Vomitus
Let me tell you a little secret about Norovirus (AKA Norwalk Virus, AKA “The Old Spew and Spray”): it SUUUUUU-UUUUUUCKS.
It’s Josephine’s fault, as you might expect, she being our youngest school-going child. Last Thursday, we’re all watching a spot of TV before bed, when suddenly she stands up and calmly tosses her cookies all over the living room. Luckily, vomiting for a 2-year-old is gentle; it didn’t affect her much at all, aside from the fact that she was somewhat concerned that she couldn’t actually stop. It just kept a-gushing for a few minutes until her stomach was drained of contents.
We got her cleaned up and prepared for a long night, putting a towel down in her crib. Sure enough, she was up about every 30 minutes from 10pm to 2am to blow chunks, although after a while there wasn’t anything to bring up other than foam. After each session, we’d clean her up as best we could, and she’d immediately fall asleep. I stayed home with her the next day, and she rallied pretty quickly, eating some animal crackers and juice and watching hour upon hour of educational programming. We assumed she had food poisoning, or some kind of stomach bug, and planned our usual weekend of cleaning and odd jobs, complicated somewhat by the fact that I had to work on Saturday.
I then spent much of the early hours of Saturday spraying various substances into the toilet. From both ends. Sarah started soon after, followed in the late morning by Charles. At some point in the middle of the night, Josephine produced a poop so substantial that it went all the way up her back, but didn’t wake her. She felt fine by morning (although, as we later discovered, was still quite contagious) and so Grandma and Grandpa were kind enough to come get her and William. Sarah and I went back to bed, occasionally rising to help Charles throw up, finally passing out for good around 8pm and sleeping straight through until roughly 6am Sunday.
I didn’t think I’d be throwing up again, but my throat was raw from all the stomach acid, so I called out of church, and we spent the morning resting some more. Around noon, Sarah retrieved the younger children, and they and Charles and I sat around the rest of the day while my wife, who is a lovely person but whose work ethic outsmarts her at times, worked on cleaning up the house and organizing all our bills and mail. Heaven forfend she actually rest, you see.
Sunday night, Sarah’s parents reported they were sick, and we suspected everyone might still be contagious, so she stayed home with the kids on Monday. William, meanwhile, hasn’t been throwing up, but his fever goes up and down. Luckily he’s eating like a pig, per his usual.
Norovirus sucks. On the other hand, it gave me the opportunity to watch some TV, since I certainly wasn’t getting off the couch, which is how I got to watch the last forty minutes of “Commando,” which I am proud to report is the gayest movie I have ever watched. I loved it.
John Matrix, played by Ahhhhnold, needs to rescue his daughter from the bad guys, who are played by Dan Hedaya (who you may recognize as Alicia Silverstone’s dad in “Clueless”) and, as near as I can tell, Fat Freddie Mercury: 
Yes, that picture is signed “I won’t shoot you between the eyes, I’ll shoot you between the balls,” an actual line from the movie.
Arnie has Rae Dawn Chong (who I believe was cast in the mistaken belief that her name was Ray Don Chong by a casting director who never looked at her picture and thought he was getting a nice bear dude to play Arnie’s love interest) fly him to a location off the coast of LA, and he then, clad in nothing but a small pair of purple skivvies, rows to the island where his daughter is being kept. There is then a brief montage of him painting his body and putting on various weapons, and he sets out to slaughter all the bad guys, which he does, finally catching up to Fat Freddie in a basement and engaging him in a shirtless knife fight and eventually IMPALING HIM IN THE CHEST WITH AN 8-FOOT LENGTH OF 4″ STEEL PIPE, which can’t possibly have had any phallic symbolism at all, wink-wink nudge-nudge.
I’m told it’s Rick Santorum’s favorite movie.
