On Friday night, Caroline and I were on our way to eat Mexican food with Mimi and Bops when Mimi mentioned that her best friend, who lives out in California, had just gotten over a really bad stomach flu. And because I am an idiot who likes to spit in the face of fate, I remarked, “You know, I’ve been amazed that we haven’t had the stomach flu this year. So many people around us have had the stomach flu and we’ve avoided it.”
In all fairness, after I emitted that foolish statement, I did mention that I should probably knock on wood. However, since I was driving us to dinner in my Ford Escape, there wasn’t any wood or even faux wood grain, to knock on. The Escape, which we pronounce as Es-CAH-PAY in tribute to Dory’s pronounciation of “Escape” in Finding Nemo, ( if you have no idea what I’m talking about, then obviously you haven’t watched the movie 152 times and you have a life) is a company car and they don’t believe in splurging on extra features like real upholstery and the aforementioned wood grain details.
Later that night, after Caroline and I were back home, I put her to bed. I was catching up on all my DVRed shows ( Friday Night Lights, how I love thee) when I heard Caroline wake up crying. I could tell it was a serious cry, not the kind she uses when she just wants me to come in so that she can verify my existence and and ask if it’s morning yet, so I went in her room only to be overwhelmed at the horrendous smell.
I changed the foulness that was her diaper, tucked her back in, and went outside to throw the diaper away. I walked out on the back porch to discover the largest, black spider I have ever seen crawling across the porch. Honestly, it was so big that I didn’t even attempt to squash it with my shoe because I was afraid it would just pick me up and throw me off the porch. I searched for a suitable lethal weapon, decided on a large piece of firewood, and killed that spider dead. Then around midnight, Caroline woke up with another round of diarrhea and it was official that mine was a household cursed with both pestilence and the plague.
I put Caroline in bed with me and at 6:30 a.m., I woke up to the sounds of a gagging cough, which I realized was the sound of Caroline throwing up. I got her out of the bed before it joined with all the sand on my sheets (see, it totally paid off that I didn’t change those sheets) and she proceeded to throw up all over the hardwood floors.
To make the situation even better, I had hit the stomach flu trifecta. Home alone, throw up on everything, and completely out of laundry detergent. I’m telling y’all you can’t hit odds like that in Vegas.
Thankfully, it seems to be a short lived bug (much like that enormous spider on my porch) and she is doing better. As for me, let’s just say that if there is even the slightest chance you might acquire a stomach flu from your child, it really would be best to eat something for dinner other than chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes from Luby’s washed down with a Corona Light.
That may seem like common sense, but apparently for me, it’s not.