Christmas Post-Mortem

Guess what we got for Christmas?! A round of vomiting and diarrhea for the whole family!

So on Thursday night, what with being tired and all from all of the festive preparations, we thought it might be a good idea to order in some Indian food. We were craving some nice butter chicken, some chicken tandoori, some basmati rice and peas, and mango kulfi for dessert. Siddhartha, the place we had a fun buffet lunch at one day last month delivered, and we tried to have a nice dinner, which was interrupted by a tired and poopy Josie. By eleven, I was feeling queasy, and by one thirty I had my head in the saucepan every half-hour. The horrible, heaving, barf-in-your-hair-that-comes-on-so-quickly-you're-reeling kind of puking left me so grateful that Josie was being awfully good about sleeping. All night and all morning I hurled, until my muscles ached and there was nothing but dry heaves left; interspersed with bouts of chills and sweats and lethargy. Steve, who barfs at the sight and sounds (which, by the way, were spectacular and should have been recorded for teenage party movie drunken scene soundtracks) of vomiting (like even cleaning up cat and dog barf!) was awesome about emptying my pots and rubbing my shoulders and bringing me cool wet washcloths. He didn't even know that he was generating good karma for when he'd begin his round in a few hours.

Yup, soon after my parents arrived around one o'clock (thankfully bringing ginger ale and crackers and stuff), Steve succumbed to the nausea he'd been experiencing (on top of the bad bottom end problem that wasn't that unusual for him, we did have spicy food after all) and began putting my barfing to shame with some truly magnificent expulsions of his own. He got hit twice as hard as me (the bigger they are, the harder they fall!); and just as I began feeling marginally better, Steve began his own period of muscle-wracking, head-spinning, toe-curling heaves that put mine to shame. My turn to generate good karma! Because...

Josephine started throwing up. And she'd had diarrhea a few times during the day on Thursday, but on Friday it was so foul it flowed out of her diaper down to her KNEES. And she developed a red, angry-looking diaper rash on contact from it. She was upset and screaming because she'd never thrown up before. So here I am on Christmas Eve, in barf and poo covered pajamas trying to bathe a baby while feeling a bit touchy myself and wondering if I shouldn't just call an ambulance to cart us all off to the hospital to let someone else deal with it. Because my parents are really, really not that helpful unless it means bringing loads of stuff from the store. Making chicken cutlets and watching the cooking channel? Lots of that. Diaper changing, bathroom cleaning and laundry? Not so much. The car was snowed, plowed and iced in, and I don't allow my father to drive us anywhere. So here we were, trapped in our own fetid and toxic hell with no idea how much worse this was going to get.

So I called this wonderful service, Telehealth Ontario. It's a toll-free line with Registered Nurses who take a history and give medical advice 24/7, in order to help you determine whether a situation requires a trip to the Emergency room. Their recommendation really helped - for Steve to stop taking fluids for a few hours to "dry up", and for me to nurse Josie more frequently and give Pedialyte and to bathe her with baking soda and other things. Altogether, it worked and we were able to make it to the family dinner yesterday. We were wise to cancel our Christmas Eve shindig with our friends, because we didn’t anticipate that it would get as bad as it did. Josie's much better, and Steve and I are still a little off, but much recovered.

His family get-together was as usual - loud and fun and full of embarrassing stories that are fondly re-counted. Josie was a little freaked-out, but I worked hard to make her comfortable. My parents took some managing. Steve and I suspect they don't really like sharing Josie with others, and my mom had a snit when I yelled NO really loud after she tried to give Josephine a bite of cream puff. Yes, you got that. AFTER BEING SICK FOR TWO DAYS, MY MOTHER DOESN'T THING THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH FEEDING MY DAUGHTER CREAM PUFFS! That meant we had to leave, because the puss on my mother was putting a real damper on the party. Perhaps I was too vocal, but her comment afterward that "this is what I have to put up with after everything I do for you" made me feel justified. I'd give back every single thing if if meant I was selling my daughter for a bite of cream puff.

So to end the saga, my dad woke up sick in the middle of the night, and I suspect from my mom's conversation with me this morning that she's coming down with it too - either that or she's still really mad at me, despite the fact that I did apologize for my tone immediately after the ride home. They're over in the hotel room right now, and I've offered to come over with whatever they need; but they say they're okay for now. We're trying to reclaim our home from the piles of paper and packaging and plastic mayhem. The irony was that my mother and I had already had a discussion...no I mean disagreement on the fact that you really shouldn't bake sweet potatoes three days before you're going to cook them for Christmas Day dinner. Because you can get sick from botulism or something. So she begrudgingly didn't bring them, and of course, the person who pays the most attention to food safety handling rules gets hit hard by something microscopic, and it turns out to be the gift that keeps on giving. Steve and I had figured out that my parents are already seething with toxins and couldn't possibly be affected by anything after years of thawing raw turkey on the top shelf of the fridge, letting the paper towels underneath it form topographical maps of thd dripping blood and fluid flow. And the sausages leaving outlines in the congealing grease in pans on the stove,or the cut up fruit with a dry skin on it, or the tomato with furry cracks in the fruit basket probably contained the fountain of youth and that's why they've survived what would kill a mere mortal. But, having witnessed my dad's skid marks on the hotel sheets yesterday, I realize they don't deserve this any more than we did. However, I resent the fact that she's insinuated it's our fault they got sick and now they're out of commission longer than we were because they're older and unhealthier to begin with. Hey! We thought it was just food poisoning!

Love Thy Neighbour

I love my neighbours, really I do. They are generous and friendly and pretend they don't think we're trashy and they buy things for Josephine. On both sides, we couldn't ask for better and could do a lot worse so we are grateful. But the ones at 47 are perpetual renovators. They have all the time in the world, lots of money, nice taste, are perfectionists, and have been fixing up things for the ENTIRE THREE YEARS WE HAVE LIVED HERE. All summer long, it was renovating a new kitchen in the back (we didn't use our back yard all summer!) Yesterday was the beginning of a new project, one I didn't have any forewarning about. Apparently, the concrete slab front porch just doesn't go with the interlocking walkway they installed, so they must cover it up with some kind of giant granite or flagstone or some kind of expensive looking pavers that must be cut to fit. Hundreds and hundreds of cuts, roughly every seven minutes, lasting from ten until six yesterday and from eight-thirty until who knows when today. So a concrete wet-saw has been shrieking in the front of the house for all this time, and guess what? NOBODY CAN NAP AROUND HERE AND SO WE ARE REALLY REALLY BITCHY AND CRANKY. Guess who's which. Oh, and the dog is really irritated too - she needs her naps more than we do. At one point, I even freaked out when Josephine's bath was running because I thought the reason we had no hot water or pressure was because they were using our outside tap for water for the saw! I even went outside in my socks for a minute while Josie was in her high chair to check! At any rate, it's just after two-thirty and they are quitting for a bit. They are sitting on my front garden rails right now smoking and eating and drinking and looking resentful for some reason. So Josephine is sleeping on my lap right now FINALLY and all I can hear is my favourite sound - tap tap tap (which is the sound of me talking without using my mouth!). That's why I'm not going to the mommies meeting.

P.S. I will admit that I am an idiot because I accused them of affecting our water supply. I forgot I was doing laundry! The steam rising from the dryer clued me in on the way back into the house.

Pop Goes the Weasel

Her mission lately is to attempt climbing up on every piece of furniture. She crawls along shrieking with glee and anticipation, and then very studiously and with lots of grunting, pulls herself up on something, and then looks over to me with this great smile. Then she crawls back for a hug, and then off to the next piece of furniture. All day long this little round head pops up all around the living room as she finds more and more things she has conquered.

As I said...

I did say, I believe I deserve everything I get. This is probably divine retribution for being too slow to update my blog or letting Josephine play with things like the faux Hawiian grass skirt while I do.

Which brings us to my latest "I do idiotic things to myself" story. The other night, Steve was taking care of Josie so I could have a shower. I, myself, was having a bit of a yeasty infection in my belly button. It was red and stinky and irritated. GROSS, I KNOW. But my belly button has always been a deep one - like first knuckle on the index finger deep. It never popped when I was pregnant with Josie - I had a belly button until the minute she was born! And now, with the extra weight, I don't even want to probe the depths, it's so deep. Nobody should have to. Steve had given Josie her bath, and was putting her pajamas on so that when I finished she and I could go to bed. He mentioned that he really needed to have a poo (in other terms, of course. Like saying, "I have to have a sit down. Soon."). So I tried to hurry a bit, being conscious of what that's like (where do they go when you don't release them when they ask, I wonder?)! In the shower, I used my Neutrogena Deep Clean Pore Cleanser (somehow thinking big hole = big pore!) and it BURNED! It burned like hellfire. It made me wonder what bad things I had done to deserve such an unexpected pain when I was trying to be nice to my button! So I ended up taking extra long in the shower trying to rinse it out. I used the cap from the shampoo bottle. I used one of Josephine's rubber duckies that can soak up water and then squirt it. I used a washcloth, I tried to get horizontal so the shower would rinse it. I plugged the tub and ran fresh water and tried to belly flop into it. All the while, I'm aware that it's becoming really uncomfortable for Steve out there, so I'm trying to hurry for his sake but really needing to have my belly button feel better! So I hop out, and think, I'll use my facial toner to rinse it. Great! And then I used a cotton pad to add more fluid that BURNED MORE my already burning belly button! And so I'm hopping around the bathroom naked trying to splash water into my stinging red belly button while Steve is hopping around the other side of the door with a turtlehead; neither of us capable of giving our full attention to Josephine due to our pressing problems! Finally, I figured out that a dab of Josephine's zinc based diaper cream would be cool and soothing, and it was; so we were all able to proceed with the rest of our evening -- but it was scary for a while there! Now, this is not unlike the scourging myself with vinegar incident, but close to it. And the button has healed nicely, thanks to the diaper rash ointment and a new commitment to drying myself more thoroughly as a means to preventing similar problems in the future.

Take care of and enjoy your parts ladies. Being a mom means that parts of you can end up hurting that you never thought would hurt, either by the forces of nature or your own stupidity. Furthermore, poo whenever you can, because you can.

Enough of the unsavoury talk.