Halloween HELL

Halloween was for us, the start of a week of HELL. Now don't go preaching to me or trying to get me to put things in perspective with tales of death & terminal diagnosis & mass foreclosures. YOU WEREN'T HERE. It was bad.

The ball got rolling the night before Halloween when Chuck and I went to our neighborhood block party. I was in a good mood, fresh off of 2 hours of gazing at Gary Allan in concert the previous night & we threw caution to the wind & decided to do something the boys have begged us to do for years --- dress up. I was a chick from the late 60's/early 70's (no one could agree) & after ditching the hippie wig I bought him, Chuck went as Francisco, the Chilean Miner. The night was fun. Until we got home & Chuck decided he had been run over by a train and oh, God, the misery and the inability to EVEN TALK because his throat hurt so bad and an earache and please LORD, don't let this be the Apalachicola nightmare all over again....And for Christ's sake, honey, you do realize you WEREN'T actually in the mine for 69 days, right? So on Monday I forced him to the doctor and he was treated for strep. Although painful, that's what you want, right? Because even though, yes, there are deadly strains, generally a couple doses of Amoxicillin and you're back among the living. Quick. Easy. Get on with your life. NEVER at the Buttry home. And I say that because early Monday morning at oh, say 2:30, Chuck yells to me on the sofa, where I have taken refuge from his giant nasal cavity & says, "Wyatt threw up in the bathroom." Sure enough. Never IN the toilet. Ever. Lots of Lysol, 409, bleach and a roll or two of paper towels later, that's cleaned up & he's back in bed. (Not Chuck - he never LEFT the bed.) My hopes of the cause being too much Halloween candy are dashed when he gets up and is sick a few more times in the night. No school for him. 24 hours and he'll be fine, right? NEVER at the Buttry home. He spikes a fever, cries that his eyes are hurting and running and that his throat hurts too. Strep test - POSITIVE. But that's easy, cause all he needs is Amoxicillin, right? Apparently so. In a day we were able to pronounce him cured. AAAhhhhh, so glad things are back to normal. But that nighttime cough Brooks is exhibiting is making me a little scared to let my guard down.

With good reason, OF COURSE. Because by the next morning, he sounds like a stranded seal & his eyes are swollen to near slits. Back to the doctor - strep test POSITIVE. He stays home and luckily he and his sister are out of school Thursday and Friday for teacher meetings. We can all rest and GET WELL, RIGHT? Wyatt goes back on Thursday, as he goes to private school & they aren't out like public. About 3:00 p.m., as I'm leaving the carpool at Wyatt's school, I get a call from Ryder, our daughter, who is watching Brooks. "WHERE ARE YOU? DAD'S PUKING!!!!" Confused, I'm all like, "Honey, Dad's in Hot Springs at the AEF convention." She responds with, "UH, right now he's in the bathroom really sick and I'm taking Brooks and heading for Baker Park!" Now since his claim to fame in college was that he once threw up on the CEILING and could wake neighbors two houses down, all that is going through my mind is "Fuck my life. This is unreal. What in God's name have I done to deserve this???" Sorry, I apologize (not really) but that's what went through my mind. I tend to his needs, God help me and think, "Well, tonight the kids and I are going to a fundraiser at Panera Bread so we'll leave him to get this out of his system and I'll go have a nice chicken salad sandwich!" So eventually Ryder, her poor friend, Lizzie, who can now be added to the 'list of people traumatized by hearing Chuck puke' (which is growing mighty long, I might add), and Brooks return from the park and I head for the bank, my last necessary errand, 'cause we all know I have great luck when I go to the bank drive-thru, right? I start the car, shut the door and Brooks RUNS out to the car and says, "I think I'm gonna be sick." And all I could say was, "You have GOT to be shitting me. Head for the bathroom." And somewhere at that point I think I cried, I know I yelled & I'm pretty sure I prayed. And do not lecture me about the order of those three. YOU WEREN'T HERE.

We didn't go to Panera Bread. I never even ate dinner that night because when you all but have a target on your head that you're next in the execution line, why waste good bread, right? Ryder got the hell out of Dodge and left with her friend and honestly, we saw her less than 15 minutes total between Thursday and Sunday. And I didn't blame her in the least. I just said, "Have a good time, check in with a text now and then & call if you need money funneled to you", which she did. Basically the same thing her dad tells me when I go shopping in Dallas.

My house stunk, my kids were cranky, I was a total neurotic bitch and my husband was all of the above PLUS dramatic because if you think there ain't no dramatic person like a sick man, I give you a man who was the only son in his family & had a mom who doted on him. SHOOT ME NOW. Oh, and there was Ryder's suffering too - "I'm at the mall!" "We're at Fantastic China!" "I got the cutest earrings!" "Is Dad still pukin'?" "Did he get paid?" "We're at Buffalo Wild Wings and oh, I'm spending the night at Skylar's! See ya'!" Oh, to be a teen again. I adore her. She is me at 15. Except I was dating her dad by then.

So far, so good. The women in the family have proven their strength & I know I'm going to wish I hadn't said that, as far as karma goes. The men in the family are better but please tell me I've paid for whatever I did for a long, long time. Please.