Mother's (Not Even A Significant Chunk of a) Day Out

After finishing up yesterday's entry, I closed the laptop with a flourish, satisfied that it was the last time I would have to discuss anything related to the Great Stampedeing Stomach Illness that had consumed us all for nearly a week. I could, perhaps, finally get around to writing the VERY IMPORTANT entry about my hair that I've been putting off day after day. 

But first, I had some equally important mental-health-related things to take care of. So I stood up and got dressed and put on some makeup and grabbed my purse and Kindle and got the hell out of Gastroenteritis Dodge. 

I drove to a sushi restaurant -- the one that has the tuna dish I like but nothing the kids are willing to eat so we never go there, especially since it's three doors down from a place that serves peanut butter and jelly and Noah KNOWS IT, DON'T YOU DENY HIM THE CHANCE TO ORDER THE SAME DAMN SANDWICH HE EATS EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE, EXCEPT THAT IT COSTS $4.95 AND COMES WITH A SIDE OF FRUIT HE WILL NOT EAT. 

And then...I just...ate the tuna dish I liked. And some soup. I took as long as I wanted. I ordered a glass of wine and surveyed the embarassing backlog of books on my Kindle that I've never gotten around to starting, and then got so engrossed in one that I ordered a second glass of wine just to prolong the experience. 

(That may have been a mistake, as the second glass simply made me extra goopy and emotional and then I started to cry over my book in public like an idiot.)

(And since I know my blog is your one-stop-source for Hot Emerging Literary Trends, lemme tell you: I have a really good feeling about this whole Hunger Games trilogy. I think it might, you know, turn out to be something of a very popular thing! Get in now on the ground floor! Party like it's 2008!)

I decided to skip the planned pedicure because I'd lingered so long at lunch, but I did wander around a CVS for awhile. I bought some hair spray.

Oh, I need to do that again. Even if it's just a cup of overpriced coffee that I could make better myself at home. Even if it's just the pedicure and hitting the drive thru. Even if it's not spending a single dollar but just allowing myself to sit on a bench and read somewhere for as long as I'd like. 

I came home awash in all manner of lame cliched adjectives: I was refreshed, renewed, recharged.

I paid the babysitter (how I love her!), checked in on a napping Ezra and Ike (my precious cherubs! angels straight from heaven!), then met Noah at the bus stop. He greeted me with a huge hug, like always, and we chatted about his day on the walk back.

I was suddenly aware of how glorious the weather was. And since I had already made the mental break from feeling any compulsion to "check in" on the Internet and email hours earlier, I suggested Noah ride his bikes with a neighbor while I sat on the stoop with my Kindle (seriously, they should like, make a movie of this book! I bet it would be v. exciting!). Ike woke up and I brought him outside too. 

I chatted with another neighbor and filled her in on some of the less-graphic details of our week of illness, that the boys were all officially on the mend, and now Jason just needs to recover from his night of misery but after that we're out of the woods. Into the sunshine! The rain is gone! The clouds have lifted and I swear this isn't the wine talking I AM JUST BUZZED ON TWO HOURS OF FREEDOM.

And then we all came back inside and I discovered that Ezra had barfed all over his bed again oh my God in heaven have mercy the end.

Assorted Epilogues

I.

Jason, the last man standing, is down. I repeat, THE HUSBAND IS DOWN. He is by far the least disgusting patient, at least, and his illness has resulted in absolutely nothing I had to clean up.

II.

But! Noah is fine. Ezra is also, finally, oh-thank-God fine and at back at school today.

I don't think I need to tell you that, humor and poor-poor-me snark aside, I was really, really worried about that one. I have never seen any of my children that sick, for which I know I am lucky, because it obviously could have been so, so much worse. He's lost a ton of weight and is still sleeping approximately 18 hours a day, but last night around dinnertime he asked for scrambled eggs and meatballs and macaroni and steak and polenta and cheese and chicken and was basically grabbing anything from the fridge he could get his hands on to eat. A jar of mustard! A pomegranate! Parsley! Whatever!

(Except for what's left of the raspberries. Those are being pointedly ignored.)

Ike is improving but probably needs another day to be back at 100%. I'm still washing a lot of diapers. And if you, like Jason, wonder why in the world I wouldn't cut myself a break and use disposables in the meantime, I will give you the Official Party Line, which is that the disposables equal blowouts and give him a rash.

(That's sort-of the truth. The rest-of-the-way truth is that I seekritly ordered some more diapers and doublers that I absolutely 100% did not need but just plain waaa-aaanted so this allows me to wash and prep them faster all seekritly-like. "What? Those? We've had them for ages, I don't know what you're talking about. Go back to bed. YOU'RE CLEARLY HALLUCINATING.")

III.

No word from the school re: the lice issue. I like to think that they are waiting until they have had time to have an Official Emergency Response Strategery Meeting and can respond with a concrete and satisfying Serious Business Is Serious battle plan, but the more likely reason is that my email read like it was written by a crazy person at the end of her fucking goddamn rope. 

IV.

Last night some animal(s) got into our backyard and attacked a bag of trash we'd left on the patio table. (Stupid, yes. But I have an excuse: Carrying it across the yard to the covered trash receptacle would have required me to put on shoes.) The mess was epic. Wrappers and plastic bags and various bits of grossness were everywhere, and unless I felt like dealing with approximately 1,237,942 requests from Ceiba to go OUTSIDE OUTSIDE OUTSIDE throughout the day so she could eat some Shitty Plastic Wrap^TM remnants, I had no choice but to -- sigh -- clean it up right then. 

So that's how I ended up in the backyard at 7 am this morning, in my pajamas and rainboots, picking up every individual paper towel befouled during the original Raspberryhorkgate 2012, every shop rag and pair of underwear I'd decided was too unspeakable to even deal with laundering, and other assorted disgusting momentos of this weekend. Again. For the second time. That is some next-level, insult-to-injury, Alanis-Morissette-style-irony karmic bullshit, right there. 

V. 

The babysitter offered to stay a couple extra hours today, in case I had any "work" I needed to "catch up on." 

I fibbed and said that yeah, there are a couple things I need to do. And while a lunch out alone, a pedicure and maybe some aimless wandering around the mall aren't exactly "work," at this point I think those things all practically come with a prescription.