Oh gods. So. very. sick.

I find it moderately unfair that this seems to be getting worse as it’s passed along to each family member. The boy had the collywobbles first on Thursday night and threw up once, then just had an upset tummy on Friday. HRH had the collywobbly tummy on Saturday and part of Sunday. I had the usual getting-sick powering-down of energy on Sunday, but didn’t actually manifest anything until 1:42 AM last night, at which time I woke up and thought I was going to die. And then I proceeded to stay awake for three hours, thinking I was going to die. I moved to my office and tried to distract myself by transposing a song Sandman7 and I want to play together at some point, which was surprisingly successful, checked on the sleeping boy a few times (including sitting down on the floor next to his bed, putting an arm around him and lying my cheek on his side to cuddle him as he slept), and finally got back to my own bed to sleep around 4:30. And then an hour later a damned cat knocked over the screen that gives them privacy in the litterbox, which sounded like a gunshot and woke both HRH and I up… and the boy too. I got up to check what it was, stomped back to bed and fell asleep. I woke up around 7:00 with the boy burrowing into bed next to me with his stuffed Maggie-cat in one hand and BunBun in the other, so we could both cuddle something. It was nice to snuggle him till it was almost time for him and HRH to hit the road to their respective schools. I waved as usual and then stumbled back to bed.

I woke up again at 9:30, still feeling moderately oh-gods-I-want-to-die, and then realised (A) with great argh that it was in fact October 6, which was Mousme’s date to have her head shaved live on radio for the Shave to Save campaign for breast cancer… at 8:00 AM, which had been ninety minutes earlier; and (B) with a bit of panic that the landlord was coming by this morning to power-wash the garage door in preparation for painting it this week. So I leapt out of bed and scrambled myself into some sort of reputable state, and here we are.

Collywobbles and upset stomachs and wanting to die aside, we all had a lovely weekend. The weather was beautiful and crisp. On Saturday HRH acquired an Xbox 360 at a hundred dollars off the customary price (!) (“I shouldn’t do this,” he fretted, so I helpfully enabled him by pointing out that if he ever wanted to play a new Xbox game again he’d have to buy one at some point), I acquired a new cell phone (which is black and very light, and we have discovered that the back has red sparkles in it when you angle it properly in the sun), and the boy acquired a new Thomas the Tank Engine DVD (because wow are we sick of the ones we have). After everyone napped we hied ourselves to Tal’s housewarming party where we saw many friends, including some I hadn’t seen in fifteen years (let me tell you, it was odd to sit on a blanket chest with girls I’d last seen ages and ages ago, all talking about our kids) and others who I’d always seen at parties but never had the chance to speak with (parties for me tend to be ‘hit the people you know and exchange essential info ASAP because eek, look, a crowd’). The boy had a wonderful time galumphing around with two older children, who seemed cheerfully willing to galumph with someone less than half their age and whose father was willing to galumph around outside with them in the first fallen leaves of the autumn, along with HRH. When we said it was time to go the boy just stood there next to his newfound friends and burst into tears. “A sign that things have gone well,” their father said, and we shared knowing looks.

On Sunday HRH started putting the gardens to bed for the winter. The biggest part of this was harvesting all the damn carrots, a job he shared with the boy who has taken a big bunch of them to school today for show and tell and snacking, greens still on and everything (because how much do you want to bet that most of these kids have never seen a carrot that’s just been pulled from the ground?).

And now I get to settle down and do another manuscript evaluation, assuming it’s actually arrived in my work folder. It hadn’t on Friday, despite the notification that it had been assigned. I need some time away from Orchestrated anyhow, after the numbing sprint over the past two weeks.