5.01.2006
Look Away! Look Away!!
Picture this (or don't, actually, I'm really not sure anyone really wants this in their head):
I had a headache all night. Not a migraine, just a bad tension headache, but my stomach was queasy. The stomach upset is not new, I've been having bouts of queasyness off and on for weeks now. But still, add that to a headache. Then add in an 8 month old who has eschewed sleep. No sleep for her. No siree bob.
Sleep is for wussies.
Kristin had been doing the night shift all night while I slept downstairs with ice-packs trying to get that headache to ease off (I discovered that we were out of tylenol and my stomach was too upset to take anything else). But at 3 AM I decided that it was going to be as good as it could be under the circumstances and that I needed to give Kristin a break. I went upstairs. There was our jabbering mackaw. Jabbering away. In the dark. Clean diaper, not hungry. I took a drink of water, and that was a bad idea. My head throbbed, my stomach started churning. Kristin passed ofd Julia and went to collapse in the bed. I took Julia downstairs to the guestroom so that Kristin could get some sleep.
I'm bouncing and rocking the mackaw on a big yoga ball in the rec room downstairs. My stomach is churning and churning and churning, my mouth is salivating. I will not throw-up. I will not throw-up. I will not throw-up. I will not throw-up. I. Will. Not. Throw. Up. IWILLNOTTHROWUP.
I stop with the bouncing and the rocking. The jabbering mackaw pokes me in the eye. My head throbs viciously. I put her binkie in her mouth, she spits it out. I put it back in. She spits it back out. I go to put it in, she bats my hand away. My head is being squeezed by four mac trucks and a water buffalo.
I. Will. Not. Throw. Up.
Suddenly, there is another need. A need from the other end. An explosive need, if you must know. A need that cannot be denied.
I give up with the whole try-to-get-the-jabbering-mackaw-to-close-its-eyes-and-sleep-already thing and place it (quickly! but gently!) on the floor and throw a couple toys down. Though still, the only light is coming from the light over the stairs (I WILL NOT turn the lights on at 3:30 AM), the jabbering mackaw is triumphant in her success at making me understand that it's playtime. I (quickly! not gently!) open the bathroom door (right next to where she is sitting) and climb the 2 stairs to the toilet (yes, we have a real throne down there) just in time.
However.
However in the mad dash to the toilet and the attendance of the other pressing need, my concentration over the primary end was disrupted. And no sooner than I had rendered the toilet bowl the last place I would want to put my face, but it became apparent that I was, indeed, going to throw up. The walk-in shower was just to my right. I turned, and the force from that first bout was enough that it spanned the 2 foot space between my mouth and the sunken shower floor. Between the first bout of retching and the second I stood up; during the second I clumbsily wiped and flung the t.p. in the general direction of the bowl (luckily it made it). I flushed in the space between the second bout and the third and listened to the jabbering from the next room to make sure that the horrible sounds coming from the bathroom had not scarred my offspring for life. During the fourth and remaining bouts of retching I was able to luxuriate in the fact that there was nothing dribbling down my leg, my child was playing and happy, and no untoward bodily fluids were going anywhere I couldn't just rinse away.
The solid contents of the shower floor (I will spare you the knowlege of what they were precisely) looked exactly as they had when I ate them 8 hours earlier. And when I tried to use the detachable shower head to wash them down the drain, they refused to dissolve further, and just sat there, on the strainer, smelling at me. So I had to grab toilet paper and pick them up from the shower floor, and put them in the toilet and flush. And then the toilet clogged. So I had to plunge it. And those items swirled around and around the bowl until I finally got the pipe clear and they exited my home. Needless to say, I won't be able to eat that item again for quite some time.
And then I washed my hands, and then used my hands to cup some water to my mouth to rinse. Then I brushed my teeth, retched into the sink, retrieved my pajamas, picked up the jabbering mackaw and her toys and moved them all to the guest bed where I curled up on my side and willed the herde of Wildebeest to stop stampedeing through my poor cranium and the carpe to stop swimming summersaults in my stomach. It is now 4 AM. The jabbering mackaw is having a grand ole time playing with her toys in the dark. The dogs are capering in the rec room trying to get me to break yet more rules and let them out before 6 AM (they bark at bug, leaves, and wind, so we try not to let them out between 10 PM and 6 AM for the sake of our neighbors). I give myself another half hour to recover. At 4:30 I take the monkey upstairs, give in to the dogs and let them out, and put the mackaw in her swing. I pop her binkie in her mouth, she spits it back out. I pop it back in. She spits it back out. I go to put it in again, she bats my hand away. I put the binkie away and start her swing up and collapse on the couch next to it. She jabbers at me for another 20 minutes and then, bored with my non-response, falls asleep around 5 AM.
Kristin wakes me up at 6:30 to get ready for work. I clasp my hands to the Wild Mustang Stag party still raging in my head and slip back into a comatose-like state. At 7 AM I drag myself off the couch and into the shower. I eat some soda crackers, get dressed, apply the mascara I bought yesterday, stagger downstairs to turn off the alarm clock that has been going off in the guest room for the past hour and a half, stagger back upstairs, throw an apple and a can of chicken soup into my purse for lunch (I'm a positivist, I am!) receive the jabbering mackaw in her carseat and the cutest outfit possible and head out the door 35 minutes late. I drop Julia off at A's and receive a mini-lecture on how babies who don't sleep are missing valuable brain-building time and how if she doesn't sleep well now she'll never sleep well, feel like retching again but can't tell if it's the stomach thing or a reaction to A's oh so helpful advice. Drove to work instead of taking the train and made it to work only 15 minutes late.
If I don't get to the "What Were We Thinking? Weekly Update today (it was a major one), look for it tomorrow. We had an action-packed weekend.
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oh dear, not good! I can't believe you made it to work after all of that.
Yuck, gross! Poor you -- I hope you are feeling better by now.
awwwww. hope you are feeling better. sounds like a being sick nightmare!
I still think you're hot, but that's because I'm somehow expunged everything I've just read out of my mind.
Sorry, sweetie! Yuck, that sounds miserable. At least Julia is willing to play with her toys in the dark....
Oh gods, that was really miserable. But damn, it's well-written misery.
My partner was sick Sunday night with a migraine & nausea too. But she wasn't quite as sick, nor did she have a child to contend with. And managed to sleep. Hope you got to catch up.
We were simultaneously barfing! How sweet...sort of...