The Daver and I frequently play a game with our kids that I like to call “Whose Genetics Are THOSE?” Anything from cowlicks (me) to inability to turn away from the television while it’s on and drooling slack-jawed like the village idiot at it (Daver, obviously) to preference or distaste for foods (usually, shamefully, me) is fair game.

The genes we’re most proud of are quickest to be claimed: my luscious mane of hair, his ability to get more pee on the floor than in the toilet bowl or to put his dirty socks down the laundry chute, my ability to always be right no matter what. Those are the first to be asserted.

What’s left are the dregs. Or what I THOUGHT were the dregs until a couple of days ago.

You see, the stomach flu is making it’s way around our house in various forms. Ben barfed, I vacated my bowels while feverish on the can at 3 AM, Dave rode the porcelain God all afternoon and Alex (currently) has the screaming shits.

And with the screaming shits, comes, of course, the dreaded flatulence. The kid can now fart loudly enough for me to mistake it for his father. It’ll echo around a room and lay a fine greasy layer of sulfur all over everything, like the rotted egg of a gigantic chicken. I honestly had to check and make sure that Alex had not gotten his hands on my iFart application for my iPhone. He hadn’t.

This, of course, because I am most mature, I find hilarious. Side-splitingly so.

Laughter is a powerful motivator in the eyes of a two year old, so he has now learned to fart on command just to make me laugh. The sense of humor and desire to make someone laugh at all costs is all mine (doubt me? Read this. ‘Nuff said).

But the gas? That’s ALL his father. And I am SO jealous.

My own pocket-sized iFarter.

Today, at 2:30 PDT, my friends will bury their daughter Maddie.

In lieu of a real post today, I will link you to the post I wrote while talking to Maddie’s mother while she was in the PICU with her daughter.

And I will raise my voice to the heavens today and beg, “give us peace, give us peace. Dona nobis pacem.”

Rest in peace, little one. The world will miss your smile.

It’s been brought to my attention by the letters O, C, and D that I have posted a decided lack of pictures since my new wordpress upgrade fails to allow me to scale my pictures appropriately. But, in the name of Rotavirus, I will say “eff THAT shit” and post it anyway.

Easter has long been one of my favorite holidays, in spite of the fact that April always seems to be An Asshole of a month (February is always the worst, though). I love it anyway, and I’m ever-optimistic that This Year Will Be Better. It never is, but my glaring stupidity and utter inability to learn from past experiences allows me to become excited about it every year, like clockwork.

This year was no different. I was hopeful and happy to be hosting my annual Easter Brunch. Then, the stomach flu hit us and suddenly, I was not so happy.

You might even say that I was UN-happy.

See, now, this was what Daver and I did on Easter Eve: we filled a fucking ton of small eggs with the sorts of candy that my grubby hands will leave alone. Like jelly beans *shudder, shudder.*

Also: we drink heavily.

And we mock the fact that I routinely forget that I’ve already bought stuff for (insert holiday here) and I buy more. Until it looks like I might, perhaps, have a soccer team of children. Which I assure you will never grace my uterus.

The following morning however, the joke was on us. Because my eldest had gotten sick during the night yet again, we had to postpone the Easter Egg hunt. So now I have a fucking ridiculous ton of small eggs in a bag in my closet simply waiting for the Right Time For A Hunt.

Or maybe I’ll just throw them back in my Easter Bin in the basement for next year. It’s not like anyone actually EATS the candy.

Then, the oven I needed to cook the delicious (pre-packaged) morsels of goodness (read: cinnamon rolls) simply refused to turn on. Fucking asshole oven. I will punch that bitch in the face.

So, then Ben was off with his father rather than force him to sit around and watch other people eat the deliciousness that is my Easter Brunch. That somehow seemed crueler to me than merely sending him off. He was happy, I should rightly add, to go.

We were down a kid, sadly, the one that was most excited about Easter.

This is a stock photo, taken on Tuesday of last week, because I had no desire to document for posterity the barfiness that was poor Benny.

My middle son, he was just thrilled by a ball. The eggs, the baskets, the candy, they were stupid and boring. Especially compared to a big red ball.

And my wee daughter, she would simply like to tell The Internet that her mother is both cruel AND unusual. Why else would she be forced to wear this?

Or one of those Head Garters everyone hates?

Ah, the therapy they will all need.

Did you ever see those commercials, you know, the ones with the perfectly coiffed mother beaming a beatific smile at the camera as a couple of small kids play in the spotless white background? She’ll then reach for a bottle of some supposed anti-bacterial cleaner and lovingly spray the toys or the counter or Something Germarific and then the voiceover will make some comment about how this gently removes 99% of germs without subjecting the kids to horrible toxic chemicals.

I’m paraphrasing of course.

I’m also not That Person. You’d be more likely to catch me popping a rogue binkie in my mouth to clean it before inserting it back into the baby’s mouth. Or casually wiping up a spilled something with my sock rather than busting out The Big Guns. I regularly throw my kids outside to play in the mud and dirt. I don’t buy soap that’s guaranteed to kill 99.9% of germs and I only have hand sanitizer for those diaper blow outs that occur one after the other (God bless 2 in diapers).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of a little bleach and I’m not a consummate slob. I wash my hands after I pee, but I don’t use my foot to flush the toilet, nor do I insist on using a paper towel to open bathroom doors. Hell, nowadays, if you were to come over to my house, you probably wouldn’t even think it was remotely dirty. My kids take regular baths, my floors are washed twice a week, and I even occasionally pay someone to clean my dogs for me.

But even as a nurse and someone whose immune system is one toke away from being technically “compromised”, I’m not a-scared of germs.

Unless (there’s always an “unless,” right?), of course, rotavirus comes to play.

Then, you’re more likely to catch me running for the Lysol as I run away from the sick kid, my hand over my mouth and gloves up to my elbow. I bust out the bleach, spray down every surface available with the strongest germicide I can get without a prescription, all while wearing a rebreathing mask and vinyl gloves (latex allergy). I wash everything the sick kid could possibly have infected on the scorching hottest setting my washer can go on and wash my hands until they’re raw and red.

Oh yes, I admit it, I’m an emetophobic.

But there are some things that do confound my utter fear of vomitus that can sort of make my behavior mildly more acceptable. Sort of.

See, my eldest, the one with a stomach as weak as my own, he barfs in his sleep AND THEN GOES BACK TO SLEEP IN IT. He also, thanks in no part to his autism stuff, puts his hands in his mouth constantly. And, being 7, just goes about his life touching things, his vomity fingers touching all of the toys and stuff of his siblings.

(I’ve tried to teach him not to. It’s not going well and hasn’t been for, oh, I don’t know, 6 or so years?)

Also in my Court of Craziness is the fact that when I get felled by the stomach flu, I get FELLED. I mean, I’m sick as an ever-loving dog for days on end, hugging the porcelain god like it’s my job. This does not a good parent make.

So today, oh family Reoviridae, I drink to you. To the horror that you have inflicted upon my house and my sanity just in time to host an Easter Brunch and Egg Hunt that my eldest could not participate.

The one solace I find comfort in today is this: at least you made it over to Ben’s father’s house. The one who always begs off on the weekends when the kid is sick because he’s able to actually decide when sickness is convenient for him to deal with.

Must. Be. Nice.

Cheers to you, you wily double stranded RNA bastard. You’ve earned it. Happy Easter to you, sir. Happy Easter, indeed.

—————

All right, Internet, let’s hear some of your weird phobias. I have several others that will make you go “dude, that bitch Aunt Becky is crazier than I thought!”

So Bring It ON, Internet.

I don’t have any idea how to follow up my last post with anything of any substance. How do you go from raging against the death of your friend’s child to talking about poop and fart jokes. I see no way of doing so without seeming tacky. And feeling tacky.

So I won’t try.

Instead I will once again proclaim that I believe, I BELIEVE in the collective good of people. I always knew that people would often do the right thing if given a chance, and here the Internet proved me right.

Within 2 days of Maddie Spohr’s death, her March of Dimes donations had gone from under $3000 to over $20,000. And no, while I am stupid, I did not misplace a zero there.

All over the world, people are wearing purple for Maddie and mourning the loss of a wonderful, amazing little girl. If I could figure out how to turn my blog purple for Maddie, I would.

Operation Purple Balloon has a new participant (me) and I’ll be buying the party store out of every shade of purple balloons they have.

Within hours of posting about it, my friend Stef was able to secure food for Heather and Mike for the next two weeks.

But what we still need to do, how you can still help is to donate to the Spohr’s to cover the prohibitive cost of the funeral (around $7,000). Go to the PayPal site and punch in the email formaddie@hotmomreviews.com if you want to donate. Give what you can, when you can. Let’s ease their burden as best we can.

I always kind of rolled my eyes whenever someone would say “but I just say them” in response to the news that said person had died. Well, I’d think, it’s not like Death sends a calling card to mention He’ll be popping by in the next couple of days. Someone was bound to see the deceased before they passed. And this time, lucky you, that someone happened to be you.

Today I woke up and learn of the passing of sweet Maddie Spohr. My initial response was an unpredictably predictable “but I JUST talked to Heather yesterday and Maddie was getting all kinds of feisty! She was GETTING BETTER.”

Maddie was going to marry my son, did I tell you that? Alex got engaged months (years?) ago when I first met Heather. My initial thought about Heather was “holy shit this chick is funny. I wish I could be so funny” and it was immediately followed by a “holy shit that baby is cute. I wish my baby was that cute.”

(Alex, Ben, EARMUFFS!)

So, I always thought of Maddie as my future-daughter-in-law. Honestly, I did. I loved her like my own and always devoured the pictures and anecdotes Heather posted regularly to her blog.

I can’t believe she’s gone. I just can’t believe it.

I spent today flitting aimlessly around the house, trying to focus on something, anything to get my mind off Maddie Spohr. And every time I’d start something, it would be dropped because I simply couldn’t focus on it. I roamed restlessly, tearfully from room to room in my house, wringing my hands and crying and wishing like hell that I could do something, anything for Heather and Mike. I nearly jumped a plane out to see them before I reminded myself that I probably could stand a shower before I got too close to anyone.

I sat most of the day here, at my computer where I sit now. My heart oozed out from my chest into a gooey pile on my keyboard as I wept, my eyes melting with grief. My chest hurt with every gasping breath I took, the oxygen searing my lungs and stinging painfully. I couldn’t stop the hurt.

I can’t stop the hurt.

Sleep, always an elusive mistress for your Aunt Becky, an insomniac of the most pathetic order, fails me and I feel like I’m going to explode at any second. Like my body has somehow filled with some sort of liquid pain and the slightest prick of pressure will send my insides outside to spatter my walls with guts and goo. I hurt. I physically hurt.

I did what I always do when I’m devastated, I made the pain physical. I did hundreds upon hundreds of sit-ups today, my muscles aching and sore after months of disuse. But the ache helped somehow. It felt as though I was punishing myself, making my pain real and raw and not just mental anguish.

And I should hurt. We ALL should hurt. All of us who knew Maddie and Heather and Mike should all hurt. We should hurt so badly that we cannot stand it. So badly that we don’t know if we can tolerate another second of this torture. Because if a life can be measured by the people whom it touched, the whole world is hurting now. Maddie touched us all.

We all will miss Maddie, the most striking child I have ever seen. We all will hurt for her. We will all hurt for the empty chasm that was left in her mom and dad when she passed. We will mourn for her, we will celebrate her, we will love her, and we will cherish her memory, raise up her life and hold her in our hearts. This will be her legacy.

Always.

Because Maddie Alice Spohr was here, dammit, and she mattered.

I have no words.

Heather, Maddie, and Mike, I hold you all so close. I’m so, so sorry. And sorry will never, ever be enough.

Fuck.

I don’t understand. I just don’t understand. And I’m just so sorry.

“When you look up at the sky at night, since I’ll be living on one of them, since I’ll be laughing on one of them, for you, it’ll be as if all the stars are laughing. You’ll have stars that can laugh!”

“And when you’re consoled (everyone is eventually consoled), you’ll be glad you’ve known me. You’ll always be my friend. You’ll feel like laughing with me. And you’ll open your windows sometimes just for the fun of it… And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you’re looking up at the sky. Then you’ll tell them, ‘Yes, it’s the stars. They always make me laugh!”

—The Little Price

When I showed up to the pediatric transplant unit for my first day of clinicals, it was mercifully dark and quiet, the nurses flitting purposefully about as stealthily as they could. The only sounds I could make out beyond the steady mechanical hum found on any hospital unit were the occasional IV beeping, signifying, perhaps, an occlusion in the line or that a bag of fluids was now emptied. It was quieter than any unit I’d ever been on before.

Reds and blues and bright yellows lined the hallway and I noted cheerful balloons painted on the walls as I thought to myself, how wonderfully non-clinical it all looked. How perfectly child-like. It seemed only fair that if a kid were sick enough to have to be in the hospital, at the very least, they could feel at home.

I spied a television with a DVD player and PlayStation stashed in a corner, and marveled at how this hospital really had been designed with children in mind. The unit fridge was stocked with puddings and chocolate milk and chips and graham crackers; all stuff my own two-year old would have happily eaten. I felt as though I might actually be in some sort of elaborate daycare facility rather than a major children’s hospital. There was even a McDonald’s in the basement.

It wasn’t until I got my first assignment -a baby; severe liver failure- and saw that my one-year old patient was the size of a three-month old that these children weren’t having much fun. These kids weren’t on vacation. They weren’t at daycare. They were sick as hell. Some were well on their way to dying.

And still, even as these children died, life went on outside.

People bustled by on the streets, knowing, perhaps, the name of the hospital and the types of patients, but never knowing that fear. The fear that lives in your gut once something horrible happens to you and you know how in the cosmic scheme of things, there is no “fair.” They’d never know how terrible it is to listen to children -innocent children- in pain. These people would never have to voluntarily inflict pain upon their own flesh, their own blood, because sometimes life deals you a wild card, and you do the best you can.

They’d never know about the secret places in the hospitals, the PICU’s; the NICU’s where small, but real lives routinely hung in the balance. Where cosmic scales made absolutely no sense. Where kids lived and where they died.

This secret place, the land of tears.

When they’d think of hospitals, they’d think of the places where old people went when they were ill. Where your appendix or a foot or two of colon would be removed and you’d go home. Cured. Where you’d splint your broken arm, x-ray a broken leg, and bandage up that nasty gash on your finger. Where old people died.

Hospitals weren’t places for children. Because in a fair and just world, kids wouldn’t get sick and kids wouldn’t die.

Kids wouldn’t be born without brains, or with only part of their brains, or born too early, too soon to live. Babies wouldn’t be born still. Kids wouldn’t need dialysis or organ transplants. No kid should have to know the torture of chemotherapy. No parent should have to send their kid to the morgue. No family should have to plan a funeral for a child.

Death, dying; transplants and cancer, those are things that should affect the old, the people who had loved and lost, married and had their families, kids, grandkids; people who had lived.

—————–

My universe is less random than I once thought it to be.

When I birthed my sick daughter, Amelia, it just so happened to be where the very same children’s hospital where I’d previously worked had just opened up a satellite unit. At three weeks of age, she underwent neurosurgery, and for the second time in her life, she became a patient there. First in the NICU, then the PICU.

The monitors blipped intermittently for my daughter, gown bearing the same logo I’d seen so many times before, when her heart rate dipped or she’d forget to breathe and watching them, I’d shake her tiny feet, whispering breathe, baby, breathe into her pink shell of an ear. And then she would inhale, those glorious oxygenating breaths filling her lungs as the monitors would once again blip normal vitals. The alarms would stop shrilly alarming and yet another crisis would wink at us in the rearview mirror as it passed.

Her father and I signed furtively in and out of the NICU, then PICU after we were buzzed in by some unseen, nameless, faceless person into a locked, secret unit; mere ghosts of ourselves. We’d drift in and out for the tenth or sixtieth cup of coffee to keep ourselves awake and functioning, getting gluey food from the cafeteria to put into our mouths and chew, never tasting it. Sometimes, our paths would converge with other shells of parents. We’d smile knowingly as we passed; the kinds of smiles you smile without any trace of joy. Those commiserative, “you too, eh? Well, FUCK,” smiles, not the, “hey, friend, how are you?” kinds.

We learned later that we were the lucky ones. The ones that were buzzed out of this unit with our daughter in her carseat, strapped tightly in and screaming her head off.

The unit of sadness, of broken dreams and tears. Laughter and heartache.

This secret place, the land of tears.

Oh, what a liar I am. This was a post I wrote when Alex was a baby and Dave had just told me about this new-fangled thing called Twitter. I promptly mocked it.

Until I signed up for it myself about a year later. And recently, oh recently, my lying ass completed her 1,000 Tweet.

In case you were wondering, my foot does taste delicious with a chianti and some fava beans.

On the way home the other day, Daver mentioned that he’d been posting on his ‘œTwitter,’ which sounded like he had yet another Internet Girlfriend to add to his collection. My knowledge about current stuff -n- things has always been lackluster at best, especially considering I only recently found out about this thing called ‘œMySpace.’ Come to think of it, I was amazed that our house actually had a microwave AND a dishwasher to boot!!

He explained that it was something you can post little bits of things here and there, kind of like a mini-blog. When I stopped laughing long enough to catch my breath, I promptly began laughing again.

Here’s the thing: I’d always found blogs to be incredibly self indulgent (keep in mind I have 2’¦what does that say about me?), useless, and boring, full of ramblings about what the owner thought about kittens and poodles and the like (although to be completely fair, I have found a TON of interesting blogs in the past couple months).

Mushroom Printing (ed note: my old blog) was started as kind of an anti-blog blog, and I found I rather enjoyed it. We only posted when we actually had something either semi-interesting or semi-coherent to say (some may argue that this is actually never), and I’m pretty sure we never discussed at any length what we ate for lunch (unless there was a pube in it or something).

To me, posting about the minutiae of your day sounds stupid and boring, only interesting if you were a teenager or an international man of mystery. If possible, this is MORE self indulgent than a blog. I’ll give you an example by writing what my day was like today, ala Twitter:

*Oh my God, I’m tired. WHY does Alex insist on waking up at 6:30? OHMYGOD did he pee a lot last night. AAAHHH! Why does he wait until I open the diaper to pee on me? Asshole.

*Ooooh. I’m hungry and my nipples hurt. YAY! I can eat a bagel now! I like bagels. I gotta hide these from Ben, or he’ll eat them all. DAMN, he spied my bagel and now he wants one. Guess I should’ve waited.

*Wow, the Internet is boring. WHY isn’t it interesting yet? OH MAN I GOT TO PEEEEEEE!

*That was a GOOOOOD pee. I feel SOOOOO much better now.

*Yum, bagels are gooooooooood. I’ve got to start Weight Watchers today. I wonder how many points are in this delicious bagel’¦OOOHHH I wonder how many are in a Monte Cristo sandwich. I’ve heard those are terrible for you, but ew, they sound nasty. Dave probably likes them.

*Am I really old enough to have a first grader? Damn, I’m old. But HAHAHAHA Dave is older. I should remind him of that.

*Hmmm’¦Dave sounds crabby. I guess he didn’t want to hear from me about how old he is at 8:16 am. I wonder why’¦?

*HOLY CRAP I’M THIRSTY! I need a Diet Coke STAT.

*That’s much better. I freaking love Diet Coke. I wonder if it’s addicting. It must be.

*NOOOO! Alex wants to eat again. The kid breast-feeds at least every hour. I guess it’s time to start the formula.

*OHMYGOD I have to PEE again. JESUS H CHRIST I GOTTA GOOOOOO NOW!

*Aaaahhhh. Better. I peed for like 20 minutes.

*Wow, the Internet is still boring. I wish people did cool stuff. And post on their blogs.

*Oh shit, soccer practice is tonight. So is Parent Night. Hahahaha, Dave has to go to Parent Night. I should remind him of that.

*Wowzers, he sounds cranky. I wonder why he’s cranky now? I didn’t mention how OLD he is, hahahahaha. Maybe it’s arthritis’¦CAUSE OLD PEOPLE HAVE IT!! HAHAHAHAHA. I should ask him if he has arthritis. And hemorrhoids.

*Man, he is UNHAPPY to talk to me again. I wonder if he’s having a bad day.

*The basement smells like pee. It’s probably cat pee. Sometimes, I hate the cats.

*There are too many socks for me to sort. I hate sorting socks. Dave has this weird hang-up about sorted socks. He got that from his mother. SHE is anal about sorted socks. I bet she doesn’t like it that my socks never match. Ever.

*Lunch is good. I like lunch. I had an egg white omelette and an english muffin and an apple. I wonder how many points are in that.

*WOW HOLY CRAP IS MCDONALDS BAD FOR YOU. LOOKIT ALL THOSE POINTS!!! I should tell Dave to not eat McDonalds anymore.

*Hmmm’¦he’s not answering his phone. I guess I should call back.

*Now it sounds like he answered but then the phone hung up. I should call back to make sure that he’s okay.

*Voicemail again. He must be busy. I’ll send him an email.

*HOLY CRAP THE BABY JUST FARTED ON THE CAT!!! HAHAHAHAH! Wow, that smells TERRIBLE. I wonder if he pooed.

*No poo this time. Maybe that’s why he’s so crabby right now. I get crabby when I have to poo.

*OHMYGOD I think I just heard a car pull up! Maybe Dave’s home from work!!! We can talk about being old together BECAUSE HE’S OOOOOLLLLDDD!!!

*No it wasn’t. Now I’m sad. Oh, I guess it’s only 1:30.

*FINE, I’ll go take a walk. I should move my fat butt.

*OH MAN!! I just got LAPPED on my walk by an old guy with orthopaedic shoes! MAYBE IT WAS DAVE!!! HAHAHAHAHA!

*I like my iPod, but I wish it was blue, not pink. I didn’t want the pink iPod, I wanted the green one, but they were out when I got this. Now I’m sad. Maybe I should break this one AND THEN I CAN GET A NEW ONE!!!

*Man, I’m HUNGRY. I wonder how many points are in a sandwich.

*Wow, that was a gross orange. It peeled well, but sheesh, it tasted like sawdust.

*I love our vacuum. Especially because it has a motor. Motor vacuums are awesome. I wish it were pink. I saw a pink one at Target and now I want it. Maybe I should go buy it.

*UHOH I gotta get Ben’s soccer stuff ready for him. I should totally get a skull tattoo on my arm so I don’t look like a soccer mom.

*THE BABY FARTED AND IT WAS HILARIOUS. It totally smelled like rotten eggs. I should tell Dave that.

*WHY is his phone now registering as disconnected? I should call back.

*Hmm, the phone company doesn’t know why his phones are all disconnected. MAYBE HE’S AT MCDONALDS AND HE DOESN’T WANT TO TELL ME. I’m gonna punch him for that. McDonalds is awesome and I love it.

*Holy crap, feeding the baby rice cereal is hard. It’s like peeing into a moving target at 20 feet. WITHOUT A PENIS.

*Man, the baby is soooooo cute. Too bad his butt smells like rotted eggs. He must get that from Dave. His butt smells rotted, too. Gross. Men are gross.

*WOW, I’m glad someone else is taking Ben to soccer. Practice is boring.

*OHMYGOD, I just accidently busted Ben for taking a dump-a-lump. I thought he was playing in his room when he was supposed to be getting ready for bed.

*sighs*

I still can’t believe I have followers on Twitter. My tweets are sadly no better than I’d predicted. Oh, and Dave is a whopping 2 years older than me. I’m not really a trophy wife or something. Sadly.

Okay, Internet, dish. What’s something you’ve done lately that you never thought you’d do.

My good friend, k@lakly over at this is now what I had planned–and also Cason and Caleb’s momma–sent me an email this morning asking me to ask my readers if they’d ever heard of this.

She took Cason into his 4 month well-baby visit and part of that visit is the ever-dreaded shots (Amelia got hers this week and it about broke my cold, shriveled heart). Today, he got diphtheria/tetanus/(and)pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, polio, and prevnar.

Today, he also ended up in anaphylaxis and stopped breathing. His momma (thank GOD) got him to the hospital in time and he’s stable now (thank GOD).

But this has stumped the doctors who have never seen anything like this before so his poor momma, k@lakly, asked me to post to the Internet to ask if anyone had seen this before.

So, wise Internet, rather than ask you to evaluate the size of my ever-widening ass, I beg your help. Has anyone, ANYONE heard of anything like this? Send me an email at becky (at) dwink (dot) net or leave a comment here. Repost this, whatever it is that we can do to get this around.

And can everyone, EVERYONE send poor Cason and his momma some prayers and love today? Leave her some love here and she’ll be able to read it (she doesn’t have a post up about this as of yet).