And I’m pretty sure that light isn’t an oncoming train!

Today I have felt human the entire day. I was tired and I’m still weak from not eating much this week, but I’m better. Thank GOD. I made myself toast for breakfast, ate applesauce a few times, and for lunch and supper I made myself a bastardized version of Congee. Congee is a traditional Chinese dish which is basically rice porridge. It’s often served at breakfast but can be eaten any time. The basic recipe is a small amount of rice and a large amount of water. You’re supposed to use real rice but all I had was the instant kind. Luckily I found a recipe where someone had used leftover cooked rice and I figured it should work since instant rice is basically pre-cooked rice anyway.

I used half a cup of rice and three cups of water. I brought them to a boil and then turned it down one notch so it would keep boiling but not bubble over. It takes about 20-25 minutes of boiling for the water to reduce and then I was left with a small pot of porridge goodness.

When you get it in Chinese restaurants (*real* Chinese restaurants, not fast food court takeout crap) you can get countless varieties – it can come with chopped chicken, sliced beef, fish, combinations thereof, vegetables, seasonings that are spicy or sweet, whatever. But if your stomach is upset, just the plain Congee with a bit of salt and pepper to taste is great. It doesn’t have much taste but it feels wonderful in your tummy and it’s guaranteed comfort. I can’t believe I haven’t eaten it in about ten years.

So anyway, after eating it for lunch and making more for supper, I feel much better. I have a serious lack of protein in my body right now so I’m hoping to take care of that tomorrow, but at least everything I ate stayed where it was supposed to. I’ve also been drinking a lot of water and some ginger ale so I’m not dehydrated any longer. I may even have a cup of tea soon but NO milk in it. That Kraft Dinner episode scared me right off of dairy until I’m 100% sure that it’s safe for me again. I figure if I don’t have any more trouble, I should be okay to have some coffee tomorrow but not until I come back home.

We’re going to hit a second hand bookstore tomorrow because it’s been forever since I’ve been in one. I have four great books on my desk right now that I got for free, basically, because sometimes my reviews get me Amazon gift certificates as a thank you gesture. Free books? Woo! I got myself Memoirs of a Geisha which I’m almost 100 pages into right now and I love it. I wish so much that I could just curl up with it and read it without interruption because that world is so foreign to me and I’m loving every word of it. I also really want to read Wicked next, and then move through my other two, Love in the Time of Cholera and The Other Boleyn Girl, but just because I finally have some books that I want to read doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to go to a bookstore and find some more, especially since they’re cheaper.

When George and I worked at the studio, there was a secondhand book and CD store around the corner from us and we used to go there regularly (he took me there on our first date, total keeper). I could easily spend over an hour in there. It wasn’t big but it was well organized. There was another one downtown but it was total chaos in there with fiction and non-fiction and horror and bodice-rippers all piled pell-mell onto the shelves. While that can be fun if you have a lot of time to browse, the one near the studio made it a bit easier to narrow down your searches. I loved sitting on the floor in the corner and pawing through the horror novels and the young adult stuff. I miss that store.

So tomorrow should be a good day for bookworms, I can’t wait – and thus there will be no coffee with milk before I go because I don’t want to have to rush straight back home!

And just when I thought I was in the clear, I was so wrong. Gastro 3, Sherry 0. This feeling is exactly why cats crawl into a tight dark space to die when it’s their time. Not that I feel like curling up to die but I would indeed love to curl up somewhere dark and quiet and warm and not come out until this thing is truly over.

Word to the wise: If you’re just getting over gastro, do not under any circumstances eat Kraft Dinner no matter how comforting it sounds. It may taste wonderful going down and give you some strength but then the dairy you forgot about (because you’re a frickin’ moron) will hit your stomach and you will be so violently ill that it will be a miracle that neither kid wakes up from the commotion.

Also? The color-free Pedialyte is the nastiest, most vile substance I have tried to choke down since I had to take some kind of icky medicine when I was a kid. Buckley’s tastes better. Next time we buy Pedialyte you can be sure we’re getting the fruit punch flavor just in case I actually have to drink it too.

Good night.

(Hi Holidailies readers! I promise I don’t usually write endlessly about being sick. Better entries soon. I hope.)

Well, the gastro that Breanna caught was pretty damn contagious seeing as how I came down with it too. Can I just say that gastro sucks?

Luckily she seems to be better, having eaten something real last night (a small bit of chicken) and some more food today. I’m not what I would call “well” at this point but I’m certainly better than I was in the middle of the night. For two days I had minimal sips of water (probably dehydrating myself tremendously, but I just couldn’t get it down more than just a sip here or there), a very tiny bowl of chicken noodle soup, and two small bowls of applesauce. Tonight for supper I had a toasted bagel and that was possibly the most delicious thing I have eaten ever. It was so good to put something solid into my stomach, and the gingerale I’ve been sipping in between small cups of water has helped too.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow and the day after that, at which point I’ll hopefully feel a lot more human that I have the past 48 hours.

Just when I thought I couldn’t laugh tonight, I found this entry and ended up snorting so hard I think i may have hurt myself.

Well, it just sort of continued from where we were last night. Breanna was sick again twice in the night, and two more times today. On top of that, I feel horrible myself. I can’t warm up no matter what I do (I’m waiting on a kettle to boil right now in the hopes that tea will help), my stomach feels very volatile, and my legs are a giant ache.

The hard part really is that while feeling like doing the cat thing and crawling into a closet to die, I actually have to take care of someone else who is also sick. On the other hand, it’s not all that bad. Hayley (who feels gosh-darn-dandy thankyouverymuch) is in school for a large part of the day so she’s entertained at least, and Breanna isn’t a newborn who wants to be walked around all day – she spent most of the day sitting on my lap while I did my best to work as much as I phsyically could, and she also slept on me while I laid on the couch. And at least we’re keeping each other warm with body heat.

Plus George is really helpful even though he’s under the weather himself – he’s under orders to take it easy for the next few days but he’ll still get Hayley what she needs or hold Breanna if I need to pee.

So we’re surviving, but honestly I’m hoping this is a short-term gastro. Speaking to my friend about it this evening, I found out that there’s one going around our area and some daycare facilities were even shut down because the staff was sick and the toys and surfaces all needed disenfecting. Still, I’ve seen Breanna perk up a few times today so hope prevails. Tonight, about ten minutes after she had puked again, she was lying on a towel on the couch watching some cartoons. Hayley started making fart noises (what, that isn’t standard in your home too?) really loudly and even though I was down the hall putting fresh sheets on the bed, I heard Breanna burst into gales of laughter. When Hayley stopped, Breanna weakly called out, “again ‘Aylay, again!”

Only in our family can fart humor still be totally appreciated even while you’re sick.

I woke up at 6:30 this morning to a ton of snow (that’s not the surprise, we knew it was coming). George and I were debating whether or not to send Hayley to school seeing as how we couldn’t see much of the street and it appeared that we no longer had sidewalks. We put the radio on and discovered her school – and most of the other elementary and high schools – were closed anyway, so we quietly went back to bed and everyone slept past eight this morning. Yay, snow day!

I have to admit, my once-teenage-self was jealous because not once in my life did our schools ever close. Kids today, so pampered!

The second surprise was less pleasant. As Breanna watched “Go Diego, Go” before bed, I was cleaning up the toys and she decided to come see what I was doing. Completely out of the blue, she suddenly started gagging and then she promptly puked all over the (new!) rug, her toy, herself, and me. So that was fun.

She was okay until I carried her to the bathroom to wash her up, and then her OCD kicked in when she noticed some was on her. She can’t stand things on her hands, so she started crying and saying, “off! OFF!” I wiped her down and tossed her in a bath, and she perked back up right away. Still, it took a lot out of her because it took her no time to fall asleep. She’s been restless in her sleep and George and I had to pause our movie three times so I could go check on her but each time she conked out again within two minutes. Poor baby, it was her first time actually vomiting.

Let’s hope she’s better by tomorrow!

Over in my review blog, I reviewed a great game for young kids called Jump Start World, which I received courtesy of Parent Bloggers Network. Feel free to check out what I thought if you’re in the market for a fun game that helps your kids learn at the same time.

The great thing about a party is the obvious chance to hang out with friends and, in this case, see the kids having fun together. Today, though, I got to enjoy the three best things about the day AFTER the party:

1. Sleeping in. When we have a late night, it means we get to enjoy sleeping later than normal. Today it was about 9:45*. Ahh.
2. The clean home. Because if I go to the trouble of maniacally cleaning everything up the day of the actual party, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it all slide the day after. The day that follows a party, I usually clean everything up to the point of looking just like it did five minutes before guests arrived. Then I get to sit and enjoy a clean, orderly home for the rest of the day.
3. The food. My biggest fear when I throw a party is that I will not have enough food to feed everyone. As a result we go overboard and get more than we need. I had made two big lasagnas, plus we had chicken nuggets, two kinds of battered cheese puffs, different pates, cheeses, crackers, bread sticks, chips, pretzels, vegetable platter, fruit platter, and two cakes. We had a ton left over. I love the day after a party because I have a load of food to munch on throughout the day. For lunch I ate about 25 pounds of cheese with crispy breadsticks and that was awesome.

Now I just have to get to bed so I can stop feeling so tired.

*Sleeping in ended up biting us in the ass though. Breanna was tired enough that she was asleep by 8:45 (not to mention the fact that she fell asleep in her little chair at 2:30 this afternoon). Hayley, however, was still awake at 10:30. I’m too afraid to go see if she’s asleep yet because I might cry if she is.

After Breanna’s birthday party today I realize I must be getting old. Once upon a time I could party it up until the wee hours with no trouble at all. For years now, we’ve always combined kids’ parties with adults getting together too, since we’re all one big group of friends with kids of similar ages.

Tonight, Breanna is in bed sleeping, Hayley is in bed trying to avoid sleep, most people are gone, and only a few of George’s friends remain. I could swear that it’s midnight at least and it’s not even 11 pm yet. Although part of me wants to crawl into bed, I think I’ll make a cup of tea, eat a slice of the Caillou cake I made, clean up a few last things, and then hit the pillow.

Plenty of pictures will be on the way at some point, but first I must sleep to recover from my little one’s party!

(I’m participating in Holidailies, an entry a day throughout December with occasional time off due to holidays if necessary, so if an entry a day in November wasn’t enough, now you get even more.)