Who Cares if There's Water in the Basement?

I debated whether I should post about my fourth stomach bug in three years. I feel I should write down some of the unhappy details of our parenthood or otherwise we'll only remember the good stuff. To which Bridges says "So what? Why do you want to remember the bad things?" Which just about sums up his wonderfully positive attitude about life.

Actually, even if I didn't write things down, I would still probably remember 10x more negative stuff than he would. It's just the way we're wired. But it's not all bad, because after some time these memories can be awfully damn funny. Just read Operating Instructions if you want a fine example. Now that I think about it, Bridges couldn't finish that book because it was too hard to read, whereas I thought it was hilarious. As I said, we're wired differently.

So I will just shortly summarize. Friday Clara is diagnosed with her sixth ear infection (a double) in ten months. She's on antibiotics. She's not sleeping well. Lee's having nightmares and is not sleeping well. Saturday I come down with terrible stomach cramps, which last for 36 hours (mercifully no vomiting this time around), and am now on my third day of diarrhea. The kind where you don't leave the house.

Let me just say that this has not been as bad as the rotovirus (or possible Norwalk virus) we got last year. Which hit us just one month after a 3-day stomach bug which involved Lee throwing up on Bridges' head while riding his shoulders through the mall (see, that's funny!). This nasty bug lasted six days and we were lucky Lee didn't end up in the hospital. One night her fever climbed over 104, at which point we yanked out the thermometer and dumped her in the bathtub at 3 am. She lost an unbelievable amount of liquids and was so sick she wouldn't even watch TV. I was nursing Clara at the time, somehow, between cleaning up bedsheets, Lees clothes, my clothes, etc... it was really awful.

But not to digress, let's get back to stomach bug #4, which for some reason has selected only me out of the family. Which I know is a good thing but somehow still seems horribly unfair. Sunday night I'm lying on the couch with pretty sharp stomach cramps, and Bridges tells me we've got water in the basement, which is coming up from the floor and flooding the west end of the house... as opposed to the east end in which we installed a brand new sump pump last summer. Poor Bridges, who has had very little sleep the past week because of the kids' not sleeping, spends the next three nights dealing with this (first just bailing by hand, then installing a second sump pump himself which turns out to be a learning experience), while I just lie on the couch.

I knew I was feeling better yesterday because I could spend some energy actually worrying about it.