Sicknesses

So, we went up to Wisconsin with ugly head colds. Shooting out lashings of snot, coughing, weeping, snuffling. All four of us had it. There was talk of going to the doctor but Dan was confindent it was viral. So, we used up all of Dan's mother's kleenexes, and forged on. Meanwhile, as I was visiting up in the north, I experienced another malady unique to my gender, if you know what I mean. No desire to be dramatic here, just setting the stage.

On Tuesday night, as I was on the sofa trying to keep the puppy close to the back door and away from the baby, who was in the bed with Dan, Andy struggled up the basement stairs and unloaded a lot of vomit into the toilet. I thought at the time, immediately after I thought, "Poor Andy," that we would all be getting the flu. But then it seemed like maybe we wouldn't. Andy seemed alright during the next day, and then puked one more time the next evening, and then seemed alright again. So, maybe we would escape.

On Thursday morning we left, and on Friday evening we got home. As I was bathing the children, I myself unloaded a lot of vomit into the toilet. But, if you know me, and you probably do, I do frequently just unload vomit at random intervals, and the occasion of arriving home from a long trip is as good as any other. Right. An hour later, another delivery. Then I went to bed. From 11:30 until 3:30 I puked at the half hour, and the really vehement and assertive puking was I am sorry to say accompanied by another activity which is even less pleasant to discuss, if that can be imagined. By morning, I was done. A weary shadow of my former self, but done.

That day (Saturday) Dan woke up with a migraine which lasted for two days. He was out of commission for Saturday and Sunday while I was recuperating. It was all so very fine though because the children weren't getting sick, and I thought in my terribly strange little brain that mabe they still wouldn't get it, because it might have been food poisoning from some roadside dive we patronized, or it might be something else, something nontransferrable, like a Polar Express ticket. Well.

Last night around 3am I heard Benny hollering MOMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!! And when I went up, there he was, sitting in a pool of his own sick. I said, sleepily, "Where did it go, Benny?" And he replied, astutely, "Just all over, Mom." And it had. So I stripped everything off the bed, sprayed the mattress and blotted it, stripped the child down to nothing, stuffed him in the tub, and soaked him for a while. Since then, he has puked with brisk regularity about every 30 minutes, and the baby, not to be undone, joined him in this activity at around 4am. At one point, I was thrusting the little bucket under her chin, and she shook her head daintily, put her hand on my shoulder, and trumpeted a hot geyser of puke down my front into my underwear. Everything in the house has been puked on, every blanket and sheet, it is all covered in virulent puke. And this morning I, who had been out of the woods for at least 36 hours, surprised and delighted even myself by unloading an angry, sloshing quart of an unmentionable substance into the toilet. An activity I have repeated now twice.

But at least DAN IS HOME FOR THE DAY. He and they are watching Madagascar. And I need to go change the laundry.