A twelve hour snapshot for you to enjoy.

 

11:45pm Ring Ring! Ring Ring!

Oh god, who is calling so late? What's wrong? Something's wrong!

11:47pm Bren climbs back into bed after answering the phone.

"Who was it?" I ask.

"Wrong number, " he says.

"At this time of night? What did they say?"

"He said, 'Christine, is that you?'"

"Gee, I bet Christine will be delighted to here from him….and also, I know you don't have the deepest baritone but geez, that's a slap in the face, isn't it? Unless Christine has the voice of a man, too."

Laughter. And then sleep.

2:30am I awake to find Luca in between Bren and I in our bed. When did he come in? He is stretching and whimpering.

"Are you alright, honey?" I ask.

And then the vomiting begins.

Like a rocket, I am out of bed and procuring old towels.

2:33am Vomiting appears to have subsided. Bren takes Luca into the bathroom to remove clothes and clean him up. I strip the bed and mop.

2:36am Put on 1st load of washing. How is Ziggy sleeping through all this? Thank god Ziggy is sleeping through all of this.

2:40am Bren remakes the bed complete with a thousand towels in the event of round two.

2:41am Luca stands there ghostly pale and shivering but giving me the most beatific smile. God, kids are adorable when they're sick!

2:45am Luca and I climb back into bed.

2:46am Bren cleans himself up having bore the brunt of the spewing and goes off to sleep in Luca's bed so that he can run interference when Zig wakes up.

4:30am Another brief spew and back to sleep.

7:30am Time to start the day. I have a midwife's appointment at 9.10am and I am thinking I won't take the kid with gastro and the other one with suspected chicken pox (oh yeah, Zig has suspected chicken pox. Weeeee!) so Bren calls in to work to let them know he won't be coming in because there is quite obviously a pox on our house.

8:40am Finally in the car and on my way.

8:45am Have a brilliant idea about a shortcut since I am running a wee bit late and am caught in the tail-end of peak hour traffic.

8:46am Turn right into the street that will be the brilliant shortcut.

8:50am Still in brilliant shortcut street along with forty other cars. Great minds.

8:55am Brilliant shortcut street does not appear to have any traffic flow.

9:00am Call midwife to inform of zero traffic flow situation and how I am going to be late.

9:05am Scratch that. There is flow. Up ahead I can see that cars are turning left into a jam-packed roundabout. At a rate of approximately one car every five minutes. I am at least twelve cars back.

9:06am Think about turning the car around.

9:07am Think about turning the car around.

9:08am Think about turning the car around.

9:09am Turn the car around.

9:10am Oh my god, it feels so good to be moving. I am doing almost 50 kilometres an hour right now!

9:11am Hmmm, the way I usually go is actually a pretty awesome way. Why did I mess with awesome?

9:12am Still going to be about 20 minutes late though. Sigh.

9:13am What's that little light there on the dash? Oh, that's the 'no fuel' signal. Excellent.

9:28am I am here. And I did not have to push the vehicle part of the way. Success!

9:35am Midwife takes one look at the number of high readings in my GD record book and pretty much tells me it was nice knowing me and good luck with the rest of my appointments which will have to be conducted at the hospital now that I am almost certainly doomed to need insulin.

9:40am Oh, the heartbeat! The heartbeat always makes everything better.

9:55am Make it to the service station where I pay a zillion dollars to fill the tank with fuel and a couple of bucks for a mini can of Coke because if I'm fucked I'm fucked.

10:25am The Coke has made me feel better but a spot of retail therapy still seems necessary which is why I pull the car into the local shopping centre.

10:26am Guiltily call Bren to make sure he is coping with the sick house. He says he's fine so I go shopping with impunity.

10:45am Holy fuck! How cute are little girls clothes?

11:30am Arrive home to relative calm. Am treated as some kind of Father Christmas figure when I dispense new DVDs for little sick ones to watch on the couch.

11:40am Put on 87th load of washing.

12 noon Finally sit down on the couch – why do I feel like I've been shagged backwards through a hedge?