Icky Sickies!

I'm a hypochondriac.  At least I think I am.  Fortunately, Jerry enjoys excellent health and hasn't even thrown up since 1975.  Until now.  

Germs are the zucchini of the pre-school set.  There is always a bumper crop of 'em and kids give them freely to everyone they see - and there's still plenty left over at home.  We have two pre-schoolers in our extended family.  Enough said.

Sunday we visited the Grands.  Grayson had been barfing earlier in the day, but he's a one-and-a-half year old; they barf all the time. We really didn't pay any attention to it.  He rallied just as we arrived and he seemed fine.  Later, while Jerry was holding him, he let loose again and blew chunks all over his Grampy.  Ewwww!!!  (I get nauseated when I think of it.  That's just who I am.)

The next evening, a friend from Michigan and her little girl were visiting our daughter's family.  We all met at a local pizza place and enjoyed catching up.  Brody, who was sitting on Grampy's lap, looked glassy eyed.  

Sure enough, during the night he, too, threw up.  So did his father.  Jerry spent a sleepless night himself, but vomiting was not his problem.  

Tuesday morning Jerry texted me to tell me he'd just hurled in a customer's parking lot.  Being a guy, he did not come home immediately.  He said he felt better (remember Grayson's rallying?) and decided to power through the day. Although he made a heroic effort, he was halfway through a meeting when he had to excuse himself and make a hasty exit. 

He dragged in around three p.m. and as he  opened the garage door he yelled at me to vacate the area, which I was happy to do - but not before I saw he was carrying a black bucket.  Later though, I did notice that our bathroom smelled heavily of bleach.  

Jerry spent the night praying to the porcelain god while I slept on the couch.  "You've already been exposed to these germs," he said.  I agreed that we'd already been introduced, but I didn't feel the need to become intimately acquainted with them.

The next morning, Jessica called and said her friend was "lying on my laundry room floor."

It was a solid twenty-four hour bug and everyone is recovering nicely.  

Me?  I never caught it, but I was sick all week.

    

www.StillSwimmingUpstream.com

Recyclable Grocery Bags

Last week Jerry read an article on how germy recyclable bags are.  According to him, leafy greens are just awash in e-coli and the little bugs hop onto the inside of my bags, clinging there forever and ever, amen.  Then, when I least expect it, they crawl out, hop on a piece of unsuspecting produce, ride up to the counter, hop onto the closest dinner plate and ultimately end up getting eaten by me.    

It's taken me a lifetime - or at least a decade - to get my husband on board with the concept of taking bags into the grocery store.  My first thought was we might backslide because of Jerry's new-found knowledge.  That was not the case.  Yesterday Jerry resolved the problem when he announced that he'd washed the three bags that we keep in his car.  He was clearly proud of himself so to underscore his accomplishment and to keep the ball rolling in the proper direction, I said I'd wash the rest of our bags tomorrow. 

Tomorrow is now today and I wonder what I could have been thinking?  Like most moms, I am intimately acquainted with the view from atop Mount Washmore but that doesn't mean I enjoy the climb.  For me, most of the laundry drama followed the kids out the door when they left for college.  I kind of like it that way.  

I collected all my grocery bags from the car, from the kitchen and from the closets.  I sorted them into which ones I thought could be machine washed and those that needed hand-laundering.  There were about a dozen that I threw into the washer and another ten that I needed to be more gentle with so I washed them in the sink.  It was more difficult than I'd imagined and my kitchen and I were both covered with bubbles and water when I finished and took the bags outside to dry.

At first I hung them in the sunshine over the railing on our front porch.  As I was cleaning up the kitchen, I realized that the railing they were draped over was bare treated lumber.  That didn't sound so healthy so I moved them to the back and hung the clean bags all over the deck chairs.  Luckily we face the woods, so nobody could see the hillbilly mess it made.

Every fifteen minutes or so, I am going outside and turning the bags.  I move the chairs down the deck as the sun travels across the sky.  Some bags dried fast, others are taking a bit longer but I do feel some satisfaction that I am wrapping up this job.

I'm happy to have this task (nearly) completed.  Now all I have to do is ask myself this one question.  Why does someone who professes to want to live a simple, uncluttered lifestyle even own over TWO DOZEN reusable grocery bags?      

An Honest Mistake

Christmas is a crazy busy time for lots of us.  With so much going on, we can sometimes get a little frazzled.  Because Christmas fell on a Sunday this year, it was a little more hectic than usual for our minister friends.  They held five services and delivered two different sermons within twenty-four hours.  Back-to-back Christmas Eve and Sunday services are a lot of preparation and a lot of talking, too.

Although our friend Gary is a healthy guy, his dog is taking antibiotics with his meals.  By Christmas morning, Gary was distracted and rushed as well as a little sleep-deprived.  He put the dog's pills on the counter, got out his own vitamins - and then took the dog's meds by mistake.

Ministers are human, too.