vacation!

[metaphortunate]

Q: How was your vacation?

A: Ten days eight timezones away, with me and Mr. E plus both kids plus the in-laws, every single one of us getting sick, except me who was sick when I left, stayed sick the entire time because you can’t get better when you don’t get any sleep, and am still sick? Staying in a B&B so filthy there were actually insects in the bed, because there literally wasn't another free pair of rooms in town, so we came home to do a full bedbug decontamination on all our stuff instead of resting? That vacation?

Q: Yeah, that one.

A: Well, first let me say that I recognize that I am a very lucky woman. I’m in a position to take a vacation, which not everyone is. And I’m lucky that I have in-laws who are willing to pay their own way to come on vacation with us just to hang out with the grandkids, without which I honestly do not know what I would have done; because even with them, two days into it I would have cracked and tried to change our plane tickets to come back home right away, but I couldn’t because I was too sick to fly. And I’m lucky to have two kids who have such vibrant good basic health that even when they develop a 3-pack-a-day cough and pour snot out like giant ambulatory faucets, it doesn’t sap their energy or slow them down in any way. And hey! The baby is clever enough that at just over 10 months, he has worked out that he can avoid having his nose wiped, which he hates, by smearing his face all over our shirts the moment he feels snot on his face!

So all in all, vacation was absolutely better than childbirth, I would say. Though it did last longer. And I might even be willing to take another vacation again someday.

Not, like, soon, though.

Comments

[loligo]

OMG BEDBUGS NOOOOOO!

I am itching from here just thinking about it. I am so very sorry.

[metaphortunate]

I am hoping that they were not really bedbugs. When we actually had a real bedbug problem in our previous apartment, we found out because I was getting the classic horribly itchy, painful, silver-dollar size wheals. I did not get those at the Filth Hotel - just ordinary bug bites such as you might expect from sleeping with the windows open and spending much of the day outside - so I am hoping hoping hoping.

But still running everything through the dryer, the freezer, or spraying it with alcohol.

[loligo]

Maybe it was just fleas. When we moved into this house, we all started getting bites at night, and since we had just been on vacation I was terrified that we had brought back bedbugs from the hotel. But it turns out that it was fleas that had been lurking in the carpet here in egg form for months, just waiting... The vibrations of people moving around caused them to hatch.

[metaphortunate]

Might be. Don't fleas hop, though? Whatever I found in the bed, it didn't hop, it ran.

[norah]

Oh ugh awful so sorry. Nothing more to be said. That's terrible.

[laurashapiro]

Oh god, I am so sorry.

I feel like I should channel the Doctor, in fact: I am so, SO sorry.

[thistleingrey]

:( :(

A childfree friend once dug up the mp3 for a song titled something like "Use a Tissue (Not Your Mom)" and sent it to me. I still haven't listened to it, but knowing that someone has made a whole song was oddly reassuring.

[metaphortunate]

Ahaha I love it.

[amaebi]

"As compared with being in the entrails of a giant sea snake..."

Congratulations on your survival!

The part of baby-wrangling that I disliked the most, and I think Chun Woo, too, was the mucus extractor. I never minded diaper changes, but I pined until Chun Woo learned to blow his nose.

[metaphortunate]

Babies, so different! The Junebug shrieked like he was being flayed every time we used the Nosefrida on him. So far Rocket behaves...well, honestly, he behaves like me at the gynecologist, i.e. it's clearly not fun but he can just sort of quietly grimace his way through it.

[amaebi]

(I didn't hold babies much before I became a late-breaking mother. I was a little overly respectful of their too-often ignored personal boundaries before I'd put my elbow in my baby's chest to change him in my lap. But once I was bolder in baby-holding I found that every baby has its own characteristic posture! Fancy that!)

Chun Woo and I tended to try to work from agreement,and usually could. When it came to mucus extraction, though, we just disagreed. He gave me to understand that he would prefer to be stopped up forever,and I overrode him. He protested, I applied a headlock and proceeded, narrating how much longer this took and how much more unpleasant it was due to his squirming. And then it would be done.