The above picture has nothing to do with this post. Except that Lego!Bilbo’s face is a pretty accurate depiction of how I felt all week.
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One of the things that’s terrible about having kids is how susceptible to illness you suddenly become. Every cold, every bug and stomach flu and snotty nose finds its way into the household and contaminates every surface. So no matter how many times you wash your hands, no matter how many vitamins or probiotics or naked dances you do under the light of the gibbous moon to help prevent yourself from getting sick, you get sick anyway. And a thousand times worse than the little carrier monkeys who gave it to you in the first place.
Last week, we all got sick (well, all except my husband, who has one of those irritating immune systems that actually works) with a gross stomach bug. Ola started throwing up on Saturday. Freja and Will bit the dust on Monday. But they’re kids, so after completely emptying their stomachs of everything they’d had to eat or drink that day, they sat and watched cartoons for a few hours and then they were fine. Like they’d never been sick. Because that’s how kids are.
But I got the bug, too. And I wasn’t better in a few hours. The first day I was sick (Monday) was traumatic. I couldn’t leave the bathroom. I had chills. I cried. Everything hurt. I couldn’t sleep for fear that I’d wake up expelling some horrible body fluid all over the bed or the couch or the floor or on whatever place I was currently writhing.
While my kids bopped around the house in their pajamas, all better after only a few hours – A FEW HOURS – of being ill, I continued to nibble on crackers and imbibe Gatorade through cracked, bleeding lips. The mere thought of food made my stomach recoil and my intestines knot. I couldn’t lay on my side because it made me feel like I would throw up. I couldn’t read or watch television or have anyone touch me or talk to me or acknowledge my existence.
But through all of it, my kids still wanted me to be Mommy and it was the worst feeling in the world to want nothing more than to push them away and crawl inside the mattress with my sippy cup of water and handful of stale crackers.
But, hey! I obviously survived. By Wednesday, I could walk around without being dizzy, and by Friday I could eat full meals again. So we’re good, now that my stomach isn’t trying to murder me.
IN OTHER NEWS…
I won’t comment on the snow, because I feel like everyone is commenting on the snow and the cold and the ARCTIC TRANS SIBERIAN POLAR EXPRESS VORTEX (which I imagine as a train that tours the world playing bad keyboard covers of Yes and Christmas favorites while creepy looking CGI children throw snowballs at my face) currently pummeling the country. But it snowed yesterday. Again. As it does round and about this time of year.
And in other, other news…
Well, I don’t think there is much else to report. We were sick. It is cold. Ta-da.
Now I’m off to bake some cookies and enjoy the amazing weather we’re having today, all forty degrees of it.