For the past month, I have been the anal-militant freak with the alcohol lotion in her diaper bag, whipping it out and sluicing all of our hands when we were so guilty as to even look at the floor we walked on. I have been that afraid of being sick yet again on Christmas day. And for the week preceding Christmas, I was feeling extra edgy, avoiding most crowded places and supplementing our diet with added vitamin C and food grade Plutonium. We were really doing well; Ford had already suffered his week of agony two weeks ago, and Chas just this past week recovered from a week bout of croup. People, mostly veteran parents, warned me that our house would be sick all winter once we had two young children, but enough is enough already, especially this close to a happy occasion.

Well, Christmas morning, the inevitable happened: I got sick.
Sunrise was such a pretty assemblage of rainbow peach for me to sneer back at it when I awoke, but I was pissed. I felt worse than the usual hangover, worse than a night without sleep. Meanwhile, as I tried prying my eyes open, Chas began to crawl over me to join Ford, already under the Christmas tree.

Buzz an blur, fast forward through presents with the strobe of a camera keeping time, and I found myself bent over the toilet, popping eyeball cappilaries and yelping for relief. And not one, but two Phenergans and three hours later, I had puked my way out of Christmas dinner at my brother’s house. Damon was able to leave the children with the rest of the family and hold my hand while I puked some more.

Finally, around eleven pm, I began to regain consciousness. I remember tossing and turning in a dehydrated, feverish funk through a series of old indie films, knowing the room was too hot and stuffy but too weak to get out of bed to open a window. Damon meanwhile slept in the boy’s room, all three of them must have been curled in a giant snuggle pile watching Harry Potter. I could hear the menu music playing on Ford’s iBook repeating over and over again. Although it was endlessly irritating, and I was too tired to lift myself out of bed, I let it replay in the background until I finally fell asleep.

I walked my way through today feeling cored and weary. Damon had cleaned up the downstairs last night, so that this morning there were no untidy remains of Christmas day. There was no ribbon scattered about, no toys littering the floor, no gung ho Christmas music and no grandparents. Just one very tidy, vacuumed living room. And this, coupled with a deafening quiet, made me feel very sad. So I suggested we go out for pancakes. And while I felt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach by a large plow horse, I had a huge appetite. Until I began to eat, and then I felt otherwise.

Anyway, there was more to Christmas besides my 24 hour bug, right?! For example, if you pause the screen at about 7:30am, you can watch Ford open the present he has been surreptitiously avoiding while dutifully opening a series of other smaller, less huge gifts. It is unmistakably his, yet his name is scrawled onto the wrapping paper with a big black marker: it the long-awaited electric guitar, just like his father’s:

Fast forward ten seconds. For months, for a long as I had been planning on not getting sick for Christmas, I had been wondering how in the world I would find a laser fan that Ford wanted. A laser fan. This, to replace the laser fan he lost, the seasonal item that Target carried last summer. Well, on a last-minute shopping trip to Whole Earth Provision with Mom and Dad (aka project flu transmission) I happened upon a basket of these little f-ckers amid all the stocking stuffer impulse grabs on the counter. Did we SCORE or what?! Ford nearly exploded when he discovered this in his stocking, and I will never understand this fascination, but it is apparently as contagious as the flu virus (except that adults seem to be immune, unless on acid):

Mom and Dad were wonderful. They gave such fun gifts to the kids, as well. Among them: an set of German puppets and a doorway theater that John and I used to play with when we were little. They were handmade in the likeness of Hansel, Grethel and the old witch. I feel extra special to have received a Harvard copy of fables and folk-lore. Well, it was meant for Ford and Chas, but they can’t fully appreciate a book without pictures yet (unless it has “Harry Potter” written on front).

The imagination is wild these days! I set up the theater today in the doorway to the boy’s room. While I checked my email in the office, I could hear them laughing and running back and forth through the fabric wall. I came to discover they were actually transporting themselves through Platform Nine and Three-Quarters (and if you’ve read Harry Potter books, you know that this is the secret rail platform one must run through a brick wall to access, which leads to the Hogwarts Express and takes you to Hogwarts School). The theater is still up, and the boys are now asleep to the sound of the credits music, again. I just peeked in on them through the stage window.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and that it was free of the flu and full of this much magic.

-Steph

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year. We have never before celebrated Winter Solstice, but it has earned higher rank this year as I try reconciling myself with Texas’ sublime seasons. I am frustrated reading about snowy winters elsewhere when we are only now beginning to see the red leaves go brown and fall. To celebrate, we will plant mostly seeds for spring, but also some painted rocks and magic pebbles. And tomorrow night: every light will be a candle.

I keep forgetting about to the weekly Self Portrait group. Here’s my contribution. So what if it’s really Wednesday.

Some of the entries were amazing!
I don’t know why I love this type of self portrait so much.
Two weeks ago, for fun, I took this photo. It’s pretty half-assed, I know. And it’s late, too!
I could take another shot; alas, the camera is charging and in five minutes my five minute window of opportunity will be gone.
Look familiar? Same glass door, this time in winter:

He’s so miserable in the other room, with his flu. I feel horrible about not being able to comfort him. So while he rests now in his bedroom I thought I’d share a few moments of Ford (over the past couple of months) with Linda, my mother-in-law, who remarked that she’s only been able to see the back of his head.

Ford endured an hour of driving in the cramped back seat of the puny Golf car, ready to puke out his heart, when we stopped in Smithville and paused before turning around and returning home. We were driving to Houston for the annual Lights in the Heights, which is a Christmas tradition in my old neighborhood. Mom and Dad had a bell choir on the front porch. The street was closed off. We looked forward to bundling up, boozing up, and towing the kids in a red wagon through the neighborhood, saying hello to old friends.

Poor kid. It broke my heart to watch him tough it out. He is the bravest little boy, so careful not to puke anywhere but into his little yellow bowl. Remembering to say please when asking for a towel. It reduced me to tears when he asked whether the pediatrician’s office that we were taking him to this afternoon was “the one with all the toys where we went when Seti (our old Jack Russell) bit me when I was trying to keep him off the bed because mommy was nursing Chas?”

Instead, I am knitting. Clothing is a priority. It’s too hard to fit normal pants over cloth diapers, so I have to knit my own. The solution: Little Turtle Knits pants. Noro Kureyon. He seems to like them. These won me kudos from our local knitting shop, where we left only minutes before taking this picture. Not before buying another 3 skeins of yarn for: another pair of pants.

Now, back to procrastination.