In Which Her Bad Mother Faces Total Defeat
I haven't done the math yet, but I'm pretty certain that about one-quarter of the posts on this blog are about me being sick, WonderBaby being sick, or the both of us being sick and/or about how the Husband never seems to get sick and the cosmic injustice of the fact that he gets to avoid both being sick and doing the laundry.So, if you are sick of reading about how much it sucks to be sick, maybe skip this particular post.
Our household seems to have become a very efficient virus transmission facility. WonderBaby acquires a nasty bug from somewhere - from, oh, say, licking another baby at the park or at playgroup - and for a very brief period of time becomes snotty and sniffly and cranky and then passes it on to me. I become snotty and sniffly and cranky and take every conceivable measure to avoid passing the virus back to WonderBaby but always manage to fail, so that at the precise moment I am starting to feel a little bit better, WonderBaby gets snotty and cranky again and so on and so forth.
This has being going on for about a week now, and I am, to say the least, sick and tired of it.
It would be easier to bear were it not for the fact that WonderBaby is not slowed down by the common cold. WonderBaby, it seems, is not slowed down by anything. A cold makes her snottier and crankier, but it does not make her more inclined to sleep during the day, nor does it impede her ability to move about at high speeds. She thrashes about the house, toddling and climbing and grabbing and pulling, with her usual force and little bit of Bad Temper thrown in for flair. And leaving a slug-like trail of snot behind her as she goes.
(I can, at least, thank the gods that I no longer face the grim task of sucking the snot out for her. She does just fine on her own now, thank you very much.)
What I had been hoping for, today, was a tranquil, if sniffly, afternoon of the kind that I used to
spend as a child when confined to bed with a bad cold: snugly wrapped in blankets, warm drinks and digestive biscuits at hand, cathode rays beaming Family Feud from the television set into an otherwise darkened room. That kind of afternoon, adapted for me and WonderBaby, is what I wanted: the two of us, curled up together on the sofa, tea for me, a bottle for her, and old episodes of the Muppet Show running on DVD. Cozy and happy, our sniffles an afterthought.What we have instead is me and WonderBaby, both in pajamas at 3 in the afternoon, neither of us cozy, only one of us happy. Me bleary-eyed and miserable and huddled on the floor in a blanket, damp tissues shoved down the front of my pajama top; WonderBaby toddling about in circles, emitting high-pitched shrieks and hoots in celebration of having sucessfully jammed a two-headed doll into the DVD carousel, slowing down only to wipe snotty nose on ultrasuede ottoman. It's just one junkie and a pool of vomit away from looking like a scene from Trainspotting.
(Oh, wait! THERE'S the pool of vomit!)
(You think I'm making that up? It's not exactly vomit - more like goopy spit-up - but still. I'd take a picture, but this blog is just not that raw.)
I'm this close to just chugging the Nyquil and spending the rest of the afternoon in a Dextromethorpan fog, just to make the picture complete...
... except that I fear that she would overpower me in my incapacitated state and take over rule of the household.
If you don't hear from me within a few days, send help.
posted by Her Bad Mother @ Thursday, September 28, 2006
50 Comments
It's been a challenging few days. The Husband has been working non-stop, which leaves WonderBaby and I in a sort of single-parent family condition, wherein I get very, very tired and sometimes cranky. (How real single-parent families do it, I do not know, I really, really don't. I would be dead from exhaustion by now were it not for the presence, however erratic, of my husband as a parenting partner.) Also, we couldn't celebrate 
If you're going to make a break for it, Mommy, take a cab.
