Each year my family and I spend two whole months prior to Christmas talking about how we will NOT get sick for the holiday season. And then, as our track record has proven for the last oh, 4 winters, we do.
This 2010 'Tis the Season to be Jolly was absolutely no different. Sure, four days before D-day we were rejoicing and thanking the Holy Spirit for sparing us. Two days later my brother and I were vomiting our brains out and begging to die.
Of course, this brought along a whole slew of problems. First, and foremost, how do we keep the children from getting it? It's one thing when I wake up on Christmas morning with my head half stuck to the toilet seat. It's a different story, though, when my kids can't enjoy the single most exciting morning of the entire year. My second issue: how was I going to finish putting together and wrapping the presents that I had so severely procrastinated on? I'd like to tell you that had I known I'd be feeling like this, I would have been a tad bit more proactive with wrapping... but I'd just be lying to you. Oh, and you might be thinking "What about the husband? Why can't he wrap?" Well, friends, let's just say that if I were to hand over the present wrapping to my dearest other half it would involve a lot of aluminum foil and duct tape. Nothing says "Santa's Workshop!" like some aluminum foil and duct tape...
I honestly had a moment where I contemplated lying to my children and telling them Christmas was actually two days away, not tomorrow. Then I remembered that my 5 year old had asked me every.single.day when Christmas was. He knew. He was keeping count on his Countdown to Christmas thingy he made at school. This just wasn't going to fly.
And so began Operation: DONT.GET.SICK.
I banned myself to the bedroom, too miserable to enjoy the rare peace and quiet of watching an uninterrupted movie. I couldn't even calm my stomach enough to take a quick snooze. Finally, out of absolute boredom and the need to get my mind off the tummy rumbling, I made the executive decision to ban myself to the living room couch for a bit of boob-tube. With this, of course, came the responsibility of washing my hands until they bled and breathing as little air as possible so I didn't circulate my germs. Did I mention that this was Christmas Eve? Yeah, I guess I did. My plans for a cozy night in with the Fam playing board games and stuffing ourselves with yummy snack trays just made me want to vomit more. The only thing keeping me going was the fact that my children were still well and had their usual hearty appetites.
It turns out in the end that I actually had food poisoning. Norwalk-virus to be exact. If you aren't privy to the details on that pretty little thing, let me fill you in. You can't catch it from the air. You can't catch it from drinking after someone. You can't even catch it if you are in a hot and heavy make-out session or doing x-rated things (websites with Norwalk specifics are pretty, uh, detailed?...). Nope, nope, nope. You wanna guess how you catch this particular "virus"? Poop. Yep, poop. To put it bluntly: Restaurant worker pooped during his/her shift. Proceeded to NOT wash his/her hands. Managed to carry that nice little norwalk-virus back to the kitchen. Made my chicken wrap throwing in a bit of poop particles for added flavor, and BOOM. I am now the proud new owner of millions of disgusting poop germs FROM SOMEONE ELSE'S BODY. I'm pretty sure I threw up one more time for good measure after I read this on the internet.
To make a long story short, and to spare you from the rest of the gory details, Christmas still came this year. Santa stopped by our house and left a crapload of stuff - no pun intended. The kids woke up at a reasonable time (thank you, Jesus) and they were thrilled. Oh, and my baby girl celebrated her very first Christmas. I kept it together enough to smile for the pictures and say "Oh, COOL!" to just about every present my kids opened. Sure I looked like death warmed over, but I look like that at 8 in the morning whether I'm sick or not so no one could tell the difference.
If I were to take one good thing away from this experience, it would be that I did manage to lose 7 pounds instead of gaining them during the holiday season. I guess you could say all in all it was a nice jump start to my New Year's resolution of getting off these last 15? Or maybe that's just pushing it a bit.
