Bad Luck Wall-E

From Monday, December 1:

As I write this, my mother is vomiting in the guest bathroom.

This remarkable event caps the last 48 hours of sick bay status at the House of Prince. What was meant to be a frolicking sunny weekend turned into a cacophony of trips to the bathroom, washing machine working overtime, bored children clattering about, and moaning.

My parent are visiting and thank God. Stewart and I came down with this noxious stomach bug Friday night around 9:30, which became evident when I puked in the bushes outside the movie theater like a drunk sorority pledge. At first we thought it was food poisoning, but when Kyle joined in the party late in the night we knew the house was doomed. With me and Stewart curled up in fetal positions in bed asking each other if we thought it was time to go to the hospital, thank God there was a kindly grandparent to shepherd our confused and scared little boy through a misery of his own.

I’ve been suffering ever since, unable to eat much and therefore regain my strength. On the plus side, I’ve lost 5.5 pounds!

But now my mother is down, living through her worst nightmare. She’s one of those people who will not, must not throw up, whatever the cost. I tried to warn her that this disease does not give you a choice. Resistance is futile. I feel even worse that she is sick now because she took such good care of our family the last few days, making me tea and toast and bringing me Tylenol and water to keep my fever down. She and my dad played with the kids once Kyle got better and took them on outings so they would not tear the house down around us.

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Three days later…

I couldn’t even finish this post on Monday because I was still weak and had to go lay down after I accomplished even minor tasks like showering or combing my hair. Blogging was much too challenging. This illness kicked butts around here and I know it’s going around our area. It makes me want to build a fortress around our house and not come out until sick season is over.

During our Friday night in Hell, as Stewart and I shivered with fever and clutched our bellies in pain, we kept saying to each other “Thank God my/your parents are here.” Really. Because when one of the children needs something in the middle of the night and both of us are immobile, who would we call otherwise? We don’t have family in the area, and our closest friends live at least 30 minutes away. Stewart says the chances of us both getting sick like that again, and one of the children then doing so, is minor. To that I answer, like I always answer to logical explanations, “But what if…?”

So that’s now on my to-do list: find a puke-buddy. Someone who will come over in the middle of the night to help my children puke, and we will do the same for them. There are a lot of families that live close by that I wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking a favor like this before, but now I see the need. You know, just in case.

The reason I believe Wall-E brought this bad luck upon us is this: we got the bug during our first date night in months. While we were out, the kids and my parents watched Wall-E on DVD. We all know now how that night ended. The last time Stewart and I went out was in the summer – we had dinner and went to see Wall-E. We fought the entire time, and I left my cell phone in the theater. Also not a fun evening. I think Wall-E is the new Scottish play.

The End.