The People Who Choose To Love Me

The People Who Choose To Love Me
This is my family. Watermark and all.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

It's Either The Flu Or The Oversized Quesadilla I Ate For Dunch

Brunch is an amazing concept. I have also heard of "linner," but I like all of my midday meals to rhyme so I'm going with "dunch." Also, when you say all of the names of mealtimes in a row it sounds like a children's song. Breakfast, brunch, lunch, dunch, dinner, midnight snack... See? There's a definite ring to it and I can almost sing it in tune with The Sound Of Music soundtrack.

Anyway, it's flu season. Two nights ago one of my children exploded. This is not an exaggeration. There was puke literally on every surface within a ten foot radius of this child. I used this bout with the flu as a learning experience. I learned that I am not nurturing. In fact, I'm pretty sure using every expletive humanly imaginable while bleaching every surface in your home is the exact opposite of nurturing. My poor kid is puking her guts out and I'm in the hallway shrieking, "Oh, fuck... It got on my arm!!! Babe!!! Where is the Emergen-C?? I'm going to die!! How in the hell does puke get on the ceiling??? This place is a vomitorium!!!" It took me a minute to realize that I was being a brat so I went and apologized to my ashen face sickie and made her as comfortable as I could by handing her things to comfort her with a ten foot long pole.


Yesterday, the smell of bleach still thick in the air, she started to feel better and I realized I hadn't eaten breakfast, brunch, or lunch, but it wasn't quite dinner time. So, I made a quesadilla for dunch. It was delicious. It was also super cheesy. Mmmmm... quesadillas... And, I ate in two seconds.


Flash forward to work six hours later, and that over sized quesadilla was making the rounds in my lower intestines. I started panicking. I felt flush and I was positive I caught the flu. I was the only person who had contact with the flu juices that spewed from my child's once adorable face. She is now, in the famous words of comedian/actor Nick Kroll, forever unclean.




My skin made direct contact with her undigested after school snack. I started obsessively feeling my forehead and excused myself to the bathroom. Surely, that quesadilla was going to make a second appearance. I sat in the bathroom stall for a few minutes, and nothin'. I didn't want to leave the other waitress to do all of the work around the place so I pulled myself together, washed my hands, and started filling salt shakers and sweeping. Then, the other waitress asked me if I was ok. Big mistake, other waitress.

"I don't know. I feel sick. Do I look sick? Am I pale? Feel my forehead! Don't get near me! I need to leave!!"

She was so sweet about it and told me to just go home. Well, she was either super sweet or just wanted me to get the hell away from her. Probably the latter. But then, in an instant, my guts started feeling normal and I stopped sweating and I realized it wasn't the flu and just an ungodly amount of cheese that was making me feel icky. And then, for whatever reason, I thought this would be a good blog idea. I am realizing now that no one probably needs to read about my intestines grumbling at work and the internal paranoia I face each and every time one of my kids has yakked all over my life. But, you're welcome anyway.


6 comments:

  1. Vomiting is an incredibly unpleasant experience, in spite of what a friend of mine said about how if you get down on all fours and straighten your spine and aim directly into the toilet it can be almost as enjoyable as a good bowel movement.
    Many years ago, though, I learned to love vomit. I don't like to throw up or be around someone else throwing up or smell it or have anything to do with it but I can't hear, read, or see anything about vomit without thinking of the great Billy Connolly's hilarious routine about how you always throw up diced carrots. It doesn't matter if it's been years since you ate diced carrots. When the hell did you eat diced carrots anyway? How often do you go up to a salad bar and say, "Give me some diced carrots and while you're at it give me some tomato skins"?
    Read all that in a thick Scottish accent and try not to laugh. And I'm the sort of person who surrounds himself with friends who, if I puke, will immediately say "diced carrots!"
    Laughing while you're doing the technicolor yawn does actually make it a little more enjoyable. At least it takes the stress off.
    One more fun fact about blowing chunks: it's not clear how "vomit" came to mean driving the porcelain bus or calling Ralph on the porcelain phone but the term comes from "vomitorium" which was not, as you may have heard, a place where Romans would go and purge. A vomitorium is "“A passage or opening in an ancient amphitheatre or theatre, leading to or from the seats."
    Maybe someone tossed their lunch or shouted at their shoes and thought, hey, that looks a lot like a huge crowd exiting an amphitheater.
    The wide entryways in theaters between seating sections are still called vomitoriums, or just "voms" by the way. Enjoy your next trip to the theater.
    I should probably do an entire post of my own on barfing instead of leaving such a long comment here.

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    1. I love your long comments! It makes me wish I was more thought provoking when I leave a comment on your blog. I will never look at the theater or carrots the same again. Even whole carrots. I'll just end up imagining them diced and then in the bottom of my toilet bowl. Good thing I hate carrots!!

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  2. Years back, we had the stomach bug from hell hit our household. It hit us one by one. I remember I scrambled to get a bunch of stuff done because I knew it was inevitable, I knew my number was coming up. Oh and it did. I was the last one and it hit me hard. I lived on the bathroom floor for two days. On that second day, Gerald sort of toed me, maybe seeing if I was still alive, and asked if I was ever gonna get up. It was just so awful. What made matters worse was my parents coming shortly after we had all recovered. I bleached every thing, every surface I could think of, before their arrival. Thought all was good when they left, only to get a call from my dad that my mom was hit! While they were on their 4 hour car trip home. I still feel guilty about that one. My dad got sick as well but he wasn't as bad as my mom. Yep, tis the season.

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    1. I used to feel so bad when my kids would get people sick but now I think I have more of a "You knew what you were getting into by visiting us," mentality.

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  3. Oh Honey I'm about as creative as a bag of nails (I know, that's not even a saying, I made it up). I love that you are becoming nail techy that is absolutely cool, and I want to do that too now! I was a big fan of the crayon nails, but my fave were the nails with the kite.

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    1. Those were both my favorites, too! I just finished doing newspaper print nails on myself and one of my daughters tonight. You should google it! They are amazing! Thank you for reading, Sandra!

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