Stomach bug, 1. Me, 0.

Woke up Monday at about 6 AM not feeling quite right. This immediately moved into extreme nausea. There are few things worse than feeling like that, hearing your children waking up, and saying to yourself, "oh my god, how am I going to do this?"

Thank God one of my sitters just happened to be free and was at the house by 11AM. So after stumbling around like a nauseated zombie for a few hours, I was "off" and took to bed while the sitter took the kids to the park. This is what people with partners feel like, I thought, while I curled up in bed in the middle of the day with a good book.

I loaded up on the nux vomica but it didn't help at all. So, so much for that.

The sitter helped with bedtime and I tried to stave off the waves of nausea all night, finally puking my guts out while Brokeback Mountain played on the TV in the background. Good times. Why is the stomach bug like this? Why are you tortured with nausea for 24 hours before it finally "wraps up"? Why??

Got almost no sleep and called the sitter back in for another full day yesterday. All of this blew my entire babysitting budget for the month of April, but it had to be done. Normal activities resumed today with B back at school, parent/teacher conferences (another good report), cleaning up, loads of laundry, cooking, and taking out of bags and bags of garbage. It's amazing how just a couple of days off my game and everything falls apart around here.

A friend recently remarked how amazing it is that Theo is completely dependent on me, and what a huge responsibility that is. Times like these really remind me how true this is. Mom can't be sick, or absent, or depressed, or lazy. Mom has to be on, all the time. And luckily, unless I'm sick, I am pretty much on all the time. Because you kind of just have to be.

I'm still a little shaky but at least able to function. Now I am just crossing my fingers that the kids don't get it. I had an episode like this a year ago where I was sick all day but the kids, including tiny one-month-old Theo, were fine. So let's hope this goes the same way.

Lots going on in the next few days - back to back singing gigs and an octogenarian birthday party this weekend, and my monthly meeting where I see The Love Interest tomorrow night. Still feeling like a stupid idiot that I think he and I could ever be together, but as with so many things in life I'm just going to push through the agony and go for it anyway.