Charlie Brown Christmas tree found.
Charlie Brown Christmas tree decorated. Without too many fistacuffs.
Five hour traditional cookie baking session complete. Without too many fistacuffs.
Stockings were hung by the chimney with care.
Night Before Christmas read. Check.
Everyone happy. Yup.
Including this Hussy who received this Hussifying outfit, which is exactly what I needed, which is better than any gift I wanted.
And then the vomit. It returned. Christmas night. Like a phantom green and red ghost haunting my Christmas. Twin A and Twin B. At the same time. It stole the spirit from me, although I'm not sure I ever had it. I thought the spirit drifted in during that 5 hour cookie baking session but then I lost a few of my ball bearings and it was gone. It came back Christmas day with skating on the pond and the homecoming smells of pot roast in the oven and the joy of brand new games. And then that ghost.
I puked, vomited, hurled, barfed, upchucked the next day. Just once. But I don't trust this ghost. It's been lingering in our house since Dec. 16th, despite my 3 hour Lysol-ing event on Christmas Eve. Every nob, light switch, door handle, chair surface. And yet my exorcism didn't work.
On this same day, the day after Christmas, Sydney decided to go on a walkabout down the hill to her favorite garbage can. I got in the car to find her and sure enough she was as round as a pot bellied pig. Paul Bunyan and I have discovered that if we pour hydrogen peroxide down her throat, it will induce her to vomit. And so we did this, saving us thousands of dollars in vet bills for emergency pancreatic care. I followed her around the yard, with my shovel, ready to get rid of the piles of vomit, because she's been known to re-eat her garbage. But then it got too cold. I thought I could watch from inside. And sure enough she slinked off. Again. I got in the car to find her. She had puked, vomited, hurled, barfed, upchucked twice, down the hill from us. I put her in the car to bring her back up to the house. She started to retch in the car so I quickly opened the car door and out she jumped, just in time to puke, vomit, hurl, barf, upchuck one last gigantic pile.
This morning, I found her pee all over the floor. Because when she taxes her kidneys like that, she pisses out everything she drinks, without even knowing she's peeing. I'm drowning in it. I can't let her out, because when I do she heads down the hill to eat her own vomit.
I'm retelling this all to you not because I know you want to hear it, but because it will explain why next year I will be pretending that Christmas time is not here. It will be the reason I want to skip it all together. I realize that the spirit of Christmas is about giving to others. But I look forward to the day when my charges stop giving me regurgitated food to clean up and my dog stops giving me a reason to shoot her. I gave this year. Yes, I didn't know I gave you something. But I gave you the stomach bug. Next year, how bout we'll just skip this little holiday and I'll knit you a little something for 2012.
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