I'm feeling a little queasy...

Since last Monday I (well, mostly Scott) have been doing load after load of puke laundry.  It started with one bad night last week when one said child went from bed to bed to bed throwing up each and every time I cleaned him up and tucked him into another bed.  The bug has been slowly traveling from one boy to the next despite my disinfecting and quarantining. 

For the last five or six days, vomit has managed to find its way into each and every day.  It's usually in the form of a small boy frantically telling me he needs his "choke bucket", a plastic toy bin that's been converted recently into the barf bucket.

Today was no different, it started out fairly normal for us.  I woke everyone up, sang happy birthday to Tommy (6 today) and told Tommy he could pick out whatever he wanted for breakfast.  Pancakes, omelets, scrambled eggs, you name it.  He chose what every six year old birthday king would... McDonalds.  I agreed only if everyone loaded up into the van right away.  Due to the freezing cold weather we had all been a little sluggish this morning and were running behind.  We raced to the van and loaded up.  The boys cheered as I scraped the frost off the window with my debit card.  Snow! Snow!  Snow!  No boys, that's called frost, sorry. 

We were off.  I hit the McDonalds drivethru and peeled back out onto the highway.  Traffic was thick and I was watching the clock.  I was facing forward and blindly handing sandwiches and hash browns behind me to cold little hands.  I snuck a bite of Tommy's McGriddle as I passed it back.  Soon I could hear Finn frantically looking for his choke bucket.  I dumped out the McDonalds bag and threw it at Tommy instructing him to hold it for Finn.  Apparently he wouldn't get his seat belt off fast enough and I saw eggs fly up from the backseat and stick on my radio.  At that very minute something in my esophagus reminded me that I have no business eating McGriddles since my lap band surgery.  I grabbed my Target bag with the Christmas photo cards (the very photo cards I will be sending some of you) in it and dumped them onto the pile of already dumped out McDonalds food.  I was attempting to aim for the bag and keep an eye on traffic and console a still retching Finn in the backseat when Gavin noticed me vomiting next to him in the front seat.  I guess the flying eggs had made him a little queasy and me gagging put him over the edge.  I made a snap decision and threw the Target bag his way.  Meanwhile, I threw up in my hand.  Gavin missed the Target bag for the most part and threw up on his multiplication homework.  Still deciding what to do with a handful of McGriddle I looked around for some options.  As I looked up, the car in front of me had stopped very quickly.  I slammed on the brakes loud enough to make a squealing noise.  Then suddenly, Finn's car seat flew 5 feet to the front seat.  He had been buckled into his car seat in the last row of the van seating.  Now he was upside down in a car seat turtle shell in the front seat.  In a traffic jam of sorts, I couldn't pull over immediately.  I consoled him best I could as I tried to get off the road as soon as possible. 

I pulled into a used car lot and uprighted him.  He appeared unharmed.  He was conscious and breathing fine, covered in vomit but breathing fine.  I replaced the car seat with him still attached, we are in a bit of a time crunch remember?  I raced back to the driver side and jumped in.  I handed out wipes to everyone and assessed the homework.  Not destroyed but splattered.  I wiped the homework and Gavin's tears.  Gavin was on the last problem and it happed to be the part of the homework that bore the brunt of the damage.  Only wet now from the baby wipes, I had no choice but to open up my window just far enough to stick my hand out (now 41 degrees out) and let the homework flap in the wind to air dry.  Most people would just turn on the heat but that gave out just after the AC went out.  Who am I kidding, this doesn't even happen to normal people.  I drove for the next 20 minutes with a numb hand. 

We were the last car allowed into the parent drop off line as I pulled my arm back in the window.  The answer is B Gavin, just fill in B.  With that, I slid the van door open and sent them off hoping they would have a better day.  I yelled Happy Birthday as Tommy skipped off to school unfazed. 

I was headed home when I remembered we needed to pickup beer and blueberries.  I'm not joking, this was our grocery list.  So I brought the boys to the grocery store.  Our family is the reason the store now has disinfectant wipes near the carts.  As we loaded up the van and I secured the children, the scavenging birds recognized my van.  They flew over and weren't shy as the hopped up into the van to see what they could find.  The boys squealed with delight as the birds hopped about eating bits of egg and hash brown.  I just sat there in amazement.  Was it weirder that birds were eating vomit or that they were eating their own unfertilized eggs?  Then I quickly realized that were we drawing a few onlookers and that I was the weird one here not the birds.