Out with a whimper...

Our Christmas holiday staggered to an end when we were visited, not by Dickens' Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, but instead by the Ghost of Projectile Vomiting and Diarrhea.

Our boy saw it first, on Friday; then me late Saturday, and finally the LOML on Sunday morning.

Yes indeed.

And, by Sunday, our boy was back to normal and had gone off on to practice shooting arrows with his friend, but we spent most of Sunday in bed in misery listening to the strange symphony playing out in our guts. Fortunately, we were mostly back to normal by Monday, but even as this week draws to a close, all of us are still feeling occasional twinges in that long tube where the food goes in one end, is processed, and what is left comes out the other end.

Our bathroom is small enough that one can sit on the toilet, and with just a little effort, wash their hands in the bathroom sink at the same time. A bathroom that small reduces the options for remodeling in any meaningful way (which is what needs to be done but we are at a loss to figure how to do it), but in this instance, this is a good thing because I found myself in an awful predicament that became rather funny at the telling. After fighting the urge to vomit for several hours, I finally faced the toilet and gave in. I thought I was finished loosing my dinner, and then realized I had to pee, so I turned around and sat down, only to realize there was, in fact another wave coming, and so I was forced to sort of hoist my self up over the sink to finish loosing my dinner before I was quite done with the other end.

I could provide more details, but aide from a general statement "there was some clean-up involved," I think this will do for now.

The episode gave pause for thought. How desperate does one become to loose weight to resort to deliberately making themselves vomit by sticking a finger down their throat or drinking an emetic, or to abuse laxatives to create diarrhea? Whew.

I didn't start off intending to write about this. What I wanted to do was share one last Christmas scene.

My sister married into an Italian family, and eventually the traditional Italian village Christmas scene - my sister calls it the "brezeb" -- that was set up as part of the holiday tradition in his home as he was growing up came to him. One year he set it up early enough in December so that I was able to see it when I came to Los Angeles to celebrate my mother's birthday at the beginning of the month. Best way to describe it was a large village setting with many buildings, people, animals, and vehicles. Quite something to see.

My sister sent me a photo of this year's display (do click on the photo, it will enlarge and some of the details of the figures can be seen), which is quite a bit smaller than the one I saw, possibly because they have since gotten two cats. Curious cats and hundreds of small objects don't mix very well. My sister wrote before Christmas:

Calee is humming "O Little Town in Italy, how I love to jump on thee!" Poor ole Jer set up a mini version of his Italian Nativity Village scene and Calee has jumped a very LONG distance from the arm of the couch, and gotten up on the TV hutch to explore. I tell you. It's kind of funny, but it's not funny. Calee knows exactly what she's doing, too, and that it's a big "no-no." She likes being a bad kitty for some reason....