Join me as I accept my fate people. I am 3- 5 days out from a rip-roaring stomach virus incident. MAX.
How do I know this, you ask?
Because Monday afternoon, as I loaded Jr into his car seat after school he looked extra pooped out… he yawned a GINORMOUS yawn, and informed me his tummy hurt “all day.”
Two hours later I was in the thick of the battle zone of a tiny person’s barf, and fever, and lethargy, and all that is parenting a child with a stomach virus.
I had sent up the flares, battened down the hatches, busted out the Lysol and pedialyte and readied him and I for the coming darkness, and the long, LONG night it would bring.
I feel it is prudent to mention, at this juncture, that my only back up going into all of this was Binky the Wonder dog…. The Mr departed that morning on one of his VERY infrequent business trips, and my parents were deep in the heart of Texas with vague plans to return sometime midweek.
To be honest having The Mr out of the way was a blessing – at the slightest hint of sickness in the house, he drops into some sort of pre-emptive man-cold mode, wherein he spends copious amounts of time panicking about catching the illness and determines he should just start behaving as if it has already overtaken him. Not needed or welcome when I have an active barfer in the casa.
As for Binky? Well… he is good company, but he won’t crap in the yard which leaves me wheeling the tiny barfing human around the neighborhood bike paths in a wagon while begging him to “barf in the bag if you have to barf, buddy.” So yeah.
It was a typical stomach bug – quick and dirty, affording me many “opportunities” to do LOTS of loads of laundry at inopportune times.
As an unintended bonus, when The Mr’s parents arrive this weekend for their annual visit for Jr’s birthday, they will find a house that has been disinfected to the point that you could probably perform surgery on any surface of your choosing. There is not one damn thing I haven’t scrubbed, laundered, sprayed, or otherwise decontaminated at this point.
Jr’s recovery set in as quickly as the illness had – and by Tuesday afternoon he was climbing the walls and jamming along to “Sing” -which I had rented in an attempt to keep him occupied during a conference call. ( A plan that backfired when our internet and cable went down for a few hours in the middle of the day because the universe believes that I work best with a “challenge” evidently.)
But here’s the thing, and “primary parents” tell me if you don’t feel me here: I KNOW that shit is coming for me….
You can drink all the grape juice and diffuse all the frigging essential oils and partake in all the shameless bargaining prayer (No? Just me?) that you want to when these things hit your kids…
But you are UP. IN. IT.
You cannot tell me that your chances of ending up infected with that funk are not EXTRA HIGH when you are elbows deep in “the bucket” trying to clean it out from the last use when your kid walks up and yaks into it again (usually with the damn toilet RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE YOU ARE STANDING, WHY GOD WHY!?) Or when said adorable germ carrier snuggles down in bed for story time, then unleashes a solid minute long combo of sneezing/dry heaving/WTF else is that noise even IN YOUR FACE before falling dead asleep while you try to hold your breath and run out to create a Lysol smoke screen to kill that shit.
There is not enough Purell on the PLANET, friends. It’s a damn crap shoot at that point… it is cosmic forces…
I am in “the window.”
That period of days after the virus has departed your child where you wait to see if you too, will drop.
Where anything you eat has that moment of “will this burn coming back up if tonight is the night?” fear every time you make a meal selection.
Where hoping that if you choke on your water during that video conference, it won’t lead to a power barf into your brand new super cute home office trashcan while your coworkers watch.
Nothing can help me now, people…. Only time will tell my fate.
(How many of you reached for the Lysol just reading this? I know I would.)
Reluctantly Suburban 