Stomach-Flu-Of-the-Month Club

I'm trying to remember - did one of my friends send me a Stomach-Flu-of-the-Month Club membership for Christmas? If anyone did, it's working. We're dealing with the March selection currently; it is leisurely making its way through all the members of this household. It's fun taking turns sleeping with the dishpan - I'm sure that, as grownups, all my children will look back fondly on this little family tradition of ours. I was stricken late, late Thursday night (around the same time Rachel started throwing up); and would you believe Larry tried to sneak off to work on Friday morning? "Just for an hour," he begged. Yeah, right - do I look stupid? Don't answer that. Obviously, I'm not stupid or I wouldn't have hidden his car keys between bouts of retching. He got me back by managing to fall ill last night just as the baby started vomiting. She was not very happy about it, let me tell you. And neither was I.

I'm not sure why anyone reads this stuff - it's sickening.

Oh, and the virus started with Anna - not that I think she did it on purpose or anything, but she does hate us. She tells me so, repeatedly. Ad nauseum, in fact. See?

I'm tired, or I wouldn't find that so funny. Anyway, just because Larry was in bed all day with the flu, he thinks he shouldn't have to paint the kitchen cabinets tonight as he had promised. I was going to paint them myself and surprise him, but he doesn't like those sort of surprises. Plus, we seem to be in the middle of winter here again and it's too cold to open the windows; so I'm worried I'll kill everyone with paint fumes. The result being, I'm going to wake up tomorrow to the same grungy-looking woodwork in the kitchen. At this rate, we'll be able to sell our house in, oh, 2012. Maybe.

And how about that snow, huh? Wasn't it fun getting out all the shovels and the snowboots and the snowpants again, after washing them and hanging them up in the back of the closet for next year? I had a blast. Really. And now we get another week of mud. That's great, just great. I need to wash the foyer floor every day - that's what I'm here for, isn't it?

You know, I think the tedium (tedia?) of housework is getting to me. I need to shake things up a bit. Maybe I will go paint those cabinets tonight, just for kicks. Who needs sleep? Not me.

The Economics of Teeth

All right - I've been brought to task by certain people on this list numerous times for the fact that our tooth fairy seems to be paying below market rate for our children's teeth. A quarter a tooth, to be precise. It seems that my critics are right - the Wall Street Journal reports that the average pay-per-tooth is $2.64. Of course, that includes the show-offs who pay $10 for each tooth. $10! If we did that, we could never convince our kids to go outside and shovel the neighbors' walks. They'd just sit in the house all day, yanking out their teeth. What's the world coming to, anyway? When I was a kid, I had to work to get $10. This is ridiculous.

I spent this evening playing Bunco with a group of my neighbors . Now, Bunco is neither fascinating nor challenging; but it beats the heck out of sitting home and watching Larry futilely trying to figure out how to afford a bigger house. It's pitiful, watching a grown man cry like that. He gets the spreadsheets wet, too. So I went out and enjoyed gambling my 5 dollars away (for those of you keeping track, that's the equivalent of 20 baby teeth). Would you believe that one pregnant woman there was playing for diaper money? Talk about the seamy underside of suburban life. Frightening, I tell you.

I should catch everyone up on what the children have been doing; but, truth to tell, I'm sick of thinking about kids. And you're probably sick of hearing about them. Let's just pretend they're not here right now. That's right - no one whining, no one throwing adolescent-sized tantrums, no one crying at the dinner table because their meat touched their potatoes. I think we all need our little fantasies now and then, don't you?

I bought the book "Best of Bombeck" (Erma, that is) from the library for a dollar (I know, 4 baby teeth). Having thought she was funny when I was a mere lass of 11 or 12, I figured she'd seem even more humorous now that I am, essentially, living her life. But unfortunately the book was too, um, accurate to be funny. I realized, with great dismay, that she had already documented my entire existence, right down to the alienated teenager and the lousy family car trips and the dead mice in the walls of our house. Is there no hope then? Is this my fate?

I don't think I should be finding Erma Bombeck's writings to be this meaningful. I have to figure out a way to broaden my horizons a bit - you know, enough that I don't feel that I'm channeling Erma each and every day of my life. Maybe I need to go back to school or something. I could study something enlightening (or at least marketable).

Come to think of it, the last 2 times I sent away for graduate school catalogs, I ended up pregnant. So perhaps that isn't such a good idea either. Oh, well.

Time to sign off - Larry wants to run those numbers again.