Chris’ grandparents took us out to dinner shortly after we arrived in Manti. We chose a wonderful little Chinese place, and we were enjoying very good food and company when suddenly Jonas choked and said, “I sick!”
Before we had time to even register what he said, he projectile vomited across the table, peppering his great grandmother with puke. Chris put his hand over Jonas’ mouth to stop the sweet and sour shower Grandma was getting, but, unfortunately, that only forced the vomit through a smaller opening, increasing the projectile quality. He finally picked Jonas up, still barfing, and hauled him to the men’s room.
We hadn’t unpacked the car yet, so I ran outside and got Jonas a change of clothing, and then asked the grossed out wait staff for paper towels. I cleaned up the barf and salvaged what I could from the platters of food that had been out of range. Jonas returned, cleaned up and quite hungry, for obvious reasons. I dished him up more food and as I was scooping up some white rice, I, ever so gracefully, knocked over Chris’ very, very large glass of ice water and watched it pour over the table and into Grandma and Grandpa’s already puke splattered laps.
At this point, I began to laugh. I couldn’t help it. You know how most people look back at life and laugh? I have the curse of looking at life in the present and laughing myself into hysterics, even in situations where laughter is inappropriate, rude, and likely to earn me a swift kick in the pants or total disinheritance. I tried to stop myself from laughing at my wonderful grandparents in-law, flecked with vomit and now looking as though they were suffering from severe incontinence. I tried to stop laughing, but as I contemplated how much they probably looked forward to seeing us, and how generous they had been to take us out, and the way Grandma’s eyes bugged out as the sweet and sour vomits sailed across the table. . .I just couldn’t stop. In fact, I began to cry from mirth.
Now, once in awhile, I’m bound to get lucky, and this was, thankfully, one of those times. Chris’ grandparents were laughing as hard as I was. Total exoneration was mine, and we ended up having a great time.
Posted by Lou on August 17, 2006 @ 6:03 am | 8 Comments
You know how usually when you get sick, you feel it coming on? You have a day or two of feeling not quite right, and then it hits? That’s not how the stomach bug I got yesterday was. I was half way through getting ready for church when out of no where, my guts exploded, and I went in an instant from “feeling good” to “someone please peel me off of the bathroom floor.” Seriously. Fevers spiked, intestines moaned, and the worst migraine I’ve had in years hit in about five seconds flat.
So you could say that yesterday wasn’t a very good day. . I haven’t gotten bugs like this since I was a little kid, but apparently since I now live with two darling disease carrying children, I get to catch everything they bring home. Such an advertisement for motherhood!
But something very funny happened yesterday. Something that just may take the disgusting slapstick routine cake. If you have a weak stomach, I suggest you stop reading, but for those of you morbidly curious enough to wonder what happened yesterday, here you go.
You know how when you’ve got the trots you discover that time is truly of the essence? Well, yesterday I was in the living room when it hit me that my guts were about to blow, so I took off at breakneck speed to the bathroom, buttocks clenched, because I knew it was only a matter of seconds.
The bathroom was crowded with Chris and Maggie and I dodged them both, heading to the toilet. I would have made it too, had it not been for the huge puddle of water on the floor. The second my feet hit that puddle, my legs flew up over my head and I landed flat on my back, with Chris catching my head at the last second. Not surprisingly, bowel control isn’t something that comes easily when you find yourself flying through the air, and as I fell back to the hard tile floor, mine gave way, and I now know how it must feel to wear a diaper. It feels gross.
And yet, while laying on the bathroom floor, covered in bruises and sick while Chris asked me what the heck I was doing, I had to laugh, because really, it was hysterical. As disgusting as my predicament was, seriously, you can’t make crap like this up, and so I laughed about it for the rest of the day. And when you’re puking your guts out and glued to the toilet, having something to laugh about is a good thing.
Posted by Lou on June 12, 2006 @ 5:36 pm | 9 Comments
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.
Posted by Lou on October 17, 2005 @ 7:27 pm | 14 Comments
I know, I know, I have internet, why haven’t I posted? I dunno. It’s been hectic here.
I had planned to do a post showing off the new house with pictures, but my camera stopped working and is now at Best Buy getting fixed. Thankfully, it is still under warranty so as frustrated as I am in not having a camera for a few weeks, it’s a lot less painful than the open weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth that would be happening if it were just a dead camera. My camera isn’t just a camera to me the way it is to most people. It’s my greatest source of creative fulfillment. It captures my children’s childhoods. I keep seeing things and wanting to take a picture and I can’t. It’s making me crazy.
On top of that, my printer died in the move. No camera and no printer to print my pictures equals no scrapbooking. This sucks.
Yesterday I was so insanely busy taking care of all of the messes Jonas made and carting a very needy, slightly feverish Maggie around that I had almost no time to take care of myself. I took a two minute shower with Maggie screaming on the floor. I think I brushed my teeth. Chris is working twelves this week so he is totally unavailable. He did, because he is wonderful and loves me and knows how much the loss of the camera pains me, take my camera in to be fixed.
He did the final walk through of the old, nasty, gross house yesterday too. The lady who was supposed to meet him was almost an hour late. Between all of this stuff he got to bed very, very late (late meaning that after working midnight to noon and then dealing with everyone he got to bed at around 4pm and had to be back at work at midnight). I couldn’t keep the kids quiet so I took them to Burger King and drove a friend to drop off her car for an oil change. The kids were wired until eleven o’clock that night. At the very end of the evening Maggie vomited all over me, which confirmed my suspicion that she wasn’t feeling well (well that and the fact that I had her in the Baby Bjorn facing me almost all day- something she would usually not tolerate). So I cleaned up the puke, put everyone to bed, and woke up Chris. Then I went to bed where I woke up every twenty minutes worrying about Maggie’s fever. Now it’s morning and I’m ready for bed. The good thing is, Maggie’s fever broke, and she is slightly less needy. Slightly, very slightly.
Is it naptime yet?
Posted by Lou on September 9, 2005 @ 4:13 pm | 3 Comments
Today, I am going to tell you about the time I threw up a tampon.
Ok, it wasn’t really a tampon, but it looked just like one.
I was about four months pregnant with Jonas, and since I suffer from severe morning sickness that only fades a bit with lots of drugs and IVs, I was, as usual, puking. Only it wasn’t the usual reversal of the stomach lining that I had grown accustomed too. This time, something got stuck in my esophagus and I couldn’t breathe at all, so I was hunched over the toilet thinking, “Oh my gosh. This is it. This is how I’m gonna die. I’m going to croak suffocating on my own vomit. Dang, that’s gonna look stupid in the obits!” Thinking about the humiliation of dying this way I managed to pull my energy together, pop several blood vessels in my face, and heave what looked exactly like a tampon that one has accidentally dropped into the toilet, into the toilet.
For a long time I just stared at it. These things don’t usually go from down there to the stomach to be barfed into an unsuspecting toilet, and even if they did, I’m pregnant, so it’s been awhile, you know? I look around to see if just maybe a random box of tampons is out and one magically fell into the toilet at the same time that I was vomiting. There’s nothing out.
So I do what any woman who has been barfing ten times a day for three months would do. I stick my hand into the toilet bowl full of puke and retrieve the faux tampon. I cradle it in my hand for a second; it doesn’t feel like a tampon, in fact, it’s kind of squishy, a bit sort of like if you were to leave brie out too long on a warm summer day. I have the sudden jolt of realization that this is, in fact, cheese.
Now, it started out as milk, which I had drunk earlier that day to relieve some heartburn, but apparently, being in my warm body for a few hours it had curdled and started the miraculous transformation from milk to cheese. I squished in around in my hand a bit more and let it squeeze through my fingers. When you think about it, the fact that I can make cheese is actually pretty darn neat.
My grandma used to warn me against drinking milk when I was sick. I don’t remember the exact reason why, something about it curdling inside and making me sicker, but now I know, don’t I? It’s so I don’t asphyxiate on my own vomit and die and end up humiliated on my tombstone forever:
Here Lies Lou;
Choked on Her Own Vomit, Poor Idiot Drank Milk When She Was Sick.
Posted by Lou on August 9, 2005 @ 11:03 pm | 18 Comments
Wednesday afternoon Maggie was rolling around the living room when her little forehead collided with the corner of the entertainment center. It was clear that she was going to have a decent sized bruise, but she didn’t cry for more than a few minutes, and even then, mostly because she was angry about our clumsy attempt to ice the little goose egg with a freezer pop. As sad as the little bruise was, I had to grit my teeth and accept that this was going to be the first of many. Newfound mobility brings with it all sorts of scars and superficial trauma and you just gotta deal. There were many times I looked at Jonas’ battered body and thought for sure someone was going to call CPS on me for beating the tar out of him. The thing is, I don’t need to beat him. He beats himself, but he is growing and healthy. So I didn’t dwell too much on Maggie’s first boo-boo.
Two hours later, while she was taking a long nap, I heard her start to sputter and choke and watched baby oatmeal shoot out of her little mouth and splatter over the length of the couch, projected in a way that only an infant can projectile vomit. Once she regained her breath, she began to scream, but was calmed very quickly. I worried that she had caught a virus, when almost immediately she snapped back to her usually cheerful self. A few minutes later she vomited again and I remembered that when people have a head injury and start vomiting a little bit later on it is usually because they have a concussion. And concussions, although usually not a big deal, can be accompanied with bleeding on the brain or full blown hemorrhaging*, which can be accompanied with death. I wrote a quick note for Chris, shoved Maggie into her car seat, dropped Jonas off at a friend’s house and drove to the ER.
I was not emotionally prepared to be taking Maggie to the ER. Jonas I had planned on taking in simply because he was such a daredevil. Even our doctor remarked once that she fully expected to see him in the cast clinic within six months. Had it been Jonas, I would have hardly been phased.
Our ER usually has a very, very long wait, but Maggie vomited shortly after we arrived and a man who was waiting picked up the phone to the triage nurse and said there was a baby out here who needed to be seen immediately. Amazingly, we were in triage in less than a minute. Maggie was acting completely normal, perky, and flirting with the nurses. She just had to stop being Little Miss Charming every few minutes to dry heave, then she would be right as rain again. After the doctor saw us he explained that since she was so little he didn’t want to give her a CT scan unless she really needed it because it involved a lot of x-rays, and a lot of x-rays can cause cancer. CANCER, people. Do not say the word cancer to someone in relation to her six month old. Just don’t. We decided to just “observe” her for awhile. I fed her to see if anything would stay down, which it didn’t. After about a half an hour of this the doctor decided a CT scan was probably a good idea. Great, I thought, she’s going to have bleeding on the brain and cancer now.
We walked into the scan room and I placed my tiny, sleeping baby onto the headrest of a massive machine. The technician gave me a forty pound lead vest to wear and turned the lights off. I had a weird flashback to a Mystery Science Theater episode. Surely, aliens would be arriving shortly. It was over quickly, and then we went to our room and found Chris there. We waited for the results together.
I really hate waiting. I had had a knot in my stomach since the minute Maggie started to vomit and it was just getting worse. Thinking that something could be wrong with your child is a really bad feeling. I was nervous and frightened. That doctor was taking a long time checking scan results he said would be ready shortly. The longer it took the more my thoughts spiraled out of control. What if there was bleeding on the brain? What if I should have brought her in hours ago, but was just too stupid to realize something was wrong? What if the reason things were taking so long was because there wasn’t any bleeding on the brain, but she had a brain tumor and was going to die and that was causing the unexplained puking? (Hey, the doctor is the one who got me thinking about cancer.) What if, what if, what if.
Finally, the doctor came back and said the scans were clear. His best guess about Maggie was a possible mild concussion. Since she was happy and hadn’t vomited for awhile, he let us go. We’d been there for five hours. I was emotionally exhausted from worry and starving because I hadn’t eaten since lunch, but I was fine, because Maggie was fine.
*Isn’t hemorrhage a freaky word? Bleeding is one thing. Bleeding you do when you get a paper cut, but HEMORRHAGE, that’s what happens in movies right before the heroine dies. “I’m sorry sir, your wife didn’t make it, she hemorrhaged after childbirth and we just couldn’t save her.” “Cause of death, massive internal hemorrhage.” Hemorrhage is just plain scary.
Posted by Lou on July 11, 2005 @ 2:38 am | 24 Comments
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