you don't realize how pleasant your "busy" christmas day was until you spend the next day throwing up
(i hate vomit)


christmas has come and gone. hannah is now three years old. we are only a few days away now from the year 2007 and all the jokes about how people are screwing up the dates on their checks because they "can't believe it's 2007!!!". honestly, how many years 'til the window on that particular conversation starter closes? five? maybe ten at the most? with the advent of the checkcard followed by it's complete integration into society, only old people write checks now anyway. when they are gone, we'll have to come up with something new.

so, what will my lasting memory of this year's christmas day be? if you are asking me six months from now, the answer may in fact be different. if you are asking me today, the answer would be vomit. let me explain.

christmas day went pretty much like the last three have gone for us. up close to dawn. family christmas. santa. family presents. the whole bit. off to marie's house for french toast and breakfast casserole and more presents. then off to sandy's (my stepmother) niece's house to visit with my dad, sandy, ken and angel for a bit. open more presents. say our good-bye's. hear crappy excuses as to why dad and sandy won't be at their granddaughter's birthday party. head home. hannah naps. we clean. hannah wakes up. head to marie's again for turkey and dressing (so good....so. good.). then back to our house for hannah's party. the party is nice. everyone has a good time. i give away my playstation 2. the house is empty. day complete. was it a busy day? sure. but every family's christmas day is busy, right? only if you are unlucky.

then comes the vomit. i wake up around 12:45 the next morning and don't feel right. i know what's coming. i just don't want to admit it. after coming out of the bathroom for the first of many, many times, i lay down. an hour later, the marathon session of losing all that lies within me begins and doesn't end until late in the a.m. hours. sarah cycles about two hours behind me most of the day and we spend one of the more miserable and memorably pathetic days together we have ever spent. both sick. neither capable of taking care of the other. both resigned to "get through it" as soon as possible. not really sure when that end is actually going to come.

i think that if i believed in a literal hell, a place of eternal damnation and suffering, i believe now that all you would do there is throw-up. what worse way can you think to spend eternity? spewing from every orifice. muscles you never realized that you had cramping at the same time. head pounding from dehydration. body alternating between adrenaline charged sweat to fear charged cold. a feeling of helplessness so strong that you wonder to yourself if death may be the better way to go at that very moment when things are at their worst.

all in all, the 26th was a long day. i don't know if there really was a lesson to be found in it. i know i did my share of griping about our "schedule", just like i always do. was this god's way of telling me to shut up? maybe (if your idea of god is that he's mean as shit). i know that i felt like i could've been more proactive in making the day as a whole feel less stressful. was the vomit god telling me that i needed the day off from work to "recharge". maybe (if your idea of god is that he is a sneaky little bastard). i guess, now that i feel human again, i will choose to look at it like this. it could've been worse. the vomit could've come the day before. it could've ruined weeks worth of anticipation about what our christmas with hannah would be like, but it didn't. it came the day after. on the 26th. nothing big was going on on the 26th.

so, here we are on the 28th, and things seem to be ok. hannah gets to open more presents tomorrow. probably her last for this year. mommy and daddy are back at work. all bodily systems are operating normally. alabama lost another football game. what's not to love?