Some Days Aren't Worth Repeating

So how was your Friday? Want to hear about ours?

It started off with me waking up to feel that maybe my stomach ickies were flaring up again, so Daddy took LC to preschool while I went back to bed until 10:30. Then all was ok, until about 2 when I finally took the 'chill' in the air to be more than just December, and started investigating the heating system. Short version of the story? It was dead. Gone. Completely jacked up. In the middle of December. Oh, and that also meant we had no hot water. Nice.

Short version of the rest of that story? After two hours of phone calls to a bizillion people in equally fragmented English and Dutch, we got to pay someone €90 (about £85 / $120) IN CASH to come out and fix something that really was the previous owners' responsibility. That's a story for an entirely different blog (to follow soon), and he was the one helping out the most in trying to resolve this anyway, so no hard feelings...just a lightened bank account.

By 6pm, we were finally able to peel away some of the 14 layers we were wearing, and I could run the dishwasher, washing machine, and shower to get all levels of dirt off this family and household. Then Daddy went off for his company Christmas party (with 1,800 people attending -- no joke) and LC and I settled into a comfy late evening together. After he went to bed, I pottered around the house a little, then cozied into the sofa to watch Finding Neverland. Ahhhh, bliss.

Until I tried to go to bed around 1am. That's when LC woke up crying. Ok, no big deal. He didn't have a fever and he settled right back to sleep .... for about 20 minutes. Then he woke crying again. Frantic. Desperate. Something was really wrong. Just as I knelt down to ask what was happening, IT happened. In bucketloads. Everywhere.

That's right. Puke. Ugh.

I wont go into all the horrible gory details, because for all I know, you're reading this while snacking. But I'll summarize by saying it took me at least 15 minutes to clean up the multiple toxic dump sites (after I'd hosed down my inconsolable child in the shower and left him on the bathroom floor with strict instructions not to move an INCH unless he needed to make another deposit, in which case there was a lovely white porcelain donation bowl standing right next to him) and take various pieces of clothing and furnishing outside to be blasted and scrubbed in the morning. LC was good as gold, even though he was really upset. From that bathroom floor, he said to me (in Dutch), 'Mommy, that wasn't fun.' And then he said (in English) 'I got fire out of my mouth, just like my dragon in Sleeping Beauty.' Awwwww. Poor kid, this was the first time he's ever thrown up, and he hadn't a clue what it was. I totally see the logic in thinking it was dragon fire!

Meanwhile, in the middle of all this, Daddy Big Chief texted me to say he was picking up his bike and would be home soon (it's about a 7-minute bike journey between home and work). So when all the horrible stuff was dumped/flushed/scrubbed/bleached, LC and I headed downstairs to watch some cartoons until Daddy got home. THIRTY MINUTES LATER, still no husband. My mind is picturing the train tracks he has to cross, combined with British man at company Xmas party, equalling drunken mess and horrific coma-inducing accident .... so I called him. Bless him, he'd (very naturally) expected me to be asleep and not have necessarily seen the text, so went with his friends to grab some post-party junk food. When I yelled 'Yeah, well, your son is projectile vomiting and your wife is envisioning you dead on the side of the road, so maybe you should get back here!' he ditched is food and came straight home. After I'd apologized for my moment of unfair, panicked EVIL, we all settled down together to watch more Dutch cartoons. (Would you believe, the cartoon channel runs 24 hours? I used to think that was terrible, until last night. Thank you, thank you, thank you!)

So from my potentially not feeling well (which came to nothing, thankfully) to a freezing home with equally freezing water, to puking kids and imagined-dead husbands, I'd rather not repeat the festivities of yesterday, if you don't mind. In the immortal words of President Josiah Bartlett .... What's next?