Husband, who goes away quite a lot for conferences, had felt rather sorry for himself this week as he flew off last Saturday to Pittsburg (which apparently really is the pits). We managed perfectly well here in Stepford on our own, as we do, managing to avoid any unnecessary bracing outdoor activity beyond a wander into the garden to pick a lemon or two and indulging in a fair amount of tea drinking and book reading. The house was incredibly tidy and orderly (amazing how that happens whenever he’s gone) and everything ticked and hummed at its proper pace until Tuesday afternoon when I fetched Six from school.
She seemed fine at first, but started complaining that she felt a bit funny as suppertime approached. I ignored this as it quite often just means she doesn’t particularly like what’s on the menu, but when she flatly refused to eat anything, saying she thought she might throw up, I callously told her to go and get into bed and put a bucket beside her in case she actually did, I’d check on her later. I honestly thought she just didn’t fancy chicken and baked potato and was itching to read her ghastly pony book (“Circus Pony”?”The Secret Pony”?”Killer Ponies from Mars”?) but then felt like a BAD MOTHER when a small, tremulous voice called down the stairs,
“Mummy? I’ve been a bit sick”
I went up to find the poor child had hurled a huge amount neatly into the bucket and was sitting wretchedly on her bed, clutching her teddy looking pale, stringy haired and unloved.
Three came thundering up
“I want to see! I want to see! Eeeuw! It smells yucky! Lemme look!”
I sent him back down, stoically cleaned out the bucket, (trying not to barf myself), settled her into bed in her nightie with a drink of ice water and sat down with Three so he would eat his food. By the time he was finished and had brushed his teeth and was in his pyjamas, Six was fast asleep and he was happy to pop into bed so I set about the various tasks I’d been saving for that evening, aware I was fetching Husband from the airport at noon the next day and from that point on little would be achieved, plus we were all due to go away for the weekend on Friday.
I went to bed at 10pm.
At 3am I woke up with acute nausea. I pretended it wasn’t there and willed myself back to sleep.
At 3.30 I woke up again. My pretending trick did not work this time but I did manage for at least 30 seconds to will myself not to hurl (“I will not be sick, I will not be sick, I will not be…Oh crap!)
And then I spent the remainder of the night lying on the bath mat waiting for encores (I was not disappointed).
By the morning I felt horrendous, but as I was on my own with the kids I realised I had to get Three, who was still healthy and disgustingly cheerful, to nursery, and Six appeared to have bounced back with aplomb. I staggered them to school in my pj’s and a sweatshirt and came home to lie in bed like a sweating,groaning zombie.
Fortunately the vomiting had ceased. Unfortunately, the gastric bug had merely displaced its efforts so I spent a good part of the day in the bathroom anyway.
So not fun.
Husband returned from Pittsburg-its-the-pits around midday, promising to take care of everything and everyone and promptly disappeared to University. I fell mercifully asleep, only to be woken minutes later by the school asking me to fetch Six who had unwisely drunk some milk with her lunch and was feeling terrible again. Husband was not answering his office phone, his cell phone, responding to texts or emails.
He does that a lot. In his defence, after nearly 8 years of cellphone ownership he now does mostly remember to carry the phone around with him, but it’s not completely unheard of for him to switch off the ringer and not switch it on again, or to never actually listen to his voicemail, or to bury the phone deep in his backpack and choose the quietest, most unobtrusive ringtone on the lowest volume, later expressing astonishment that he didn’t hear the phone. He won’t actually tell you this but I believe that deep in his soul he resents being reachable on the phone. He only likes it that he can ring you when he wants to. Otherwise, it’s an intrusive annoyance.
Off to school I went, still in my pj’s with my bird’s-nest special hairdo and 2 day old mascara halfway down my cheeks (where it hadn’t settled into my undereye wrinkles). Still, I held my head high as I walked in and fetched Six who had dressed herself all in black and scraped her hair back that morning, and now looked, in her scrawny pallor, uncannily like Wednesday Addams. I wished I looked like Morticia, but really, I just looked ready for the mortician.
As soon as we came home she staged a miraculous recovery and I went into a steep decline, feverish and gut-aching. I sent her off with the iPad to watch as much Netflix as her little eyes could consume and I had an equally entertaining afternoon of bizarre, terrifying nightmares. At some stage Husband returned with Three and I could vaguely hear the sounds of family life continuing around the house but I was off in some kind of netherworld, praying for deliverance.
And then, with dawn, a miracle! The fever broke, my stomach had stabilised. I felt a little weak, but still, I knew it had mostly passed. What a huge relief. I even managed a cup of tea.
Because I’m not completely better, but on my convalescing day, I thought it would be perfectly acceptable to lie in bed reading books on my Kindle and watching Netflix myself.
It is here that I should probably confess to my dirty little secret: On Netflix streaming I recently came across “A Touch of Frost”, a UK detective series which almost all you Brits will know, but I, having not had a TV since the mid 90′s, was completely unaware of and would never have watched anyway. But for some inexplicable reason (middle age?) I became completely obsessed by and have watched relentlessly from its pilot right up to the final series without watching anything else inbetween. It’s amazing, and indeed terrifying, how quickly the actors age. My Frost issue has now gotten to the point where Husband asks me if I’m going out in the evening and sometimes I say “Yes, I’m going to Denton” , which is the fictional town where Inspector Frost lives and works.
Pathetic/worrying/cause for intervention?
I don’t know how I got off on the Frost tangent, but I thought I’d better tell someone. No doubt you all think less of me now. Husband and I giggle over the vernacular (so removed from the, like, Calispeak that we hear every day) and he now frequently says, apropos of nothing, in his very faint German accent ” I’ll have you BANG to rights”, and we both collapse in hysterics.
On my Kindle, if anyone is interested, I have recently read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (wonderful) Started Early, Took my Dog by Kate Atkinson (pretty good, the usual KA fayre) Still Alice by Lisa Genova (subject-interesting, writing-meh) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (great!, nonfiction) Trespass by Rose Tremain (one of her better ones).
I wish you all good health!