Monthly Archives: January 2013

My Captain is, at the writing of this, the Last Man Standing in our house.   The rest of us are like the undead here.  Zombies.  Nasty smelling Zombies.

Critter and Varmint are down with a viral gastrointestinal bug from hell, and I’m out with the good ol’ fashioned flu.  Not just any flu.

THE Flu.

At any given moment in this house, someone is either coughing or vomiting or pooping or whining or crying.  And the washer and dryer have been in constant use.

It ain’t been for the faint of heart.

It started Sunday at 6:30am, and has steadily gotten worse. At first I was the official Muck Collector, but I got taken out last night.  My Captain, home since then, would usually be on shift at Fire Station 31 tomorrow, but he took one look into my pleading, pathetic, worshipful eyes, and decided against it.  How could he leave me to care for a sick Varmint and Critter, when I could hardly even care for my own feverish self?  He could not, in all good conscience.  He’s a rescuer, after all.

Oh he may have WANTED to go to work.  I have no doubt he is conflicted.  After all, he’s got stuff piling up at the Station when he isn’t there.    In the end, not only his duty to his family, but also his strong sense of self-preservation made him stay…..

…..’cause I would have killed him if he left.

With a spoon.

A dull spoon.

A dirty, dull, spoon.

I mean that all in metaphor, of course.  I didn’t actually visualize it.  Well, not EXACTLY.  Not the dull part anyways.

So tonight My Captain had to fend for his own dinner, sadly.  He thought a grilled cheese sandwich sounded good.  But so did a hot dog.  He couldn’t decide; and as necessity is the mother of invention, he created a new entrée for this house.

Behold the new Grilled Dog Cheese Sandwich.

We should have thought to spread the halves apart so you could see the gooey melty cheesy center, but even without it, you can just imagine the yumminess, can’t you?   All crunchy and hot on the outside, and all cheesy on the inside.

It’s a lot like me if you think about it.

Wait, that sounds wrong.  Forget I said that.  Move on.

So he’s added this awesome sammy to his arsenal for this particular sick family zombie apocalypse.  He’s ready for us, the half-un-dead, waving his grilled dog cheese yumminess in front of our nausea-filled faces.  Like Tallahasse in Zombieland.

But without the Banjo.

It’s genius, really.

We’ve been fighting illness in our house.  To call it Gastroenteritis is a kind understatement.  It would be more accurate to call it “Effluence 2013: Where anything that CAN shoot out of a body orifice at high velocity, will.”

And the things that usually come jetting out, look, smell, and feel totally grody, Man.

The only way I, as designated muck collector, can avoid puking during the sanitizing process is to:  1) think only happy thoughts and 2) breathe through my mouth, instead of my nose.

Because if I get even one whiff of those vapors…it’s over.

We’re not talking dry heaves.  We’re talking the whole gamut of retching and its various forms.

….which would then start off a chain reaction around the house.

…..which would then create more for me, the muck collector, to collect, remove, and sanitize.

So you see how Mouth-Breathing is an absolute necessity.

It’s an art, really.  One I’ve had to perfect since I birthed my life-force sucking little critters.

Just another one of those things that makes me useful around the house…….

I can’t do it.  I can’t even fake it.  That old adage ‘Fake it until you make it’….yeah, that’s not happening.

Other parents can, though.  And plenty of them, by the look of things this weekend.   I heard barks of encouragement.  I saw excitement and frustration and joy and disappointment on the faces of so many parents.  The whole gamut.

There were even parent spats.

There were people who hushed their spouses so they wouldn’t get thrown out.

There was drama galore, I tell you.

But ultimately, they kept it together.  No one flat out lost it.

And then there was me….

….sitting up at the top of the bleachers, in the fetal position, sucking my thumb.

Why?

Because  this  moment:

is more than my heart can take….regardless of the outcome.

I’m just not cut out for this.

God help me if she takes up snowboarding.

Tonight, as I came home with my Critter from his basketball practice, I opened the kitchen door to the most wonderful spectacle:  Varmint had set up a birthday celebratory dinner for me.

There were party hats.

There was confetti.

There was crepe paper.

There were paper and foil stars hanging precariously from the lightfixture in a highly flammable fashion.

There were those little paper roll up blow toys, which, to Critter’s dismay, did NOT make a loud honking sound.

And all of this because Varmint wanted to make my birthday special.

Let me tell you something, friends.  The day you are too old to feel all warm and fuzzy when someone hands you a party hat and paper horn and tells you it’s all about you, is the day you might as well lay down and die.   Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, says love like a surprise birthday meal.

Especially one planned and executed by an 11-year-old Varmint.

…..

Thank you, sweetheart.  I love you, too.

A friend posted a picture of the center of our little town on Facebook tonight (Thank you, Valerie!).

When I looked at it, it was as if I was seeing Poolesville, Maryland for the first time.

Isn’t it beautiful?

We do actually live in color, even if much of our town is a little ‘old-tyme.’

Poolesville has one foot in 2013, and the other sometime in the ’50’s, I think.  And we seem to like it that way; we take the best of both.  It’s small enough that we are somewhat connected, but large enough that not everyone knows your business, unless you’re misbehaving…..

Our crime rate is lower than the national average.

Our schools rate higher than the national average.

People tend to be a little politer here then they are farther south in Montgomery County.  Maybe it’s because we are not as much in a hurry.  Maybe it’s because we aren’t so full of ourselves that we need to push one another out of the way.  Maybe because at any given time, someone around does know you, and will tell your ma if you’re being an embarrassment to the family.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, we do have our beloved McDonald’s and I have been known to get a little snippy in line if I am really super hungry and my sausage burrito is being held up by the lady in front of me who has to count out her exact change, and in doing so finds she has some Canadian coins that she wonders could they please take anyways, and no, says the kid behind the counter, and could you get the manager, please she says, and meanwhile the eggs in my burrito which I can SEE under the warmer are turning to rubber as we speak… wait, what was I talking about?

Oh, right.  Small town.  Polite.  Got it.

What I’m saying is, on the whole, we are fairly like “Mayberry.”

And, lukewarm sausage burritos aside, I like it that way.