I am blessed to have a family that does not get the stomach flu. Honestly. No kidding. I've never, ever had one. My husband of 16 1/2 years has not had one in the 18 years I've known him. In ten years of parenting neither of my boys has had a stomach flu. The only member of the family to regularly throw up is neurotic Shakespeare and he almost always does it, considerately, near the door. I know, I know, let the disbelief and the hissing begin.
My youngest son gets carsick when he reads in a hot car. That's an easy fix. No books, lots of A/C. As a baby he obligatorily drenched me in spit up frequently but grew out of that. My oldest son? Beyond mild spitting up he has never thrown up in ten years. Here is an example of his cast iron stomach. When we were stationed in Iceland we went on a whale watching tour. The only two people not puking in agony were him and me and I only held it in out of sheer force of will. When we got off the extremely smelly boat, #1 had the cheerful nerve to say, "That was fun, can we go again sometime?"
This lengthy preface is to say that last night #1 threw up. Okay, about time right? Picture my life though. I live in an RV. We were at the self serve campground that had no laundry facility. I don't even have extra bedding because of limited space. And this kid saved ten years of vomit for one night. It was on the wall, cooked to the radiator (oh, that one was fun to clean), all over the top bunk, dripping down to the bottom bunk and all over the carpet. Did I mention we don't have a carpet cleaner?
Did I mention my parents and my sister spent the night with us? Or that my sister was sleeping under #1 and ended up looking like a Jackson Pollock painting? Or that we apparently ran out of water in our tank and there was no way to shower? Or that the smell absolutely took over my 316 square feet of living space? Being unused to such occurrences, I literally stood paralyzed in the middle of the bedroom just wondering where to begin.
We solved all immediate problems by throwing all the nasty laundry out the door into the sub-freezing weather. Frozen vomit won't smell as bad, right? I attacked everything with paper towels and Method's Lavender scented cleaner which worked really well. Thank goodness the bottom bunk is a leather couch and was the easiest to clean. Baking soda on the carpet to absorb odor, a damp paper towel to wipe down the kid and my sister, a waterless toothbrush, some Coca Cola syrup that's been around since my last pregnancy and everyone went back to sleep. Except me. I was awake for another hour, thinking about my next blog and also about how the Pioneers would deal with the problem. At least they didn't have to clean cooked vomit off the radiator!
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