The One in Which I Puke

I was sleeping soundly when somewhere in the dark recesses of my resting brain I sensed a presence in my room. I cracked open an eye to see Clay's face a mere inch and a half from my own. After screaming bloody murder and after my heart rate skyrocketed to the equivalent of any athlete's after an hour of aerobics, I asked him, "Why are you trying to kill me?" "What's wrong, Clay?"

"I threw up lots of times", he said in tears.

Oh great, I can't clean that up. Now we have to move.

"Please, please, please tell me you made it to the bathroom!" I begged.

"Yeah, I threw up in the bathroom," he said.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I asked him, "Are you ok now? Does your tummy feel better?" Maybe I shouldn't have let him eat 50,000 cookies and a box of Valentine's Day candy for dinner.

He said that he was fine and felt much better. I told him to go back to sleep, in that case. I quickly fell back asleep and forgot all about the barf-o-rama.

This morning, I awoke and shuffled, eyes still half-closed, through the kitchen. I was heading for the coffee maker, but stopped short as my foot hit something squishy. I looked down and realized I'd stepped in barf. OH! MY! GOSH! The gag reflex has never hit me so fast in my life. I hopped toward the bathroom, my foot covered in disgusting yuckness, and promptly threw up.

Then I did what any sensible person would do in this situation. I cut off my foot.

A little later, Lexi told me that the toilet in the kids' bathroom was covered in vomit. I simply closed my eyes, felt around for the doorknob, and quickly shut the door. Then I barricaded it with yellow caution tape. No problem. Situation resolved. We have another bathroom. We're fine and dandy until someone gets sick in there at which point we'll clearly have to move.

Actually, one of my best friends in the world came by and offered to clean it for me. How awesome is that? But I didn't even need him to do that because while I was at Fed Ex this afternoon, Savannah cleaned it. When I got home and she told me that she'd cleaned the toilet, I asked her, "HOW??? How did you do that without throwing up?" She rolled her eyes at me and said that vomit doesn't make her throw up. She has a new job.

And why was I at Fed Ex? Because I had to overnight my pregnancy manuscript to my editor. So I walked in, filled out the form to mail it, and realized that I didn't have a copy of it. For some reason, my publisher doesn't do things electronically so all I had was this one hard copy of the manuscript. My mind started whirling with visions of these horrible scenarios. What if the Fed Ex truck flipped over on the way to my editor, and gas spilled and the truck exploded? My manuscript would be in a big mushroom cloud somewhere over the tri-state area and I'd have to rewrite the whole thing! Or what if the Fed Ex plane went down in the ocean near some desert island and Tom Hanks decided to read my manuscript to entertain Wilson until they got bored with it, then he'd use it for kindling or worse - toilet paper. I decided a copy was definitely in order.

"Um, excuse me sir? Would you please make a copy of this so Tom Hanks doesn't use it as toilet paper?"

The guy behind the counter didn't even blink at my request and simply asked, "black and white"? Apparently this is a common request in the Fed Ex world. Interesting.

Now, I need to get Brooklyn some more medicine because she's been running a fever all day and keeps crying that her eyes hurt. The fun never ends around here, I tell ya!