A day in the life...

Preface
We attended a cousin's birthday party on Saturday and ate ourselves silly. In particular, Miss Rae Rae decided that she would eat not only her food, but her two-year old cousin's. Needless to say, she puked it all up when we got home. We assumed the child had just overeaten. We were wrong.
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Monday evening, 7pm
I arrive home with the girls at our normal time, ready to feed them and the dogs before heading out to a work-related dinner. I make Rae Rae a delish meal of nuggets, green peas and corn bread and fed Petra her favorite, tomato soup. Feeling comfortable, I leave the girls in their father's charge and head to a local restaurant to meet my colleagues for dinner.

Mon, 9pm
My phone beeps urgently. I look down to see that my husband has called a few times, which does not bode well. I call home to find out that Petra has been vomiting violently for the past half hour and has the chills. I leave my colleageus and race home.

15 min later...
I arrive home to find my older girl child puking and crying, saying, "Mommy, please get rid of the sick." I stay with her on the couch (where she's more comfortable) and put a bucket by her head. I notice that I don't feel so well either, but attribute that to the wonderful, but rich meal I just ate. Wrong again.

Tuesday morning, 12:30 am
I realize with horror that Petra isn't the only one who's sick as I race to the bathroom for the first of many puking sessions. At some point, when nothing else comes up, I sit hunched over the toilet, dry-heaving and thinking that I really need to just die or at least stop puking...neither of which happens.

Tuesday morning, 4am
Based on my calculations, I've now puked approx. seven times with several hurls each sitting. I've also been up almost all night with no sleep. Fortunately, it appears that I have rid myself of whatever toxic virus attacked my body and I actually manage to get two hours of sleep before the baby wakes.

Tuesday, ROD
I lie on the couch immobile next to Petra, who although sick, is well enough to ask me for something every five minutes and my husband, who came down with the illness about two hours after I did. Fortunately, I was able to extricate myself from the bathroom long enough this morning to take Rae Rae to school (that was the longest trip of my life) knowing there is no way Natche or I can take care of her right now. Rae Rae, of course, suffered the least and is happy as a clam.

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I'm not sure I can entirely articulate how horrible this stomach bug/flu actually was. It was, perhaps, the sickest I've been in a very long time and that says a lot...I've had shingles, dammit...and I can't believe how quickly it passed. While weak and exhausted today, I am, nonetheless, better.

Now, if I could just find the daycare child who got us sick...

How long does it take to get to Maine?

According to MapQuest, it's really not supposed to take very long. But MapQuest can't really factor in traffic, bathroom breaks, unexpected detours, more traffic, slow drivers and even more traffic.

Yes, my friends, it took us close to FIVE hours to get to Yarmouth for the ClamFest, while worth a two-hour drive, was not even close to good enough to be worth the actual time it took. We stopped TWICE at McDonalds because, you know, it wasn't like we were headed to a food festival featuring (arguably) the yummiest food in America. No, we had to stop before the baby ate the fabric off her seat and/or Petra peed all over the car. So, Mickey D's it was.

The clamfest was good though. There were food booths, an arts and crafts festival and an entire (expensive) carnival. We ate our weight in food (including the best clam cakes ever), rode a few rides and headed home after about two hours. We stopped in Kittery on the way back to satiate my always ravenous shopping appetite and made it back home at ~10:30...just in time for the girls to have breakdowns.

Don't get me wrong, it was fun. Enough. And next time, we'll know not to follow the directions every car in Massachusetts seemed to have and instead take our secret squirrel back roads (which we *so* should've done in the first place).

Yes, next time.

Gary Busey's famous "Buseyisms"

Oh my. This is so incredibly sad, it's hysterical. Check it out and then go look at the TWENTY-SEVEN other Busey shills for GotVmail videos.

Is it time to give up on Twitter?

(Cross-posted at Beautiful Marketing)

Will Twitter EVER be stable? I ask because Twitter's issues relating to scalability and stability are nothing new. And yet, very few seem to have abandoned Twitter for one of the many similar services out there - Pownce, Jaiku, Plurk, et al.

Why? I think you can give credit to the incredibly simple interface and the numerous apps and services that riff off of Twitter. And probably Scoble too.

Still, at what point do people decide enough's enough? I think it's coming soon. Twhirl has been nightmarish - I see "limit exceeded, paused 5 min" more than 75% of the time - and the Twitter web site is not much better.What do you think? Is it time to give up on Twitter?

My favorite things...for now

In no particular order...

1. Sleepy morning babies who cuddle when you first pick them up
2. The look on Petra's face when she gets mail (especially now that she can read her name)
3. The Deadliest Catch
4. Morning silence
5. Akitas - especially the pinto-colored ones
6. House Hunters (HGTV)
7. Trans-Siberian Orchestra
8. "Back" day at the gym
9. Lincoln Park After Dark
10. The BlackBerry Curve
11. Fairly Odd Parents (what? It's growing on me! I especially like the epis with Jordan von Strangle)
12. Buffalo chicken chili...want the recipe?
13. Buffett
14. Margaritas (with anejo, please)
15. The laundry fairy
16. S'mores
17. Bikram yoga - I go here
18. Twitter (when it's up...for more than an hour at a time)
19. My new job
20. Rude Cosmos

And one very not-so-favorite thing:

1. Babies who grab poopy diapers out of the trash can and shake them all over the place causing the poop to fly around the room.