my night with the porcelain goddess

The virus struck me last night. As many Clorox Wipes and as much Lysol as I sprayed when Mac was sick, I really thought nothing, including small pets and houseplants, could survive. But my sister, the doctor, tells me these viruses are very, very tenacious and can replicate with just 10 live particles. That's like a speck of dust that I obviously missed with my Wipes.

Last night I was watching tv and felt queasier and queasier until I was hit by the first eruption of the most violent vomiting I've ever experienced. It made me feel so sorry for Mac that his body was racked by the same vomiting a couple days ago.

I quickly got in the bed, only to be awakened at 9:30 for round #2, at which time the virus graced me with its presence from both ends.

This went on every hour only until about 12:30pm when it stopped. I can tell you that every time I got back in the bed, I prayed to the Lord to make this quick. And He surely did.

I, of course, am not a doctor, but I think that by the virus making an egress from both ends, I cut my "active sickness" time in half. I'm basing this on the length of time Mac was actively sick. So that is a positive. I'm now left with weakness - expected - and these awful achey pains in my thighs and lower back - not unexpected. My neighbor's family all had the virus a couple weeks ago and she said the aches are a symptom of the norovirus and would be gone in a day or two.

After consulting again with my sister, I am now eating bananas to restore potassium lost through diarrhea and I'm going to medicate with Advil PM when I go to bed. I would love to be able to sleep and these aches make it impossible to get comfortable enough to sleep.

I don't often get stomach bugs, so I really marveled last night about a couple things.

1. I woke up before every "active sickness" with more than sufficient time to get to the bathroom. The queasiness was really very mild when I woke up and gradually strengthened until it was time to make a move. How does a body know to wake up? I could have had a mess in my bed otherwise.

2. The body's ability to expel things is really quite horrific and dramatic and violent.

I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, especially if tomorrow is the last day of the leg aches. The only really good thing that has come out of this sickness is that my stomach is flatter than it's been in years. I know it'll go back to normal as soon as I start eating, but too bad it's not bathing suit season yet!

that wretched 24-hour vomit-free rule

I am pleased to report that Mac is 100% better today. The last vomiting episode was at 12:30 yesterday afternoon. Keeping in mind that rule about not sending your child back to school until they have been symptom-free for 24 hours, he is home with me today.

And it will be a miracle if we both survive the day with our wits about us.

Knowing that we didn't have to set the alarm clock this morning, I stayed up late to doze through the Oscars. So imagine my surprise when Mac bounded out of the bed at 7:30am and told me that he felt Guhhhh-REAT! (Use your best Tony the Tiger impersonation there and you'll get how he sounded.)

I sent him downstairs to watch tv so I could sleep more, but got up shortly thereafter because I couldn't go back to sleep. I was having a really distressing dream where I was having a dinner party and was serving some Indian-inspired meal and I couldn't decide what vegetable to serve. I like to eat Indian food, but never cook it at home and I'm pretty sure the pre-wake-up vegetable (roasted caulifower) was not authentic. I wanted to go back to sleep to find the right vegetable but I couldn't make it happen.

So I got up and was quickly reminded that I promised we could set up the newly purchased tent today. Now I had in mind a backyard set-up, so I told Mac it was 40 degrees outside and we needed to wait until it warmed up. He got the tape measure and told me we had just enough space to set it up in the living room if we moved all the furniture.

Now this tent is 10'x9'. It's a 6-person number because in the event that I ever get hoodwinked into having to sleep in it, I don't want all of us on top of each other. The box showed room for two queen-size air mattresses, which seemed suitable to me.

Our living room, once you cut off the unusable angles, is about 10.5'x9.5'.

In an effort to resurrect my MOTY nomination, the tent is up. I do not want to hear Jimmy complain about setting this thing up in the wide open spaces because I got it up in a tight space with the assistance of an over-eager 7 year-old.

happy anniversary to me (and Jimmy, of course)

Well today is our 12th wedding anniversary. It was meant to be spent at church followed by a wonderful and relaxing afternoon at my best friend Caroline's house. Caroline and Willie had very graciously stepped in to take care of me on this special day in Jimmy's absence.

You know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men?

Yes, our plans have gone awry.

Mac woke up at 5:30 this morning with the vomit virus. I really hoped it was food poisoning and it would be a one-vomit wonder. But alas, we've started hour 4 and it's pretty constant.

I decided we need to stockpile some vomit rations, like ginger ale and saltines. But then I faced the quandary that single mothers must face every day with a sick child who's not old enough to stay home by himself:

- do you take the child to the grocery store and have him walk around holding a vomit bag? (answer: only if you want to be told never come back to the neighborhood Publix again.)

- do you take the child to the grocery store but leave him in the car with a vomit bag? (answer: you could but he's so pathetic that dragging him to the car seems like child abuse. Plus you really don't want to take the chance that he misses the bag and vomits on the car.)

- do you call your backup support team to go to the grocery store for you? (answer: your backup support team is either out of town or can't go for one reason or another. As a side note, this is when you feel really, really alone in the world.)

- do you call a taxi service to go the store for you and do your shopping? (answer: you google "taxis, Summerville, SC" and there's only one company listed. It's called Mr. P-Nut's Taxi Service and you decide you're not that desperate yet.)

- do you Skype your husband in Afghanistan and ask him to cyber-babysit using the webcam while you run to the store? (answer: yes. I positioned the laptop so he could see Mac vomiting, grabbed my cell phone so he could call if there was a real emergency, and ran to the Publix and back in less than 10 minutes.)

If you have a good memory, you'll remember that Mother's Day 2009, the very first full day of my geographic single motherhood, found me in the emergency room with Mac having pneumonia. My wedding anniversary has found me home alone in an uncelebratory mood with a vomiting child. I get goosebumps thinking what fun can be in store for my birthday in a few weeks.

artwork from Mac's backpack

Ignore the fact that Mac addressed the letter to Jimmy and not Daddy, and you might find this as sweet as I did.

Dear Jimmy,
Are we still going caping (camping) this spring. I hope we are and sot (shoot) the 22 rifull (rifle).

(I've told you before that he's a Berkeley County boy through and through).

What this means to me is that I'm going to have a night by myself while they're out camping somewhere that's not the backyard (because there will be no rifle shooting in White Gables). Hooray for dads and sons going camping! Bigger hoorays for when moms don't have to go!

the teeth have left the building

Mac is the ultimate trooper. He marched right into that dentist's office and got some laughing gas in exchange for having two teeth yanked from his head. The dental hygienist assured me the permanent teeth would slip back into the right place. That remains to be seen.

All that and he was back at school by 9:45am.

Thanks for all the encouragement you sent. I sat in the waiting room and was moments away from vomiting the whole time from nerves.

(I think it was nerves, but it might have been that extra-big cup of coffee I drank on an empty stomach while I was waiting. We'll blame it on nerves for purposes of the MOTYs.)

two pet peeves I'd like to share

Can I share two things that have driven me nuts lately? (If you don't want me to share, please stop reading here.)

1. If you're in a checkout line, waiting patiently, and another lane opens up, I think the polite thing is to allow the person who's next in line to be first in the newly opened lane. This happened to me on two separate occasions last week - there was only one checkout open, I was in line and the line had built up to the point where some manager realized that more lanes needed to be opened. Instead of calling the people near the front of the old line to the new register, the people at the back of the line ran over and ended up getting out of the store faster than I did.

2. If a person drives a big car (as in an SUV or minivan, like I used to drive), and he pulls up to a stop sign that has a left turn lane and a right turn lane (as in the exit to my subdivision), he needs to realize that people in little cockroach cars like the one I currently drive cannot see over him if he pulls all the way up to the stop sign. Therefore I can never make a turn until he moves because I have no idea if a tractor-trailer is coming and just happens to be hidden by his huge vehicle.

Thank you for allowing me to vent. I feel much better.

teeth

I called the pediatric dentist at 8:18 this morning, 18 minutes past the time I'd appointed, but I was in the Publix with bad cell reception, so I had to wait. I spoke to the cheerful receptionist who acted like children have double fangs growing out of their mouths all the time and she scheduled us for Wednesday morning at 8:40am.

WEDNESDAY?

But that's two full days away, I said.

To which she said, two more days really won't matter. (I think that was a slam against my maternal negligence.)

Seriously, she said that this is a common problem. I haven't read many parenting books since "What to Expect in Baby's First Year", but is this really that common? Do a lot of kids really grow buck canine teeth?

The receptionist told me I should wiggle the baby tooth as much as possible between now and Wednesday. I told her that I really wasn't anxious to pull that tooth out because the permanent tooth appeared to be coming in at such an awkward angle and I wanted the dentist to pull the baby tooth and try to get that permanent tooth wiggled back into the right spot all at the same time. I cringe at the mere thought of all that dental stuff going on and I very nearly vomit when I think of me having to do all of that dental stuff.

From this point on, I will be doing a tooth check at least weekly until Mac goes to college. If there is a rogue tooth preparing to enter, I will know about it.