As The Food Turns

But first, some non-food news (well, sort of...)...

This news story is making me rethink everything I thought I knew about the blogosphere. I mean, knitting bloggers all seem so nice (so long as you don't threaten their stash). If you can't trust a knitting blogger, who can you trust? And if you peruse those published blog posts of the accused, they all seem fairly standard, don't they? Will we all start wondering who else amongst us might be a wolf in sheep's clothing? (Well, a wolf knitting from sheep's clothing, anyway...)

And doesn't this incident mean that all of us knitting bloggers should refrain from joking about how we steal from the family food budget in order to add to our yarn stashes? I wouldn't want the FBI showing up at my door, waving some printouts of this blog and demanding to see my teenage daughter. It just might upset Larry. Run-ins with the law do that to him, you know.

Speaking of knitting bloggers (at least, those of us who are law-abiding), I can only assume that we are all of the same mind about this news item. 150,000 dollars on clothes? I could have made do on half that and then spent the rest on some good sock yarn. And a decent set of circular needles. And a few knitting books....

It's all about spending priorities, isn't it? Judging from hers, I'm betting we can't count on a Vice President Palin to support yarn subsidies for knitters. I wonder, is there a knitter on the Democratic ticket? Does anyone even care about the knitting vote?


And now back to our regularly scheduled feature -

1. Sauerkraut (again!) - it migrated back into the refrigerator while I was still trying to decide whether or not to toss it.
2. 2 Gladware containers of mashed potatoes
3. 1 Gladware container of some kidney bean concoction - it was slated for the freezer, but someone shoved it into the back of the fridge instead.
4. Our scrambled eggs from last week - I told you so.
5. A CorningWare pot half full (or half empty, depending upon your outlook) of homemade chicken noodle soup. My kids like the canned stuff better. What can I say? They're sodium junkies.
6. And in the back is some leftover Amigo Chicken Tortilla Soup from SavingDinner. This tasted pretty good; but then Anna decided that it smelled like the sausage chowder she had thrown up 2 years ago, and now no one wants to eat it. Including y'all, I suppose...
   

I must say, it is a wonder how I am able to work the subject of vomit into almost any post. I do pride myself on it.

Taking Care Of Business...

Maraiya commented yesterday only to ask if I have thrown up yet. Sorry to disappoint all you vomit voyeurs out there, but it seems Brian's puking episode on the 4th stemmed from simple overconsumption of holiday goodies. Nothing contagious, thank goodness.

I don't think I'll be eating cherry pie any time soon, however. Yuck.

Oh, and today Holly, over at June Cleaver Nirvana, gave me an award for making vomit "the new black." Boy, I wish I had thought of that line. I don't really understand the award itself - it's called Arte y Pico, which I think is some sort of salsa. I can't wait to try it.

It seems that there is yet another stumbling block to my being anointed the Imperfect Blogger of the Month. Here I was keeping an eye on Sue , while all the while MadMad has pulled even with me in the voting; and she hasn't been abasing herself by begging her readers for votes, even. I had assumed that her post, although laugh-inducing (as is everything she writes), was way too knitting-oriented to tickle the average non-knitting parent's funny bone. Apparently, I was wrong.

Hey! Maybe it was you all who voted for her. Now I don't know whether to urge the stragglers to get on over there and vote (every day until the 11th!) or not.

Hoist by my own petard, I am...

[All you homeschoolers out there, The Daily Planet is hosting a carnival of delicious homeschooling posts right now - head on over and get the scoop!]

May The Funniest Post Win...

I have been nominated as the "Imperfect Blogger of the Week" for the last week of June. Imagine that - just because I couldn't recognize my own child at the pool. I was sort of excited, at first, because every month they have readers vote for the most Imperfect Blogger of the Week and I figured that no one could beat a story like mine. That is, until I saw that this post of Sue's had also been nominated in June.

So, I was going to beg everyone to go over and vote for me (hurry!), because I think there might be a real prize available; but now I'm just going to have to tell y'all to head on over there and vote your funny bone. That's the only honest thing I can do when I am up against the blogger who makes me laugh every single time she posts. And she's had a rough 6 months. And she's in the middle of moving again. Plus, hers was pretty funny. Damn.

I hope everyone had a glorious (and wormless) Fourth!

[Edited to add: I was about to click "Publish Post" on this item when Theo informed me that Brian had just thrown up. On the top bunk. You know, this gets old. And, mind you, this happened in his new room. Maybe this is how he marks his territory? Unfortunately, this means I will now have 2 bedrooms that stink of puke forever.]

Tempting Fate and Predator Encounters

Today Larry took the kids to the summer festival one town over, just like we do every year. Except when we don't. Looks like we missed - oops! - 2 whole years, even though it is only 10 minutes away. 10 minutes!

Larry decided it would be most efficient to take the kids there right after the pancake breakfast at church. Because we parents of large families are all about convenience and efficiency.

"Um, you're going to let them go on rides with their stomachs full of scrambled eggs?" I said.

"Hey, it's not every Pancake Sunday they can throw up only 10 minutes from home," Larry answered. " Last time, we traveled a whole hour, remember?"

[Note to new-ish readers: you must click on that link - it's worth it]

"So, you're going to take them straight from the Pancake Breakfast to rides that spin them in circles..."

"Yes! Exactly! They can ride those bears that twirl around..."

"The Barfing Bears?"

"Yes!"

"And the merry-go-puke?"

"Right! And don't forget - the Tilt-a-Hurl!"

We just crack ourselves up.

I am happy to report, however, that everyone returned from the fair with their breakfasts intact. Larry bought them snow cones and lollipops, too. Anyone wonder why he is the favorite parent? Rachel was disappointed that she wasn't allowed on the bumper cars, but we thought it best not to let her test her driving capabilities.

Oh - and then, after that, while walking to a nearby shopping center for a lunch date, Larry and I saw an honest-to-goodness coyote. First Larry insisted it was a dog, then he suggested a fox; I think he just didn't want to admit I was right, because I yelled "Coyote!" before he did. He can be sorta competitive that way.

You know how they say to make yourself look large and threatening if you run into one of these creatures? Well, you can't do that when you are under 5 feet tall. So I cowered behind Larry and exhorted him to "Look taller!" while the creature stared at us and wouldn't move. It finally decided that Larry wasn't going to abandon his lower-on-the-food-chain wife and slunk away, in a very coyote-like fashion.

But it looked really hungry...

Sigh

I'd be snoozing right now; but the sound of a toddler barfing right next to me hath murdered sleep. I'm fussy that way, not being able to relax while lying there and waiting for Round 2. We could have put Susie in her own bed after her vomiting incident, but that would have made sense. After all, why mess up a set of twin sheets when you can finish off yet another set of king-sized ones instead? And Larry had the nerve to make fun of me while I carefully remade our bed with the spare sheets. "Yeah, make sure that top sheet is on right-side-out," he remarked. "We wouldn't want her to puke on the wrong side tonight."

I'm a creature of habit, what can I say? I tucked in the corners just so, too.

Last week Mental Tesserae suggested (in the comments of this post) that mothers must have 100 words for vomit, just as Eskimos (supposedly) have a hundred words for snow. Well, I managed to use 3 of them in that first paragraph alone. Pretty good, huh? It strikes me that I may have a special talent for writing about regurgitation (4!). I've certainly had enough practice, anyway.

Why can't I ever write about anything interesting, like global warming or the food shortage or the presidential campaign? Noooo, it's always vomit this and barf that and puke all over the bed linens around here. I wonder whether the people who invented the Internet envisioned someone like me using it to liveblog the slow, relentless march of a stomach virus through our family of 8.

Ain't technology great? Maybe I could embed a video next time. I mean, what's a vomit story without the sound effects?

Why Bunkbeds Are A Bad Idea

I was going to be a good girl and go to bed at 10 this evening, but then I decided to stay up and wash puke off of the boys' bedroom wall instead. Because that activity is more enjoyable than a good night's sleep.

Naturally, what with vomit-cleanup being such an adrenaline-pumping experience, I am still up. And not feeling too well myself, I might add. Larry went back to sleep, however, after moving the bunkbeds and lifting the mattresses and removing the puked-on guardrails for me while I wrung my hands and wailed things like, "Aaagh! It's dripping on me!" and "Why does he always have to be in the top bunk when he throws up?!" To that last, Larry said, "I dunno. We're lucky, I guess."

You know, Larry may seem like he's totally out of it, standing there in his underwear and looking groggy; but he always manages to come up with a good one-liner at times like these.

The embarrassing part is that when I heard Brian coughing strangely in his bed and I went in and didn't see any vomit (because it was dark and he had puked on the wall next to the bed and because I didn't really want to find any vomit, if you must know the truth), I had to debate whether there was a new puke smell in the room, or if that was just the old puke smell from October. I mean, how can you tell? Is that a question I could send in to Hints from Heloise, you think?

I'm just so glad Brian didn't want the tuna at dinner. I don't think I could have cleaned that up.

Hello? Anyone still here?

Before my evening was ruined, I went to Knit Night and let everyone touch the book that the Yarn Harlot had signed for me. Then I ate a delicious chicken caesar salad and half a brownie sundae, and I fervently hope that I will not be seeing those 2 items again tonight. Things are not looking good, though. Can anyone tell me: do you stop catching stomach viruses once the kids are grown and gone? Because this vomit scene is getting really old.

Chocolate Makes The World Go 'Round

We had a romantic Valentines Dinner out, Larry and I and the 6 kids, at a local burger joint. After yelling at the children for 3 hours this morning in order to get the house ready for the party, I was too wiped out (lazy, really) to make a decent meal. And since I hadn't fed the kids anything but candy and cake all day, I wasn't able to rationalize feeding them that crap for dinner also. I haven't sunk that low yet. Give me another year.

Anyway, now Brian feels sick (but not in a stomach way, thank goodness). For some reason (that I really do not want to think about at all), the boys' room still smells like puke from the bunkbed vomiting incident 4 months ago. You would think that even if I had missed some vomit in the clean-up(s), the leftover stuff wouldn't smell anymore. Or maybe you don't think about things like that at all. Maybe that's my own particular hobby.

I should just turn this problem into a homeschool science fair experiment - we could call it How Long Does Vomit Maintain Its Ability to Offend the Olfactory Senses? That would look great on a college application, now wouldn't it?

Valentine's Day is a No Weight Watchers Zone, by the way. Otherwise, I wouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning. I mean, what would have been the point? The house was a veritable dieting minefield, filled as it was with Rice Krispy treats and cookies and the big heart-shaped box of chocolate given to me by my loving but misguided husband. Tomorrow, I will climb back on the points-counting, healthy-eating wagon; but for another hour or so, everything edible here is fair game. And, since the kids are finally in bed, it's mine, all mine!

I broke my bedtime rule this evening, and boy did I regret it. By 8 o'clock all the kids were running around and screaming at each other. Rachel touched Susie's balloon; and then Susie took Rachel's puppy (the one from Santa), because she likes Rachel's puppy with the pretty red bow around its neck better than the boring brown doggy that she got from Santa. Brian was crying that his feet felt funny, and Anna was pitching a fit in the kitchen because she had to load all of 5 dishes into the dishwasher and turn it on.

So I spanked them all soundly and sent them to bed. Well, I wish I had, anyway. What I really did was wrest the puppy out of Susie's fat little hands and watch her big brown eyes well up with big fat tears, which damn near broke my heart. Then I gave Brian Tylenol and told him to lie down and recuperate in his vomity-smelling bedroom. And I left Larry to deal with the overgrown tantrum-thrower in the kitchen while I lay in bed with Susie and read a book until she fell asleep over an hour later.

All of which explains why I am downstairs at close to midnight eating my Valentine's chocolate and feeling cheated out of my evening , rather than upstairs giving my husband the rest of his Valentine's present. In case you were wondering....

Barf-o-rama, Act III

More of the same here, I'm afraid. Monday was a relatively calm day, spent recuperating from the day before. We went to Target so David and Brian could blow the rest of their money (I really don't know where these kids get the stuff; I mean, I don't give it to them - could they be dealing drugs?) on a remote control airplane. Then I went to the dentist and (to make up for my trauma) a yarn shop, a type of establishment I had never been to before. I needed to go there to get a certain size knitting needle not carried in a generic crafts store like Michael's, and I have to admit I was curious about what I was missing in terms of the specialty yarn shop experience. But I ended up being disappointed. There were a lot of uber-price-y fistfuls of wool and everything (luckily) was a bit too refined (and expensive) to even tempt my appetite. I guess I'm just a cheap-eats sort of knitter. And I'm okay with that.

Okay, so we ate dinner, tucked the kids in bed, and had pretty much settled down for the evening when David came running down to tell me (not Larry; Larry had already gone to the sleep, the sneak) that Brian had thrown up. And in a valiant effort not to soil his bed linens, he had leaned over the bed rail - of the top bunk. It was a bad scene. The blast radius of this stuff was incredible. Maybe it had something to do with the ceiling fan, I'm not sure. But somehow it landed under the bed. And on the walls. And on the dresser. And the nightstand. And we still had to strip the beds (both of them). Under the bed was the biggest challenge - I don't think I've ever tried Swiffering vomit before, but it worked. I love my Swiffer.

The rest of the night is sort of a blur. There was more vomit and then I couldn't go to bed because I felt sick again (no wonder - our entire upstairs smelled disgusting by this point); I think I must have logged 3 hours total of sleep. Larry didn't do much better. But hey - who cares? Anna needed to go to Michael's today to get some beads for the bracelets she's making to sell at the holiday bazaar. Here there were sick people lying in various states of discomfort all over the living room (Theo had been felled by the stomach-virus fairy also); Susie for some reason decided to sympathy-vomit in the kitchen after I fed her some lunch; David was weak from hunger because he didn't want to eat because he figured he was going to get sick any minute (we're still waiting); but Anna could not comprehend why I was not grabbing my keys and running for the car. She also couldn't understand why a lot of the chores were falling on her. Not exactly a team-player, that girl. I was tired enough to ignore her histrionics, an approach which worked pretty well.

So there we are - for those of you keeping score, that's 5 down and 3 to go. And tomorrow's Larry's b'day.....so my money is on him.

Vomit Makes Me Want to Puke

Oh, dear, 2 days have gone by already? You know, time just flies when people are throwing up. Don't you think so? Actually, we had a vomit-free day Saturday, on which I ran around like mad and got all my errands done, because I knew that it was merely a brief hiatus and that the stomach-virus fairy was coming back. But she waited....so we went ahead with our plans to pack a fun picnic lunch and drive the 4 youngest to the great science museum in a city about an hour from here. We loaded everyone in the car and headed off and had a fairly uneventful car ride. Because Susie waited until we got all the way there, until we were pulling into the driveway of the museum, to start....erupting, really; there's no other word for it. She sort of burped, and scrambled eggs were pouring out of her mouth, for several minutes, while she sat there looking completely puzzled and the rest of us gawked in horror at what looked like a case of demonic possession. (For the record, scrambled eggs look exactly the same coming back up as they do going down; other foods do not have this property.)

So, Larry and I stripped her down and showered her with a water bottle we found in the car and put a fresh outfit on her (a miracle, really, that we found one in the diaper bag) and marched everyone into the museum. Of course, by this time, my stomach was feeling none too healthy and I had to make a supreme effort not to think about scrambled eggs. The museum was very kid-friendly and one room had a huge waterplay table, with dams and boats and little fountains, that the kids splashed around in, while Larry and I discussed what to do if Susie threw up into the water (we decided to pretend not to speak English); but we didn't have to worry, because all she did was pee all over herself and the floor instead, and no one noticed because it was so wet in there anyway. Yes, we are great parents. Thank you.

We steered the kids back to the car before anyone could get too hungry (no way we were feeding Susie again); so of course Brian cried because he wanted that nice picnic lunch (with lemonade) that we had packed for them and we told him that he had to wait until we got home. I don't really know what happened when we got home because I ran straight from the car up to my bedroom, where I lay for several hours in a fetal position trying not to throw up myself. One would think that after almost 16 years of raising kids I would have already encountered every stomach virus there is, but apparently I missed one.

And now we can just set that theoretical "number of days this blog has gone without mentioning vomit" counter back to zero.

Regurgitation, revisited

Larry and I managed to sneak away after dinner last night to take a walk at the Town Center and listen to the live music they have there in the summers. We enjoyed our date for almost 10 full minutes before Theo called to inform us that Rachel needed to throw up; we sped home so we wouldn't miss any of the excitement. I don't know what's with that kid. I just know that there is yet another dinner that I won't ever be able to eat again. There's quite a list now - the delicious sausage chowder a friend made us last summer, the great salisbury steak recipe we tried out this past winter, the spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce that we enjoyed last night - just a few of the many dishes that have been ruined for me by the sight of their regurgitated versions. Thanks, kids!

It's difficult to sleep well when the odds are good that your kid is going to throw up again during the night. At half past midnight both Larry and I heard a child cry out for us and leaped out of bed like firemen hearing an alarm bell. Wrong kid, though - psych! - just Susie coming in to share our bed for the rest of the night. Rachel waited another hour - you know, just long enough for Larry and I to get back into a comfortable slumber - to wake us up. Obviously feeling quite chipper, she wanted her comforter back (we had confiscated anything we didn't want to wash the vomit off of) and her stuffed bunny and a few other things. We staggered back to bed, relieved that we weren't cleaning up more vomit, and knew no more until daybreak. This pattern of interrupted sleep (16 years of it, dammit) is getting to me. I believe the sleep deprivation is eating away at my brain cells.

Which may explain why I can no longer figure out how to operate a simple appliance such as my new dishwasher. Reading the manual is too overwhelming, so I just push random buttons until it lights up and starts making those gurgling sounds. But I love my dishwasher. And it only costs us 77 dollars a year to operate! I figured that out all by myself, thank you. You see, the tag said it only cost 22 dollars to operate; but that refers to normal use (defined as 4 loads a week). 4 loads a week! If that's all I had to do, I wouldn't need an automatic dishwasher. So I managed to extrapolate to 14 loads a week. It took me a while. Probably used up my last few remaining brain cells to do it, too.

Happy Father's Day!

I managed to be the first in the family to wish Larry a Happy Father's Day, as Susie decided to wake us up at 4 this morning by puking in our bed. Being seasoned parents, our reflexes kicked in immediately - Larry leapt out of bed and started throwing towels at me to try to minimize the damage, while I traumatized the throw-up-ee by trying to clean her up while holding her at arm's length. While we were stripping the sheets off the bed, I commented that it was just as well - I was going to wash the bed linens today anyway. Larry responded with "Cool! That's just perfect! I'm glad this happened then!" Some people are sort of sarcastic when they're woken up too early, don't you think? So I let him sleep in a bit (all the way 'til 7) while I took Susie downstairs until she fell asleep in my arms an hour or so later. I hope Larry didn't expect a present on top of that.

While I was sitting there, martyring myself by forgoing sleep, I realized that today is the 17th anniversary of the day that Larry and I met. I resisted the urge to wake him up just to tell him. Sometimes I am able to act somewhat mature, you know. But sitting up with the baby gave me time to ponder, "Gee, if I could have foreseen this day 17 years ago, would I have acted differently?" Of course not. I mean, I don't think so. When Larry did wake up, I had to ask him the same question. "Would you have acted differently? Would you have run like hell?" His answer, of course, was, "Certainly not." That man hasn't been married all these years for nothing, you know. He knows the right answer, even when he's barely awake.

Theo has run away from home to spend the summer working at Boy Scout camp. I hope he decides to come back. Someone has to cook dinner around here. Larry took him down there on Saturday; so I got to spend all day amusing the little ones (with not too much help from Anna, who was not at all pleased on Friday to learn that she would not be returning to public school next year). Anna was shocked, shocked, to learn that her behavior was nowhere close to meeting our expectations these past 9 months - apparently, we were speaking Urdu all those times that we warned her to shape up.

The new house is a mess - full of boxes of camping gear, handyman tools, and I don't know what-all. Someday we'll get the attic planked over and be able to hide this stuff up there; in the meantime, however, this house feels smaller than the old one. But we're paying more for it. Which isn't a good feeling. The new windows arrive tomorrow (thanks, Grandpa!) - so Larry had to spend a lot of time today moving the boxes around to provide access for the window installers. He's not really been having the best of Father's Days, I guess. Tough. This move was all his idea anyway.

My birthday is coming up this week, which provides me with a nice excuse to sit around and eat bon-bons all day (and no, that's not what I do normally - normally, I sit around and yell at the kids all day). I'm not exactly expecting a present from Anna, though. Maybe she'll decide to refrain for the day from telling me how much she hates me. That would be nice.

Movin' On Up

We're moving! The fun...has begun! Ha, ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha! (I'm not sure, but I think that is how one would spell out hysterical laughter.) We're fine, really. We just have to figure out how to get everything that is in this house, into that other house. No problem. Especially with all the help we're getting from Anna, the one-armed mover. She keeps the other hand in her pocket, to illustrate just how much she doesn't care about the outcome of this whole process. Larry foiled my plans for an easy move by returning from his working retreat (oxymoron if I ever heard one) before I could manage to get the Salvation Army to show up with a really large truck for all of his junk. Whatever happens, that crap is not going back into my laundry room. Because it's even smaller this time. Bigger house, smaller laundry room, fewer storage closets - get the picture? More space for living, less space for junk. Now that's my kind of house.

The kids are all quite excited, except Anna of course, whose brain is still in some hormone-addled fog. Susie was so excited that she tried to help me paint our new hall closet while I wasn't looking. Serves me right for trying to get something accomplished. I won't attempt that again, that's for sure. Instead, I'll just take the kids to the pool. We had our inaugural 2007 visit yesterday, and being at the pool was just as wonderful as I remembered its being. I mean, until someone's kid (not mine, thank goodness) threw up into the splash pool. But I figure 48 hours will be enough time for things to become decontaminated enough for us to go back. If I'm wrong, everyone here will be throwing up next week while we're trying to move. Let's face it, we're not going to get off easy on this relocation thing. Something is going to happen, it's just a matter of what. At least it won't be chicken pox like last year. Hurricane, maybe? Who knows?

Of course, it doesn't help to have the carpet layers informing me that the outside wall of the basement bedroom is rotted out. So Larry tore out all the dry wall - somehow, it doesn't seem like my dream house with the exposed cinder block and studding. I'm trying not to look until he gets it fixed. Burying my head in the sand is what I do best.

David turns 10 next week, and I'm just praying I don't forget. And that I can find the cake pans in time.

So, if anyone is feeling bored this Wednesday or Thursday or Friday and happens to be in our area, and maybe feels the need for a little exercise, feel free to come on by to help out. Or you could just bring a chair and some snacks and sit and watch the fun. We live to entertain.

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.

Veni, Vici, Regurgitati

Well, Larry, apparently desperate for some R and R, hightailed it out of here last week to go to some sort of "working retreat." Yeah, right...one of these days I'm going to go on a working retreat...with all my girlfriends. We'll get together at some nice hotel and talk about our favorite brand of diapers and where to get the cheapest toilet paper and how does one get vomit stains out of comforters, for all of 5 minutes, maybe...and then we'll goof off for the next 3 days.

All I can say is thank heaven for teenage boys. While Larry was gone, Theo managed to catch no less than 3 mice (and one, um, extra(?) tail...yuck), including the obviously stupid mouse that decided to run around our livingroom one evening. That incident only exacerbated my feelings of spousal abandonment, of course. But we got Larry back for his desertion - Rachel started throwing up almost the minute he walked in the door. (Warning: non-parents may want to exit now - graphic descriptions follow) For some reason, despite my battle-hardened attitude to all forms of vomit, this incident was particularly gross. I don't think we'll ever have salisbury steak again. Rachel threw up again later, in her sleep, while we were downstairs watching a movie (we were rather desperately searching for some comic relief). The movie was Ghostbusters, as a matter of fact. Theo and Anna had never seen it, so it was fun watching it again with them. Of course, Larry and I found ourselves explaining a lot of items that were rendered confusing by the passage of 20-plus years. Remember the opening scene, where the librarian is spooked by the cards flying from the card catalogs? We had to explain what those were. We also noted, among other things, an "old-fashioned" computer on the secretary's desk, an old-fashioned phone (touchtone with a cord), and the weirdness of the protagonists' lack of cellphones. I thought I would end up reliving my youth by watching the movie; instead, I went to bed feeling a hundred years old.

Where was I? Oh, yes - Rachel threw up in her sleep. I went upstairs to check on her and found her slumbering soundly in a pool of vomit. It was so disgusting (how disgusting was it, Karen?)...it was so disgusting that I had to get a pair of scissors and cut her out of her pajama shirt, rather than pull it over her head. Isn't that nice? Just what she needed - more scissor ideas...anyway, I stripped her, stripped her bed, showered the puke out of her hair, remade the bed, dressed her in fresh jammies, tucked her in, gave her a few sips of flat ginger ale (all the while thinking, you know, that you can't pay anyone enough to do these things), and then...she threw up again. As I said, you can't pay anyone enough....

Susie barfed all over our bed soon after we finally got to sleep. By this point, Larry was looking so miserable that he was dismissed to go to bed wherever he could find a vomit-free place to lay his head. Misery loves company, but he did have to get up in the morning and go to his Naval Reserve drill. I sat up and held the baby by the computer until she fell asleep. Just when it looked safe to try to put her in her crib (no way she was going in my bed again), she woke up and threw up all over me. By this time, for those of you keeping track, I had approximately 16000 loads of puke-soaked bed linens and clothes stacked up in front of the washer, no clean pajamas left for me or baby and no spare clean blankets. The weekend wasn't shaping up too well, it was clear. I spent all of Saturday just trying to catch up on the laundry - and need I mention that by then I was also suffering from this lovely ailment? And can you believe Larry didn't even call me during the day to check up on us? Coward.

So - Larry got home from work Saturday evening and I convinced him that we needed to go out for a short, refreshing date (obviously, a trademark of parents of large families is irrational optimism). We told Anna to watch the baby for an hour and a half, and she immediately blew up and said she had too much to do and we had no right to make her babysit. Opting for a tactical retreat, we took the baby with us and fed her french fries (this was a dumb idea) and tried to pretend we were not too tired to enjoy each other's company. Then baby threw up and we had to beat a hasty retreat (a lot of retreating that evening); I vaguely remember Larry throwing a bunch of money at the waiter and grabbing the puke-covered baby and dashing out the door, while I was still messing around trying to soak up the vomit on the table with a stack of paper napkins.

We didn't let Anna get away with her mutiny, of course. She actually told Theo after we left, "See? Mom knew I was right," and then she sat down and played a computer game for a while. Funny how the next morning, when she wanted to go out and get away from us, she couldn't find her shoes. It's my version of house arrest, that missing-shoes trick. She threatened to stay in bed all day and I told her to go ahead. At least I don't have to see her glaring at me all day that way.

There! I'm sure by now I've convinced any of you who are childless (and still reading) to remain happily unblessed by offspring. See? Even though I have six children, I'm still doing my part to keep the total world population from skyrocketing out of control. So you can stop begrudging me that $6,000 child tax credit, all right? I've earned it, dammit.

You know, maybe it's time to get to bed before someone else gets sick - that way, I can pretend to be asleep and Larry will have to deal with it. Yes, an excellent idea - good night!