Saturday morning I set Maggie on the floor and heard her crawl off to Jonas’ room to play. I lounged in my bed, enjoying the peace and listening to their giggles. A bit later, Maggie started to make her frustrated sound. Since it was on a very minor level I decided to let her work out whatever was bugging her, which typically she can manage. About a minute later “frustrated” escalated to “ok, I’m starting to get really ticked off here,” so I lumbered out of bed to go help her out. She met me in the hall where I found that Jonas had slathered her, head to toes, with special attention paid to her hair and face, in absorbase. Absorbase is Maggie’s eczema cream. I am sure it is first cousins to Crisco, as it looks, feels, and presents the same level of difficulty when you are trying to wash it out of your hair.

Because Maggie had her eyelashes full of white gunk I quickly took a warm rag to get it off before it got in her eyes. Since she wasn’t screaming, I assumed it hadn’t gotten that far, but the way she was rubbing her face it was headed there. Once her eyes were basically clear I stripped off both of our clothes and hopped in the shower with her to try, unsuccessfully to scrub the goop out of her hair. I got about half of it out when her tolerance level maxed out and I had to stop slathering her with soap and then drowning her in the water, so we got out of the shower.

I went into Jonas’ room to finish chewing him out. Before I could form words I saw that his train table, carpet, bedding, toys, bunk bed and window were all liberally greased. Almost the entire tub of cream was artfully slathered about the room. It took me over an hour to clean everything up.

The rest of the day I was cranky and tired. Chris worked twelve hour shifts all weekend because the air show is in town. All that means to me is that instead of listening to the occasional C-5 revving up we are now favored with Thunderbirds taking off with a roar making it impossible to keep a baby down for a nap. It also means that there was no driving anywhere this weekend because the meanest trip to the store would result in an hour long traffic jam due to the people flocking onto base and the total disorganization with which traffic was being diverted. ( I know, because my husband was one of the poor slobs who got volen-told for that job and every five minutes he had someone yelling at him to change what he was doing, and do it another way for five minutes until the next guy came along and bawled him out for whatever he had just been told to do.) This, paired with a really severe cold made Chris extra good tempered when he arrived home Saturday night. As we all went to bed that night I marveled at my good fortune of, for the first time ever, having everyone else get sick and me not catching it.

Sunday morning at six am I woke up with a fever and puked my guts out right as Chris yelled, “Bye!” and left for another twelve hour shift. I spent the remainder of the day running to and from the bathroom with Maggie screaming her displeasure over the abandonment and Jonas seizing the opportunity to get into stuff and throw hundreds of bits of pasta about the house.. It was a long, long day. To sum up, I may never eat onion rings again.

So, it is now Monday morning. I’m not puking. I am very weak and dizzy and can’t handle walking very well. I’m having hot and cold flashes. So, I’m sick, but not like yesterday sick. Jonas drew on the couch cushions with blue pen while I was in bed and Chris was in the shower. If it doesn’t come out, the cushions can be flipped over. Amazingly, our new couches lasted almost one year to the day of being purchased without any major destruction. In a house with small children, this is truly miraculous.