View From the Bushes

Some weekends are so refreshing that you almost don't mind going back to work on Monday. Some aren't refreshing at all, but they're so fun that although you are ill-prepared to return to work on Monday, at least you feel like you got something out of the deal. And finally, there are weekends which are neither restful nor enjoyable, where you feel strongly that you are owed another weekend, because whatever it was that happened between Friday afternoon and Monday morning, it wasn't a weekend; certainly not in the classical sense.

As I mentioned earlier I came down with a cold last week, and I was still feeling pretty crappy when the weekend arrived. And in addition to being sick, my oldest son had started throwing up Thursday night. But last Saturday was the only Saturday when my friends could get together to play D&D, so I had to do that. "Had" may convey the wrong impression. I wanted to do it; it's just that if there had been some way to reschedule it, I probably would have. As it was, we were having a pretty good time, and it looked like it might be a decent weekend after all, despite being sick. But then it happened (Warning: sick kid story about to start).

When my oldest went to bed she said she didn't feel well so we gave her a bucket. By 9:00 pm she had thrown up. With that information we decided to end D&D early. Just as people were leaving at 10:00 pm my youngest threw up. Lacking the wisdom of age, she had given us no warning, so one might say... she missed. We had just gotten things cleaned up from her and I was laying down when I heard some more vomiting. I figured it was the oldest throwing up some more. No, it was the number two son, and once again he missed. Well in the midst of cleaning all of that up, my wife admitted that she was starting to feel pretty nauseated, and sure enough within the hour she was throwing up.

It wouldn't have been too bad except somehow in the midst of the melee I developed this excrutiating headache in my right temple, the kind where it feels like someone is trying to auger a hole into your brain. Needless to say, it was a bad night. The cherry on top of the whole miserable weekend was when I thought a meeting I had at 6:00 was actually at 7:00 so I was 50 minutes late. Anyone who knows me knows that I hate being late more than just about anything else in the world.

Death before tardiness
Ross