Ugh.
I should preface this by saying that I had a wonderful time on vacation. As did Meredith. As did the kids.
But it was not without its misfortunes.
Let's start with the week before we left (5Mar06)... I knew that Meredith had been extremely busy setting all this up and she was definitely up for a short break. So, being gracious and polite, I offered a "Mom's Night Out" to her for Wednesday, which she eagerly accepted. Of course, most mothers of children such as ours would take the opportunity to put together a band of merry revelers and go drink. I know that's what I'd do! But not Meredith -- she decided to put in a few last minute visits to Target, B&N, and grab a quick bite at Taco H^HBell. She got home about 9 pm and at 10 pm (on the dot) she was overcome with a terrible sickness. For the next ten hours she would be cursed. She spent most of Thursday in bed and finally began feeling better late Thursday evening. We chalked it up to food poisoning and proceeded with the final countdown.
Fast-forward to Saturday morning. We're on the road -- a little later than we'd wanted -- but headed north to Olney. Just north of Lampassas we encountered a little turbulence. Here's a transcript of the flight recorder:
FAMILY: "Row row row your boat, gently down the stream..."
HAYS: "Griffin, are you hungry?"
[moments later]
HAYS: "I think I'm hungry."
[another brief pause]
HAYS: "Mom... I think I'm going to throw up."
MEREDITH (turning head): "Wha--"
HAYS: BLLUUUURRGGHHHHHH!
MEREDITH: "Ohmygod!"
CAR: SCREECH
Hays spent the next few minutes emptying the contents of his stomach while Meredith spent those same minutes attempting to clean the car up. I tried to help Hays, but really, that mostly went like this:
ME: "Hays, are you okay?"
HAYS: "Ye--"AAARRRRPPPHHHHHHHH!
ME: "Um, ick."
Yeah, Meredith has told me before that I don't react to well to crisis.
At this point we were still pretty convinced that Meredith's incident was food poisoning, so we figured this was some car sickness. No, he's never gotten carsick before. Over the next few hours of the drive, things went mostly well, and we got better at emergency ejection procedures. The dialog went more along these lines:
FAMILY: "On top of Old Smokey... All covered with snow..."
HAYS: "I'm going to be sick."
CAR: SCREECH
ME: "EjectEjectEject"
HAYS: RRRROOOOLLLLLFFFFF!
We should have turned back, but we pressed on perilously. By the time we reached Olney (early afternoon), Hays had pretty much finished the Barfing Phase of the sickness, and fell into the I-Don't-Feel-Good Phase. Meredith and I consulted and decided that we would stick around for a while on Sunday, even if that meant pulling into Hot Springs at 3am.
On Sunday morning (12Mar06), Hays was his chipper, ol' self. After continuous reiteration, Meredith and I were finally certain that he was fine. Heck, he was back to eating bugs and dirt.
Meredith and I set out. There's this really great highway that runs east-west about 60 miles north of the D/FW metro area. It runs through a few communities such as Denton and others before hooking up with an interstate (I-40, I think). We figured this would be faster than dipping down into Fort Worth and driving through it and Dallas and heading east on I-40 (maybe I-30, I can't remember).
Oh man, what a mistake. It took roughly two hours to go 70 miles. We eventually got to Hot Springs and had a grand time, but that is not the realm of this chronicle....
No... back in Olney, we thought all was better. After all, Hays was back to attempting to break his neck in new and unusual ways...
Grandma drove from Bryan to Olney on Wednesday and brought cousins Nik and Andrew with her.
Oh, and Griffin got sick. Just once. Wednesday night. Probably right about the time we were checking into our digs in Mena, AR.
On Friday, Meredith and I drove back from Mena, AR, to Olney. This time we stuck to interstates as much as possible. We got back to Olney and Nik was feeling a little under the weather. Not terrible, but a little shakey.
A few times during Friday evening he felt a little ill... then he came in and informed us:
NIK: "I have bad news and I have good news. The bad news is, I got sick. The good news is that I
almost made it to the toilet.
It was a mess (UNDERSTATEMENT). Mom was also feeling a little ill, so I did most of the clean-up. I tried staying clean -- I used about a half-gallon of antibacterial hand sanitizer.
It did not work. Last night, I fell under this horrible spell. I'm feeling a bit better this afternoon, but still very week.
Fortunately, I haven't hurled.
