Domestic BLISS!

We’ve been lucky that the worst thing The Boy had caught so far was a nasty little head flu. Oh, he might have caught something worse when he was a baby — but babies spend so much time leaking and excreting horrible things out of various orifices simultaneously that, honestly, who can tell.

That all changed Saturday night, when he got his first stomach bug. Melissa did the Mom thing, I washed sheets and pillows and stuffed animals. Four loads worth, between Saturday night and Sunday morning. Melissa did another two Sunday afternoon. Neither one of us got much sleep.

The Boy seems to be feeling better — he’s now actively miserable instead of passively. Melissa spent Sunday night racing to the bathroom every 45 minutes. This is a demanding bug they’ve got. It judges you not by the contents of your stomach, but by the number of times you kneel before the toilet. And you will kneel.

I might be safe. Saturday night — when not racing up and down stairs and doing Emergency Midnight Laundry and Amateur Carpet Cleaning Brigade duties — I was alternately freezing and sweating in bed. The freezing parts were OK, since I like to keep the bedroom temperature down around “Cold Snap, 2009, Duluth,” but rarely get to do that since getting married. And by “rarely” I mean “never, ever.”

So I’d be in a state of near-chattering right up until the sweats kicked in. The sweaty parts were extra-sweaty. The kind where you keep pulling more and more blankets off yourself, trying to get comfortable, right up until you realize you’re freezing again. Draw feet back up, pull blankets around chin, and start the process all over again. Still, beats puking for 48 hours.

This morning The Boy got up at five, and couldn’t be talked back into bed. By six he was throwing up the water I’d given him. The triage nurse on the phone says that his system is getting in some fluids, since it’s taking him so long to throw them back up. And also he’s peeing. So — no emergency here yet. Unless you count caring for overlapping stomach flu sufferers on little or no sleep an emergency.

I’m not sure exactly what to call it, but I’m calling my Congressman and asking for a bailout.