I am back from the Barfing Wars—or at least I am on my way home from them. Last recorded barf was early this morning, and it was produced by a child who’d had very little to eat the entire day before, and since then she’s pinkened up and eaten a good lunch (without barfing) and is looking a lot better. Paul is back to work today, Rob and I are feeling better, Edward hasn’t barfed since that first time, William and Henry never got it at all.

While I was awake in the middle of Sunday night, resting my face on the insufficiently-cool bathroom floor and wondering whether I’d barf next or Rob would or Elizabeth would, or whether perhaps the baby might barf all over his crib, my main thought was, “I don’t think I can go through another pregnancy.” You know how when you’re not sick, you think it’s pretty bad to be sick, but when you ARE sick you can’t believe how bad it feels? I think this is why sometimes people say “flu” when what they have is a cold, and why sometimes they say “migraine” when what they have is a headache: it just feels SO BAD, and words like “cold” and “headache” don’t cover it—either for the sufferer or for the employer/spouse who is expected to sympathize and make accommodations.

When I was feeling queasy and weak, it brought back to me so strongly the first three months of pregnancy and how it feels like that THE WHOLE TIME. I remember being in the first trimester with Henry and thinking there’d be an upside to miscarriage. That thought SHOCKS me now, truly shocks me. But when I felt so sick and queasy and knew I had at least two more months of it, it seemed perfectly reasonable, perhaps even preferable.

I feel a little flattened by those thoughts now, because I REALLY WOULD like another baby, and it seems crazy to be dissuaded by a little short-term NAUSEA, and yet. Well. It just feels SO BAD. So bad! Stomach flu for 2-1/2 months! And yet here I am in the daylight, feeling better, looking at the Henry I got out of it (GOOD TRADE), and it’s hard to imagine how bad it felt.

Well. Let’s see. Other news. Oh yes! I’d paid for that fabric-protection stuff they offer you when you buy a new piece of upholstered furniture, mostly because I was too shy to say no, and so I called about the recliner Edward barfed on at the beginning of this whole ordeal. They sent someone out this morning, and (1) he was cute, and (2) he was non-scary, or as non-scary as any Stranger In My House can be, and (3) he made that recliner look nearly BRAND-NEW. I won’t know how good a job he did on the smell until the sun hits the fabric sometime this afternoon, but I might have to get my furniture cleaned from time to time now that I’ve seen how nice it looks. I wonder how much it costs? If I weren’t such a SAD WIMP, I would have asked him while he was here and he probably could have done our other recliner (a golden color that looks grubby now) at the same time. But I AM a sad wimp, and so here I am with one gorgeous recliner and one grubby.

This morning Paul left for the grocery store before I took a shower, to beat the crowds (at the grocery store, I mean, not in our shower). As he pulled out of the driveway, I headed downstairs with a load of laundry–and found the basement covered with huge puddles. I was contemplating the puddles with the detached inability to problem-solve that hits me whenever I’m surprised, when I heard Edward suddenly start crying, and Rob and William yelled, “Edward threw up!!”

So of course I went running upstairs, and I found what looked like a gallon of curdled milk soaking into the recliner and carpet, and Edward was screaming in dismay. And I may be a compassionate mother in many ways, but there is NO CHANCE of me scooping a barfy child into my arms and holding him tight until AFTER he’s cleaned up, so I soothed him with WORDS while I wondered if I should try to clean up the recliner or just pitch it into the front yard and hope for it to be swallowed by the earth. And in any case, Edward had to be cleaned up first.

And that’s when Henry started crying, and I discovered he had a stinkers diaper.

I realized that although I theoretically could handle this alone, I didn’t want to–and since Paul wouldn’t even be at the store yet, I could call him on his cell phone and tell him to come back home. I called—and heard his phone ringing from the top of our bureau.

I mobilized the troops, sending Rob and William for a bunch of towels, and Rob to fill the tub with warm water, and William to get baking soda to put into the tub. I stripped Edward down and had him stand on a hard floor as opposed to the carpet, since carpets are Barf Dowsers.

Then William came up and said he couldn’t find the baking soda. And I went to check on Rob’s progress and found that he’d filled the tub with cold water even though I’d told him it should be warm and had confirmed with him that he’d checked it and it was in fact warm. Also, the shower curtain was in the water instead of outside the tub. And because dismayed frustration is the emotion that leaves me least able to control my temper, of course I yelled at both of them, and I marched William down and showed him the baking soda EXACTLY where I’d said it would be and where it always is, and I invited Rob to feel the water and tell me if that was called WARM or not, and I chewed them both out for not listening to instructions.

Then I apologized, and put Edward in the tub, and had Rob and William supervise him while I changed Henry’s diaper and tackled the recliner/carpet mess. I don’t want to talk about tackling the mess.

Then I took the laundry basket of revolting towels and clothing down to the washing machine and added half a box of baking soda, and put my barf-speckled pajamas in there too, and went upstairs and got dressed even though I hadn’t showered yet, because I find I can’t really tackle tough situations in my pjs and socks. And I went back downstairs to examine the basement.

Luckily there was no water in the carpeted areas, only on the cement. And it looked like it was coming from a leak in the bulkhead, not from the ground below. And it looked like it was not getting worse. And nothing was sitting in it except plastic containers and the boards we put under boxes to keep the damp from seeping in. So I rescued a few unprotected things that were on dry cement but might not be soon, and went back upstairs.

I bathed Edward. May I take a moment to recommend baking soda? Before I discovered it, I used to give a barfy child MULTIPLE baths in strongly-scented soaps and STILL not remove the barf smell. I used to put barfy clothes through the washer MULTIPLE times, spraying them with Febreze between each load, and STILL not remove the barf smell. Now I put half a box of baking soda in the washing machine and the barf smell vanishes. I put the other half of the box into the tub, leaving out enough to make a paste to work through the child’s hair, and the barf smell vanishes.

As I was drying Edward, Paul came home. I told him the news: basement, barf, CELL PHONE VIOLATION. He said it made sense that Edward was getting sick, because SO WAS HE. He said he nearly threw up in the grocery store parking lot.

And so all day, Paul has been lying in bed, gasping and groaning and asking me to make a batch of Gatorade to replenish his electrolytes. I haven’t taken a shower yet, so I’m not quite as fresh as a daisy. I suppose I could take one now, while the three littles are napping, but I would rather talk to you. Venting to friends is what keeps me from having something more significant to complain about, such as jail time.

This is a LITTLE WEIRD. But…I have a Facebook profile now. And so if you want to be friends with “Swistle Thistle,” you can be. What is the POINT of that, you may be asking yourself. AS AM I. But…it seemed like it might be fun. So I did it on a whim. And now we will see if it IS fun, or if it is just weird.

I have a bottle of expensive French perfume. You know how pipe tobacco can smell delicious? That is the basic idea of this perfume.

Swistle: Want to smell my new expensive French perfume? *offers neck*

Paul: *takes deep whiff of neck* Mmmm, nice. Flowery.

Swistle: It’s SMOKY.

Paul: …

Swistle: Want to try again? *re-offers neck*

Paul: *takes deep whiff of neck* Mmmm! SMOKE!

Swistle: …

Paul: Have you been…*waggles eyebrows suggestively*…BARBECUING?

You know what makes me feel a little queasy, and causes me to lose faith in my fellow man? The fact that spammers would not send out spam if it didn’t sometimes work. There are ACTUAL PEOPLE clicking those stupid things and handing over money. I know this observation has been made before, but it keeps hitting me afresh.

And speaking of spam, I was looking idly to see if an email I was hoping for had maybe gotten stuck in the spam filter, and I found FOUR non-spam emails in there. FOUR! Two containing time-sensitive questions! And that’s just in the last month: spams get deleted automatically after 30 days, and I had TOTAL FAITH so I NEVER CHECKED! How many people have I appeared to TOTALLY SNUB over the last year and a half? AAAAAAAAAGH!

And I can’t even say, “If I haven’t gotten back to you, it’s my spam filter’s fault,” because sometimes I do take kind of a LONG TIME to answer, and I HAVEN’T been answering emails for the new baby name site but have just been tucking them all aside for later use. Well, how about this: if you have been thinking, “…Hey, why hasn’t she answered my email?” (unless it’s for the baby-name site, because so far I’m not answering those, just saving them), it wouldn’t hurt to re-send your email. And I’ll start checking the spam filter more often.

Also, look how Henry sucks his fingers:

I’m just going to start saving for braces now. No sense waiting.

I haven’t mentioned the diet for awhile, and you are probably thinking you’re on to me. “Yes,” you nod wisely. “This is what happened with Couch to 5K, and with Modified Couch to 5K, and with that whole Cleaning Program: big talk, and then a Suspicious Lack of talk.”

But no! I am in fact still on the diet. I’m past the stage where the weight loss makes clothes “less tight,” and now I’m into the stage where it makes them “loose and unflatteringly sloppy-looking.” I’ve had many, Many, MANY slips (brownies! cake! clearance Valentine’s candy!), but I haven’t had that feeling of kind of HOPING I’ve blown it so I can go back to eating what I want. I keep thinking, “Okay, Swistle, right back on it now dear.”

It helps that I am a person who likes eating the exact same meals day after day. The less I think about food, the better. I have chocolate-milky coffee (half microwaved skim milk, half coffee, with Splenda and baking cocoa) for breakfast (with cereal or eggs if I’m hungry), turkey-vegetable-chickpea soup for lunch, chicken-vegetable stir-fry on rice for dinner, and fat-free sugar-free pudding for dessert (I recommend the cooked kind, which is an utter pain in the ass to make but I think more delicious than the instant kind). Snacks are milky tea, furtively-eaten marshmallows, various foods purchased “for the kids,” swigs directly from a bottle of booze, etc. (Snacks need some work.)

I have a Freebie Day coming up: Easter candy is the best of all seasonal candy, so on Easter I eat ANY KIND I WANT and as much as I want, all day long. Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs! Cadbury Eggs! Hershey candy-coated eggs! Cadbury candy-coated eggs! Hershey marshmallow eggs! On my last diet, this led to a several-day binge instead of the one-day planned splurge, but life went on after that so I’m not much worried.

In the meantime, Diet P0rrn:

See’s Candies: the centerfold.

10:30 p.m.– Swistle goes to bed and lies awake thinking about something totally stupid.

11:00 p.m.– Still thinking. And now also thinking about how many minutes this has wasted.

11:20 p.m.– Drifts off to fantasy of winning a $1,000 gift card to Target.

11:30 p.m.– Elizabeth wakes up crying. Swistle goes and gets her and brings her back to Swistle’s room, then lies awake again thinking with increasing anxiety about how she would get the kids out of the house if there was a fire.

11:40 p.m.– Swistle gets kicked in the neck by a toddler who wants to lie sideways with her head on Daddy’s pillow.

12:15 a.m.– Drifts off.

12:30 a.m.– Henry calls for service from the 24-hour cafeteria. He would like a refill on his bottomless cup of milk, purchased 9 months ago.

1:00 a.m.– Back to bed. NO THINKING. GO TO SLEEP. STOP THINKING. Swistle falls asleep and dreams about a gentle, pleasant canoe ride. A canoe ride that cruises past a giant, half-submerged, tipped-over, dark-metal boat.

1:45 a.m.– Swistle is actually grateful to be awakened by the sound of a nearby toddler about to barf, and before reaching full consciousness is already halfway to the bathroom with the toddler, who throws up mostly into the sink, greatly reducing barf clean-up time.

2:05 a.m.– Back to bed, with toddler on towel. Swistle lies awake wondering if this means the whole family is going to start barfing. Is she imagining it, or does her tummy feel a little queasy?

2:25 a.m.– Drifts off. Dreams about elevators, and about missing the bus.

5:28 a.m.– Paul’s alarm goes off. Swistle thinks, “Oh, thank goodness I can sleep for another 37 minutes.”

5:29 a.m.– Henry wakes up yelling.

5:35 a.m.– Edward calls, “My get up too?”

6:05 a.m.– Careful not to move her sore neck too much, Swistle puts the coffee on.

6:30 a.m.– Swistle realizes the coffee maker will not work when it is not plugged in.

1) Giant nasty vehicle-like robots that destroyed anything out after sunset. I was out after sunset. I took refuge in a house that didn’t have a working bathroom.

2) I went to Jen‘s house for a mothers’ group meeting that opened with each person doing a little improv a capella singing. Jen’s husband was in the background telling the triplets that he still needed to fix the freight elevator, so they should take the regular elevator. I dream about elevators frequently.

3) Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were in my bedroom explaining how Scientology could improve my sex life. Tom was being really gross about it.

Meanwhile, a toddler was kicking me in the neck because she wanted to lie sideways with her head on Paul’s pillow and her feet on mine.

Coffee brewing? CHECK.

Edward, as a DVD started up: “YAAAAAAY! Cah soon to DVD!” (coming soon to DVD)

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Me: forgetting to put creamer in my coffee and not wanting to get another spoon dirty. Seeing sippee cup of milk abandoned in living room. Considering. Shrugging. Using.