oh.my.belly screen.

We have been fighting some kind of awful stomach bug that is going around here since Tuesday evening.

Jake came home from school on Tuesday saying that he didn't feel "berry" good and his "belly screen" was hurting. If you are a tot mom, you get the belly screen reference. For those non-tot moms, there is a cartoon called Team Umizoomi and the robot calls his tummy a "belly screen".

Jake went to bed fairly early Tuesday night and woke me up covered in a lovely mess come Wednesday morning, the same occurred on Thursday morning with a nice fever and some vomiting, and by Friday....it caught up with me too. It is a lovely little bug.

I stayed home from work on Friday, somewhat afraid to leave the house and mostly exhausted from being up ALL night between my tummy and Jake's tummy. Not to mention that I had taken Jake to school ill the last 2 days thinking he just ate something bad and not realizing that he really should have stayed home the first day and nursed some liquids to kick the bug, not make it worse. No amount of IV fluids can replenish your body after the great clean out this bug does to your system. (TMI? nah..) It drains you and makes you quite weak.

This bug has caused me to have a love/hate relationship with this weekend. Well, the bug along with allergies, and eating Mexican food two nights in a row. (why did I do that too myself?) I blame my brother. He is home this weekend for his 21st birthday and he LOVES Mexican food, and the nastier the better.

After sleeping Friday until I couldn't stand it anymore, I did manage to leave the house for a short stint to get my oil changed, bad idea. Jake and I both barely made it through that trip. We got home and I was praying that I could just get back to my bed and Jake would sleep the rest of the day. This is where my love hate/relationship with Excedrin comes in. It is the only "drug" that helps my head from feeling like it's going to blow off my shoulders and after not having a headache for 2 weeks, the dehydration and lack of normal functioning ability of my body produced a rather intense headache. Down side to this miracle drug, caffeine. And a lot of it. The problem-I couldn't go back to sleep. So what do I do, at 4pm like a crazy person after being up all night long and sleeping most of the day away, I now hyped up on caffeine decide to clean some of the house. Another BAD IDEA. I was dying. Now, not only was my head pounding, and my tummy churning a small alien around....my allergies were going NUTS. Leaving me unable to breathe through one nostril, my throat feeling like I swallowed a pin cushion and my ear feeling like it had a mound of lady bugs crawling around in it. I was miserable and Jake was starting to perk back up. Then came night o' Mexican food #1. Joy.

Today, I felt like I was going to die. I made the whole night without loosing any Mexican food, but this morning was no good. I still couldn't breathe, that pounding headache was still kicking, and that alien was still brewing up a mean batch of death in my guts. I was awake for a short period this morning and back out before lunch this afternoon. Then out again until I had to get dressed for family pictures this evening. My company hosted our annual family day today at the Dallas Zoo and I was really looking forward to taking Jake out there, but I was in no shape this morning to be at the Zoo nor was I so sure that Jake could have handled it. The only reason we continued to do family photos in the weather and feeling like poo was simply because my brother and sister-in-law were home, which doesn't happen very often so we had to take advantage. They won't be home again until Thanksgiving, and that was going to be too late!

Family pictures were....bitterly cold. Of course my family takes pictures on the first day the super cold front decides to blow through. But we had the lovely Dyan Kethley taking our pictures and I know there will be some super fun shots (I hope so!). Then, came Mexican food #2, thanks Jeff, I am now dying yet again and can't sleep from the mass amounts of caffeine flowing through my body from sucking down Excedrin like it's candy.

I don't know why I do this to myself. I eat the most God awful things when my stomach is not in normal conditions. I try to do way too much when I don't really feel like it. I need to quit trying to off myself these days and slow down! Good grief, my body is seriously trying to tell me something.

I have however managed to keep a smile, laugh with my family the last 2 nights, and not be as grumpy as I feel on the inside. That's got to be good for something, no?!