The Gift That Keeps On Giving
January 18, 2006
So, as I have typed in recent posts, the entire family has some ailment or another. Usually, we time it so well that only one of us has something ill-like going on, or just as one is finishing being sick, another one picks up the baton; kind of like a sickness relay race. I’m sure to the outsider, it’s poetry in motion; but to us, it’s a Dante’s Inferno kind of thing.
The past two weeks have been very much like the third circle of hell kind of weeks; and may we never have to go through that again anytime soon.
R kicked it off by bringing home the classroom “sickness du jour” of stomach flu. We had heard rumors of it going around, and my mom-in-law’s ballet school had their own strain of it going around. That had felled her over the holidays, but by the time she watched the kids for us to have that wild weekend in Albany she was fit as a fiddle.
Apparently flu germs have a shelf-life.
R kicked off Saturday morning by saying “I have to go cough in the toilet”.
Pretty astute for an almost 4 year old, I’d say.
He proceeded to spend pretty much all day “coughing in the toilet”.
Blissfully, he passed out early and Sunday he seemed better; although he wasn’t eating much.
Sunday was chill-out day, as I was still recuperating from vertigo. (Which I still have depending on how I move my head.)
Monday we went to a friend’s new home in a town called Celebration. This was originally the brainchild of Disney. Walt wanted to build a community geared toward families. In theory, they have achieved their goals. It’s a very nice, very clean, very safe place to live and work. I saw many kids in the Market Street section in groups without parents near. Everything is within walking or electric car distance; so it’s very much like a circa 1950′s town. We had a lovely day walking to the lake, eating pizza then feeding the ducks our pizza crusts (pictures to come in the flikr thing soon), then playing in one of the little parks near a community swimming pool. It was a great day. The house our friends have moved into is lovely, and it looks like they will be very happy there.
If I had a choice to live there? I’d have to seriously think about it.
It IS nice. The schools seem great. M would really like it there I think. (Heck, who am I kidding? He’d LOVE it there. The friend we went to see is his “girlfriend” of sorts.)
I just don’t know if I could do it. It looks very “Stepford”-like, and that makes me uncomfortable. Not that I’m going to put out a gaggle of pink flamingos on my lawn or anything, but there are definite things you can and cannot do there; and the can-nots outweigh the can-s pretty strongly.
But I digress…
So we get home from visiting our friends and I make pasta. We eat and get ready for bed and M tells me his “tummy feels funny”.
Uh-oh.
He gets into bed and within 10 minutes hurls everywhere. Yuck. Did I mention he sleeps on the top bunk of a bunk bed? Have you any idea how difficult it is to change the sheets on these things? It’s like a game of Twister with the board on an upper shelf.
Oh, yeah, M was sick. Back to that….
So his “coughing in the toilet” ensues. It turns into “coughing in a bowl”, and my favorite; “coughing on the nice pillows on the sofa”.
Me and the water company are real tight. I was their best customer that night.
He threw up EVERYWHERE!
I finally got him to bed and asleep at around 4am.
Needless to say, no one went to school the next day.
It didn’t take long, I got hit with it, with the hubby hot on my heels. By noon yesterday, hubby was in bed with the heating pad because he was so cold (in between vomiting spells in the bathroom), and I was on the sofa making sure the kids were being supervised while I dozed hoping to die quickly and with no more vomiting.
We traded spots at about 4pm, so he could watch the kids and I could rest.
We felt good enough later on to round out the evening watching American Idol before crawling into bed.
Today has been slow-going, trying to pace myself while cleaning up the mess my house has become. Sitting down is better than moving around, I have found.
Here’s hoping this doesn’t hit your house. It’s a doozy!
(Sorry to anyone we may have inadvertently given this to. really, REALLY sorry.)
