Regurgitation

Anna's been sick today. I have cleaned her up after 3 bouts of vomit (with several spews per bout), changed her clothes twice, cleaned floors and furniture each time, and now she's sleeping. Hopefully she will stay that way.

I have washed my hands approximately 50 times, changed MY vomit-covered clothes once, and now I feel like I need to be run through a sanitizer.

But as I was scooping up some vomit off the carpet with a spoon after Bout 2, my mind turned back to the time I threw up on Halloween of 1990. What a memory. I was 8 years old and just putting the finishing touches on my costume before heading out for some trick or treating. I was dressed up as a business man. (We can talk about why that may have been a questionable cross-dressing decision later, but I thought it was ingenious.) I was wearing a suit and tie (I felt like such a rogue), a black hat, and I was carrying a briefcase. So dashing and quite a costume for an 8-year-old girl.

But I needed help with my tie. I had been ignoring rumbles in my stomach all afternoon, but trick or treating was far more important. So this pressing need took me into the kitchen to ask one of my brothers for help tying my tie. Figuring he was the most experienced, I asked my oldest brother for help who was there visiting with his new wife of one month. He started to work on my tie, but then things started to close in on me and I started to get very, very clammy. I woozily moved away from him and said I needed to get out of there.

I threw up three times before I actually made it to the bathroom, with one spew landing on the borrowed black hat I was to wear that night. Rough.

Later, my sister in-law told me that my mom asked her to grab a spoon so she could get in on the clean up, telling her she "better get used to this." And there's no time like the present. My mom is awesome.

I went to bed with a glass of sprite, and my kind older sister went trick or treating for me. Many people thought she was totally full of it and looked skeptically at her extra bag, but I guess she was pretty convincing because I remember getting a LOT of good stuff that year. Though my other sister's black hat has never been the same, I will always remember with fondness that Halloween.