12 day of pain-mas

For some reason, this holiday season has been a little more painful than most. It started 10 days ago and it seems like somehow there’s been illness, injury or owies pretty much every day since. So here goes our rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas...the painful version.

12...Barfers Barfing. Sloane gets the stomach flu at 2 in the morning and pukes for 6 hours. Including twice in our bed. Why does it always look like corn?

11...Pukers Puking. Sloane gives her stomach flu to me. I spend 7 hours curled up on the bathroom floor barfing, to the point where I may never eat mashed potatoes and gravy again and my back hurt for two days afterwards. I counted it as exercise and part of my holiday diet program.

10...Husbands Heaving. And then Scott got it, so he started throwing up just as I was vacating my residence in the bathroom. Good timing. But having just finished 36 hours of gross-ness, the last thing you want disturbing your much-needed sleep is the sound of violent yakking through the bathroom door. Especially when you don’t even have the energy to be comforting or help at all. Good luck, hubby. Welcome to hell.

9...Ladies Falling. Yep, tripped in my high-heeled boots and fell down the stairs. Boot heel broken, ankle just sprained.

8...Kids-a-Coughing. Tagg, who miraculously avoided the family puke fest, starts coughing and then spikes a 104 degree fever. Thanks to Tylenol and a day home from pre-school he’s back on the mend a few days later. But lots and lots of "honey medicine" for his throat, education about the value of coughing into his elbow as opposed to my face, and soothing for the sad, sick child.

7...Fish-a-Floating. The kids decided to “feed” our Beta fish. Granted we don’t like this fish but filling its bowl with an entire jar of fish food and the copious amounts of change in our family swear jar seems borderline cruel. And the kids did it three times in just a few days. Feeling bad for Dory the fish, I bought it a little plastic plant for its bowl while I was buying round two of fish food. At WalMart. I would like to believe that the over-feeding, coin toxins took Dory out but I have been informed that these sweet plastic fish plants meant to spruce up Dory’s bowl may leech toxic China-WalMart chemicals into the water. Either way, the damn fish is dead. Tagg thinks he/she’s on vacation at Vanessa’s house.

6...Goose-Eggs-a-Laying. I’m doing a little cleaning up in the basement and start moving a wine rack that’s perched on a high shelf which has just a couple of vintage bottles that I save for memory’s sake, including an empty $500 bottle of 1982 Chateau Margaux that some Vegas sugar daddies treated us to years and years ago which still holds the record for the most expensive wine I’ve ever had. Sure enough, the rack tips and that particular bottle cracks me right on the forehead. Almost knocked me out. Bleeding and Cars bandaids follow. And then I get to rock a ping-pong ball size, goose-egg lump on my forehead for the next three days. Apparently, just in case I had any illusions, my Vegas sugar-daddy party days are OVER. And that's the worst headache I have ever had from a bottle of wine.

5...Sharp Knives. Never try to cut the strings off a roast when the knife is aimed right at your wrist and there are a gazillion people in your house. This will not end well. Especially when your helpful husband distracts you at a critical moment by admonishing you with a “hey, be careful.” A) Don’t distract me when I’m doing something dangerous and stupid. B) Don’t tell me what to do. I WILL stab myself in the wrist, dangerously close to major veins and tendons just to prove you wrong. At least I didn’t bleed on the roast. I didn’t want to get Chopped. Apparently I should have gone to the Instacare to get stitches but I didn’t so….

4...Tetanus Shots. Well, just one really but still, a shot. In the ass. Hence another bandaid. And the nurse said that my butt was my biggest "muscle." I wish I could have tipped her.

3...Banged Heads. A kid at school threw a train at Tagg’s head, so now he and I have matching head wounds. He also favors Cars bandaids.

2...Tequilas Down. Okay, it wasn’t tequila. It was really expensive High West Silver Whiskey which I was making into an adorable gift basket for a friend who likes their “Lemonade.” I had the recipe printed out, farm-fresh honey, a couple of organic lemons, fresh herbs, this over-priced whiskey which is made in Utah, all packed into a cute tin bucket with crinkled paper shreds. All I had to do was pull the cellophane around it and tie a festive ribbon into a lovely bow. I touch the bottle to move it into primo-wrapping position…and the entire fucking neck of the bottle breaks off in my hand. Breaks. OFF. And cuts my finger. I am bleeding, again. Gift, ruined. Surely there’s glass shards and/or my blood in the over-priced whiskey, and perhaps in my finger. Seriously? How did I get the one bottle of whiskey that was pre-destined to shatter on contact? 

1...Hangover on My Couch. I'm not going to lie. There's a pretty good chance this holiday season of disaster, the 12 days of Pain-mas, may drive me to drink entirely too much one day here soon, so I will likely be laying on my sofa watching football or bad 80s movies while feeling like shit. I think I deserve it. And, let's face it, there's a fairly good chance that I won't do anything that requires stitches while I'm couch-bound so that's a good start to the new year.