Sick Cycle Carousel

We were racing down the 15 at 2:30am this morning, Charlie was trying to sleep walk out of his carseat, Robbie was wailing the exhausted wail of an infant who refuses to stop protesting his hatred of cars, and Jamie was throwing up for the fifth time into a handy ziploc I stole from my Grandma's kitchen.  Jim told me, "Happy Mother's Day babe" and we laughed.  Because really, the weekend had reached such epic levels of slapstick that there was nothing left to do but be numb to it. 

It started out with the rubics cube style planning that accompanies violin/work/baseball/Grandma's 80th birthday/college graduation/graduation party in one weekend.  Plan A was scrapped, Plan B was briefly enacted before being tossed, Plan C seemed to be a winner until it got majorly fusterclucked, and we moved on to Plan D which while not perfect, was certainly doable.   Then the stomach flu showed up and ruined everything. 

We should have stayed home... but everyone had been well for over 24 hours, and so we fled to L.A. to see long lost cousins and celebrate with family.    As we were brushing our teeth and getting ready to claim some sleeping bag real estate to sleep on, I jokingly told Jim that I was so exhausted the kids would probably choose this night to keep us up.   Note to self:  Don't ever joke about things like that.  Ever.  I really should know better.   Because of course, not twenty minutes after I'd fallen into deep, restful slumber, than my nicer-than-me sister so kindly woke me up and asked me what she should do about the fact my seven year old was throwing up all over her room.   Then my other nicer-than-me sister woke up and offered to help clean it up.  Really, I don't deserve these kind of siblings.  I would have been all  *gag* *retch* *gag*  "WHAT THE--- Your KID just BARFED on my BED."  *gag* *retch* *gag*.    

But I digress.  As I rocked my puking son back and forth in the bathtub of a small house with limited bathroom space and people literally sleeping everywhere...I realized this was not a recipe for success.   Twenty people can't really share a bathroom with someone who has the stomach flu, and so we threw all our stuff in the car.  Picked up our sleeping and bewildered children and went back from whence we came.  

Now I'm just sitting here waiting for the stomach flu to hit me too.  But these munchkins are worth it.