, with apologies to you guys out there) and the females go back into a burrow under the skin.  That's it.  The average "infestation" consists of only about 12 mites on the entire body.  They aren't running around on my clothes or leaping off of me onto my furniture and/or friends (or swan-diving into my soup, Jeri).  And if they are somehow dislodged from my skin, say when I peel off my jammies, they will only survive off of my body for 24 hours, or, if you believe some of the more conservative pundits, up to 72 hours.  If you leave them alone for a day or three, (or bake them in the oven) they're dead.  (So for those on the web who've complained about getting scabies from an infested sofa that you brought home, I suspect you had fleas or something, not scabies.)  They are usually transmitted by skin-to-skin contact long enough for them to crawl from one person to the other (and only an impregnated female will cause you any grief, since a lone male will just crawl around looking for a mate until he dies).  You are likely to get them if you LIVE with an infested person, but otherwise, unless you're wearing my dirty clothes, or sleeping in my bed, you aren't likely to get them.  You can also catch them if you give a frail elderly woman who's had undiagnosed scabies for several months a  weekly hand massage.  Lesson learned.

I've got to go wash the oils off my scalp, remove another layer of skin, apply more oils, and then go buy more neem, because I'm running low and God forbid I should run out and let the mite ba$tards win.  Oh, and I'm holding steady at about 112.  Yoga today, with a  good chance of a strength training Meet-up in the park in the forecast for Monday night

And no, I still haven't tried the Cardio Ballroom.  With all the bugs going on, I don't need any distractions, so it will have to wait for a while.