The shitter is full Clark!
Watching TV late one Sunday night my
daughter comes downstairs and into the den. She points to her tummy and says,
“mommy my tummy hurts right here!”
Figuring it was an attempt to stay up and read I told her to just go get
into my bed and when I came to bed I would move her back to her room. Satisfied because sleeping in mommy and
daddy’s bed is always a win, she scampered off to my bed. Approximately 30 minutes later I went
into the kitchen for some water. I
leaned over to the left to look around the refrigerator because I could see
into my room and I wanted to check on her without bothering her.
I heard her cough.
Now, as a mommy you KNOW to well the sounds your child makes
in the night and you know the distinction between all of them. Enter the part
where I kind of wish I could sleep like the daddy sleeps. You know, that kind of sleep where a
bomb could go off next to his head and he would never be the wiser? I swear the hate I feel towards my
husband because of how hard he sleeps is purely unnatural. I could change the sheets around him
and redecorate the entire room with him sleeping and he would have no clue
until morning. Not the most
comforting of feelings but as his wife this is just one of the crosses I bear. J
So this cough did not sound like a normal
cough. It sounding like a holy
shit she is holding something down cough.
I walked to the bedroom and floundering for the light on the wall while my
eyes were also adjusting, I could see that she was sitting up. Right before I found the light she
said, mommy I think I am going to, so I moved to the light by the bed and as I
touched it she puked, Linda Blair style.
Trying faster to turn the light on she puked again, and again. At this point I only needed to turn the
light on so I could see where NOT to walk when I moved her to the
bathroom. When I did turn the
light on, OH MY DAMN! Poor little
thing looked like a human blueberry pie sitting in the middle of my bed! Why is it that every time my house gets
sick, the adults have had something with meat sauce and the children have
overdosed on blueberries?!?!?!?!
This child, my girl child does nothing that is just sufficient, she is
the mistress of all she surveys.
When she does something it is 110%. Poor thing had thrown up all over herself, the sheets (white
sheets) the down comforter (white comforter) and the duvet folded at the foot
of the bed. (White with red flowers that now had a bit of a patriotic look to
it). She hit the nightstand, the
lamp, the side of the bed, the wall beside the bed, my favorite rug on the
floor and she had covered me from lip to knees. The look on her face was a cross between
motherfuckingsonofabitch and mommy please make it stop! I picked her up and carried her to the
bathroom while screaming my husbands name at the top of my lungs. Even though he sleeps like a daddy,
when he is awake and I scream like a crazed Indian he hears like a mommy.
He came flying in, quickly assessed the situation and started cleaning
it up. I was in the bathroom with
the girl child reenacting scenes from the Exorcist but with blueberries. Daddy got the bed changed and the room
all clean just in time for round 2.
Another set of 1000 thread count sheets bites the dust. This is pretty much how the rest of the
night went. We washed load upon
load of bedding, sheets and towels.
She was sick a few times the next day but seemed to have the worst of it
out of her and rested somewhat peacefully. I as the nurse maid and mommy did not sleep AT ALL. Also as a mommy I would not have it any
other way for reasons all mommies know without explanation. The next morning my husband came in,
looked at me and asked the words equivalent to him taking the bullet for the
day. I told him no, go to work I
got this and it will all pass soon.
The look that went between us next was one much like the scene in
Indiana Jones when the bridge was about to be cut down and the kid said, “hold
on lady, we goin for a ride!!!”
The feeling we both had was like being at the top of a roller coaster
you were scared shitless to get on anyway and knowing you were about to plunge
down the drop and there was nothing you could do to reverse it. You had to just ride it out. See, in our family the girl child is
the bulletproof one. We can all be
sick with the plague of biblical proportions, locusts and frogs flying about
and ALL and she will breeze through unscathed and never suffer the first
symptom. We can be puking our
heads off and she is just eyeballing us with disdain, pondering the joys of
living with another family, one that actually has good intestinal fortitude. Her being the first one to go down is a
game changer. It means the rest of
us are screwed and it is just a matter of time! Yep we were officially in the eye of the hurricane.
Before
The Storm
Monday was hell. Tuesday was better with some symptoms (but no real
sleep yet for the mommy) and the girl decided she felt well enough to go to
school on Wednesday. We all woke
up Wednesday morning and were easing through the morning rituals as
normal. Just then the boy comes up
to me and says, “mommy my tummy hurts right here.” My husband looked at me but this time offered no bullet
taking words. I almost started to
cry out of shear exhaustion! I
quickly put him in my bed and started preparing the house for the next
onslaught of pukefest 2013! I knew
I had about a half an hour before all hell broke loose. The range of emotion was off the
charts. I was tired, happy the
girl felt better, irritated that having a uterus meant I had to be the one to
take care of all this, worried about the boy getting sick, wondering when it was going to hit me, feverishly making
sure all the sheets and towels were clean because God knows I was going to need
them and checking the pantry for supplies that would ultimately not matter
anyway because none of them stayed down!
5 minutes before 8am, my husband left for
work and at 2 minutes after
8am the boy started puking. It was
much the same as his sister did for about 3 hours and then HE raised the
bar. Sweet Mary Mother of God he raised the bar and I helped. I changed the first set of
sheets and settled in beside him.
I was tired and feeling weak from lack of sleep and he seemed like he may have a break in
the action so maybe we could both rest.
WRONG. He sat up in the bed
and in a tired and sickly voice said, MOMMYYY it is coming and I don’t think I
am going to be able to trust my farts anymore.” I was SO shocked that this, coming from a 7 year old did not even
make me giggle. I got up, scooped him up and headed for the bathroom. Half way there he started exploding and I mean EXPLODING
from both ends of his body. He
threw up and it looked like a fountain…tasted like stomach acid (for any who
were wondering if it hit me in the face) and what came out of the business end
of this kid was thick, hot and smelled like major sickness and was all over him
and running down my arms and legs.
I mean that shit did not even smell normal. What could be IN this beautiful child causing THAT??? The rest of what happened that day was none other than
epic!
Holding a child in my arms spewing nastiness
out of both ends of his body and quickly trying to make it to the bathroom to
clean both of us up, I slip up in the slimy mess and fall with him. Not a good moment as a mommy let me
tell you. I finally get there and
sit down on the edge of the tub with him in my arms. I lean over to turn on the water so I can clean him/us up
and when I do…. NO WATER!!! It
spits and sputters like a smoker with bronchitis and then there was dead
silence. Screaming, YOU HAVE GOT
TO BE FRICKIN KIDDING ME???? I set
him down on the toilet. He poops
and throws up all over himself (and the bathroom) while I try to figure out
what is wrong. I know my bills are
paid so let me go call the water company and figure out what the hell is going on.
I do so and am immediately given the particulars of a water main break
in my area with a 6-hour window of when it will be fixed!! OMG you are kidding me. Feeling flush I sit on the edge of the
bed and as I am looking around the war zone I realize…oh holy hell, mommies
tummy doesn’t feel so good right hererererererere! I make a mad dash to the bathroom and proceed to destroy the
tub because the boy is still sitting on the toilet!
LAVA!!!
Yep you guessed it! It is
coming out of both ends now and the only way I can accommodate this level of hell is by getting into the tub! The pain was unbelievable and I was pretty sure my ass was on fire!!! I look
over at my son still sitting on the toilet with his head in his hands, now I
start to laugh, HARD! Through
tears he asks me what I am laughing about because clearly this shit is no
laughing matter. I tell him that
sometimes the kind of luck we have just makes me laugh and that no one is going
to believe this is actually happening to us. He, 7 years old, through tears, shitting and puking his
little brains out says, well knock it off MOMMY because it IS happening and it IS NOT
funny. I agree and continue on with the episodes until
there is a break in which I can get up and get some towels. I flush the toilet but have nothing to
clean him up with. What the HELL
am I going to do??? I start smuggling towels out of the closet like a Colombian drug lord! I grab a towel
and run upstairs to the other bathroom.
I was going to put the towel into the tank of the toilet and suck up as
much of that water as I could.
Nice try home fly because all the jostling around made me sick and I
destroyed that toilet twice and used up all the water in the tank to get rid of
it!
When I was able to move I crawled downstairs to
remove my son from the toilet. I wiped him down as best I could and placed him in bed and laid down beside him for a little bit. My sweet mom was texting because she
was worried and felt terrible that she was in another city while I was home
dealing with this. She got sick of
texting so she called. When she
heard my voice she began to cry and said, oh honey please throw that baby in
the car and come here so I can help you.
I did not even have the energy to lift my head and she was asking me to
move him, clean us up with no water and drive for 1 hour and 45
minutes?!?!?!? The only thing I
could muster to say that would let her know how dire the situation was that I
was in was, “Mother, how do you want me to drive...FOR GOD SAKE, WE ARE NOT WEARING PANTS!!!!!!” She quietly said, “oh” and that pretty
much summed it up!! We spent the
next hour racing each other to the bathroom turned Turkish prison. Think escape tunnel used by Andy
Dufresne in The shawshank Redemption!
When you crash landed into this bathroom IF all you had to do was shit,
the appearance and the shear volume of puke and excrement combined with the
smell would drive you to puking! Turrible just turrible!! Let me just tell you that the
competitive edge I developed due to having to race my son to the shitter for
part of an afternoon and losing to him still haunts me today. But worse, what also haunts me is that
the images he saw what he considers to be his perfect mother doing that day,
will cause him to need extensive therapy at some point in his life when the
flashbacks arrive!
This bullshit continued for a couple of
hours and in the process I threw away no less than 15 towels, 3 sets of sheets
and boiled down the only two bags of ice I had just to have enough water to
clean up self and child (and that clean up job would win me a visit from social services for sure). At this point we
were lying on beach towels draped over plastic mattress covers. No energy, keeping nothing in and every
toilet in the house was full and gross, every trash can was full and I was
saving 5 towels just in case we got sick again or so we would have something to
clean up with if the fucking water ever came back on. I am not kidding at all when I say that the sick bay section
of my house would have given a Turkish prison a run for its money.
At exactly 4pm I went into the bathroom and
prayed as I turned on the faucet. The
water came on it actually came on!!!
I cleaned the tub and then scooped up my son and took a shower with him
so that we could both be clean..Best shower EVER!!! After putting him back to bed, it took me 30 minutes to
clean the bathroom from top to bottom.
It took me equally as long to clean the bedroom and in an additional 15
minutes we had clean sheets. I am
pretty sure that I ruined all my taste buds and the possibility to ever smell
properly because I used two bottles of Clorox. I think I also rid myself of fingerprints but who the hell cares,
at least the house smelled like something other than shit and puke. I crawled back into bed with my son and
fell immediately to sleep. We were
so sick and there was so much going on that I didn’t even think to call my
husband for help for several hours.
When I did think of calling for help I decided against it because I knew
if I called him he would rush home and that would put him at risk of getting
sick also and dammit I needed him to take care of me tonight. He also runs the risk of infecting a ton of people that also have kids given his job..so I left him alone. No sleep since Sunday night at 11:30,
no food or drink and I was worn OUT.
I did not need another wounded soldier on my hands. Not to mention that I DID NOT want him
to see what the house looked like because Jesus Mary and Joseph it was
something I have never seen in a movie!
He got home shortly after 6pm and brought us
a coke then kissed me on the forehead, closed the door and left us alone. I had posted a bit onto Facebook in the
beginning of this debacle but then had only communicated with my mother via
text and phone. He read Facebook
and then called my mother who filled him in of all the happenings. He came in and with tears in his eyes
said, “OH MY GOD, I had no idea what you were going through…why didn’t you call
me honey I could have at least brought you some damn water????” I leaned up and looked at him and
whispered, “I needed you well and wanted to spare you the disgusting way this
house looked…trust me if you don't get this, you will thank me.” He shook his head and left the room.
We woke up the next morning with high fevers and stayed in
bed all day and night. By Friday
we were able to eat toast and realized that not only would we live, we
actually wanted to. My daughter
was well, my husband never got sick and my son and I still shiver and shake
when we talk about that day.
So now when my friends talk tongue in cheek about winning
the mommy of the year award I just think to myself, look bitches here is what
it takes to win that prestigious award.
Puke on yourself, puke on your sons head, puke in the tub, shit in the tub,
shit in the bed. Shit in the floor getting out of bed on the way to the tub. Race your
son to the bathroom because neither of you can trust a fart, shit in the floor,
slip and fall in the shit and still lose to your 7 year old son. Wipe your face with the same towel you
have wiped your ass with. Do the
same to your son. Crawl on your hands and knees cleaning up after your son who
not only has watched YOU his mother do all the things listed above but done
them himself and with more grace than YOU his mother did. Live without water for 5 hours during
the stomach virus of all viruses. When you can say you have
done all this then you can say you have won the mommy of the year award. Until then, quit fucking whining cause
I shored that sucker up in one week!
