As the most awesome birthday gift ever, Chris sent me to a bed and breakfast with Jessica.  It was one of the tender mercies he has extended me in the last few months.  Another was when I came home and found two bottles of white wine sitting on the kitchen counter.  I am not sure if you know this, but in Utah they only sell beer in grocery stores.  If you want anything else, you have to go in to a special liquor store.  That was never going to happen toeing my little group behind me.  So all that cooking with wine was over for me.  I am embarrassed to say how much that bothered me.  I love cooking with white wine.  White wine and parsnips.  Delicious.  Everything is better after having been deglazed with white wine.  I couldn't get it any more and not like my cooking is spectacular to begin with, but there was even less love in those dishes.  So when I walked in and saw that white wine sitting there on the counter, it was like seeing mercy and Chris-love in a bottle.  That's from someone who doesn't drink.

It is probably a really good thing I don't drink.  By now I would probably be downing gin every night.  I have never even smelled gin, but I have vague memories of Grandma Brown missing its taste in her tea or something.  Or maybe that was rum.  Anyway, if you could put it in a teacup and drink it down proud with your pinkie in the air, well now, that's my kind of spunky drink.  And that leads me back to the bed and breakfast.

It was really sweet and Jessica even arranged for us to have high tea.  We didn't know what that was, exactly, but it sounded like something we should try at least once.  Just so you all know, high tea is basically what you imagine a tea party being.  It was lovely: cucumber sandwiches, a bowl of berries, little pots of jellies and butter to lather on scones, some chamomile tea in a very flowery teapot.  Everything matched.  We even had lace napkins.  It was perfectly quaint.  After high tea we took a 'jaunt' down some abandoned train tracks and looked at the blooming dogwoods and fields of running horses.  It really was like out of a dream.

Had my middle school self seen me then...  Well, I probably would have been disappointed by how small my chest still was, but I would have forgiven myself when I saw the clawed tub full of bubbles on our bathroom.  Jessica loves me.  She even found special Epsom salts for my aching feet.  I had already taken a bath, and so we put Jessica in the bubbles (which was just as concealing and modest as they make it in the moves... see, some things you see in the movies can be real).  We didn't have a wash bowl in the room.  I really should speak to the maid about that.  I suppose the modern plumbing made it a little redundant.  But I had nowhere to soak my feet, so we emptied out the trashcan and filled that puppy full of lavender Epsom salts.  Believe it or not, my feet have actually been a lot better since.  Now that I think of it, I really should do that more often.  I probably don't because, as I mentioned before, I don't have a proper washing basin.  Sigh.*  The trials of modernity.

Anyway, it was lovely.  I had forgotten how soft and peaceful it was.  I am really glad I thought to write about it.  Jessica and I spent the next morning laughing with the other breakfast guests.  In fact, the woman serving commented on how the laughter was so loud that surely it sounded like dinner... and didn't even need alcohol.  I think the story of the morning was when Jessica shared a time when her father-in-law had used JB welds (a construction glue) to put a tooth back in.  It was good company.  Well, I was with Jessica.  What more good company do you need?

To commemorate the fine time we hunted down an old antique shop, three stories high stuffed with beautiful old things.  Most antique stores read like a stuffed garage sell in some old smelly house, but this place was beautifully prepared.  The upper story was more raw, but it still had history books open to pages displaying the very 1800's furniture that we were looking at.  We were actually after a tea cup as a keepsake, but I wasn't willing to spend $150 on a beautiful tea cup and I didn't want the hideous little thing that was $25 but it was a good time anyhow.

Sitting here at home it is a little weird to think that I was there.  That it only happened a little over a week ago,  I think that in the moment I was still a little numb from being home and by the time I had landed in the Las Vegas airport I realized that it was already over and that I would have to go back.  I realized that I hadn't brought any thing home for anyone except for Chris (I play favorites like that). So I stalled, finding a shirt for Lyra and some candy for the other kids there in the airport.  I paid a stupid price, but the time bought was worth it.  I found the car, got in, headed home, decided to get some gas and then kept hesitating as I pulled away.  I almost turned around right there on the on ramp to go back and maybe get some dinner.  Anything.

I didn't.  Chris knew I was coming and had spent the entire weekend with kids violently throwing up on him, Grandma and Grandpa.  He was entitled to a break.  I am glad that I hadn't waited much longer.  Uh actually, glad is not the right word, but it was a good thing.  I walked in the door at about 12 am.  Esther was crying in bed so I went to go comfort her and not five minutes after my arrival, I had vomit down the front of my shirt.  Even throwing up and with a face crusted in boogers and hair matted with ... something, she was beautiful.  Chris came in then, with an expression of deep exhaustion and relief.  I told him to go back to bed while I cleaned up Esther.

Instead, after finishing up with Esther, I found him on the toilet, so very unhappy.  I had just thought to go get him some Pepto bismol when, in a blink, there was suddenly well chewed ramin vomit piling up on the floor and splashing onto the surrounding walls.  Not 20 minutes after my arrival  I was literally shoveling stomach bile and ramin vomit into a bowl with a dust pan.  And so the night went on.  Ethan then Esther again, then Someone with nightmares then Isaac gagging and coughing up unreal amounts of formula.

To Chris' credit, he had already survived two similar nights, solo.  The next day he took off work to continue to fill the toilet and I took the kids.  Each still throwing up in turn - Parker, then Ethan then Esther then Ethan then Isaac.  It occurred to me that I should just stop giving them more ammunition but then, they already looked dehydrated.  Chris was a little better by the next day and worked from home, courageously helping in the kitchen in the evening.  He was exceptionally kind and even apologetic about everything and it was weird because this was no harder than it usually was.  I guess the throwup added a bit of  a twist, but the kids had been constantly and seriously ill since we moved here.  Parker when his lips were turning blue because he couldn't breathe, then extremely bad ear infections in both Issac and Ethan.  Esther was diagnosed with bronchitis.  She would cough and cry through the nights.  Then Isaac had another ear infection.  Anyway, I was thankful that he was so sympathetic, but seriously confused because again, this was not harder than it had been before.

When I started throwing up Tuesday night  it then occurred to me that I was not going to get a sick day.  That Chris had a very important meeting with board members and absolutely could not come home early or even for lunch.  I was on my own, no matter what.  Chris got up with the kids in the morning, but he had to leave early for said meeting and he handed me the baby.  He needed changing and I remember setting him down on the table and then being so dizzy that I had to crouch down or faint.  I left a hand on that squirming baby (I swear he has a death wish) and cried faintly for Chris.  It was as loud as I could muster, but I know it must have been soft, because he didn't hear me and a few min later the door closed and that was it.  Alone.

The baby had to be changed.  Parker hadn't thrown up in a day so he and Lyra needed feeding and dressing (please, they are still only 5) and to be taken to the joke of a school here for a whoppin' 2 and 1/2 hours.  I would have skipped it, but if they built up too many absences they didn't get to go to the pool party at the end of the year.  Ethan and Esther needed to be wrestled into their car seats.  Isaac needed to be stuffed into his and carried out.  And all without getting too much throw up on the car.  I didn't feed the younger twins till we got home.  They weren't hungry anyway.  Chris called me at about 3 to see how it was going.  He found out that we didn't even have sick time TV going because I couldn't find a single live battery in the house to power the remotes to the wii.  That good man snuck out to buy and bring me batteries.  We only live about five minutes from work, so it wasn't a huge trespass to sneak out, drop them off and sneak back.  But it was still really sweet.

Honestly by that point I didn't care if there was TV.  I had hauled those sick kids to the store to get Tylenol (I only discovered the battery situation after the trip) and back.  It was all they or I had in us.  They just cried.  They took turns, so it wasn't too much of a burden on any one.  They cried and cried.  Ethan wasn't keeping fluids down at all, Esther was only doing a little better and Isaac was not to be left behind so he cried and cried and cried.  And yet... somehow it seemed the same.

I was still alone, walking on feet and knees that were giving out and ached with every step.  Still holding two crying, sick babies.  Still doing laundry and dishes.  Still sick.  Alone.

That night after Chris came home from work I took Ethan to Insta care, because the nurse I had spoken with on the phone told me that I should not worry unless someone had been 8 hours without a wet diaper.  Ethan wasn't quite that, but to be safe I took him in.  I was then treated like a completely idiotic and negligent mother.  I insisted that he only needed a prescription for throw up medicine and he would be fine, but they scoffed and told me that I must go the the ER immediately 'come back when you have an itty ear infection or something' the nurse said as a farewell.  $250 later and after being patronized and belittled, after no one would give my thirsty kid a drink, even though he was there because of dehydration.  After they had wrestled an IV into his little arm while ignoring my explanation that he just needed something simple, like zofran.  After drawing thick blood from him and after some child psychologist told me how I should hold my kid now because he was sad.  After they then realized that he didn't have some crazy thing and, like I had said, just needed zofran to calm his raw stomach.  After the dr sat there explaining to me how to use Tylonol. After all that, I pulled into the Walgreens just in the nick of time to get that wretched zofran.  Poor miserable little Ethan.

It was another long night of changing sheets and wiping vomit from hands and faces.  Ethan was a little better thanks to the Zofran and the next day I started giving it to Esther, too.  The throw up was still flowing strong, in spite of the zofran by the next day.  Partially because Ethan patently refused any medicine at that point.  Force feeding can only get so much down.  And Esther had begun to do the same.  Isaac's eyes were sealed shut with puss.  Esther would not move from her bed.  I called and set up an appointment for four of the five kids for Friday.   It was about this time that my own pressure headache had begun to be dizzying.  And I snapped.

I survived this day and still I am here.  Homework, bedtime, dinner, getting the kids to eat dinner, laundry always more throw up laundry.  I broke.  Kids were still not in bed by then and it was 8:30 pm.  If I didn't get them there, sick as I was, it still wasn't going to happen.  Alone.  I was alone.  Still.

Chris could see the rage in my voice and helped Lyra when she started crying in bed because we hadn't done the full scripture and story - they were jumping and yelling.  I was not prepared to wrestle with them.  I don't think Chris could figure out what had happened.  One moment everything was fine and the next I was a raving hysterical mess, stuffing dishes into the dishwasher - it wasn't going to get done unless I did it.  Chris finally convinced me to just go to bed.  That night he arranged for me to sleep the next two nights in a hotel.  He also took the first wave of kids nighttime throw up. And tidied the house.

The saga should be over.  That is how it should end.  And yet there is always more.  Next day I was cleaning more explosive vomit out of the couch.  I was literally pinning Ethan down and shoving my fingers in his mouth so he couldn't spit out the medicine I was trying to give him.  That day the Dr confirmed that everyone had, indeed, been sick, prescribed more zofran for all, diagnosed severe ear infections in the three babies, one of whom was to go get tubes in his ears.  And decided that Parker was not, in fact, showing signs of asthma.  That his struggle for oxygen was due to some sort of bacteria, and then a whole new gambit of drugs were ordered.  Seriously, I have funded the entire college tuition of that pharmacist's kids.

Bless Chris for sending me off to the hotel because I then spent my entire time there downing cold medicines to control the mounting pressure behind my own ears.  I still managed to get a few errands done, but I could only manage an hour before I was dragging myself through Smiths with bottles of water and cold medicine.  The memory is hazy.  All I remember is at 2:30 I checked out with the intention of going to that noxious insta-care with an 'itty' ear infection of my own.  I didn't know the hours for those places, though and was not willing to pay another $250 to take my chances with the ER.  So I came home and rocked a writhing baby so that Chris could get a little sleep out of the rest of the night.  I was not going to sleep.  I couldn't tip my head without an excruciating pressure headache.

And now, here I am.  Sunday night... or actually more Monday morning 2am typing this out.  Partly because it is still painful to put my head down... but also partly because if I go to sleep, the whole week starts anew.