Thursday: 30% chance for barf storms

I don’t like to clock in until 6 a.m. for my daily duties with my boss. Anything before then and I believe that he is being unrealistic about my time comittment to his needs. If he does happen to demand my services much before 6 a.m., then I feel no guilt about clomping down to the couch and turning on the television. This morning Devon woke up much closer to 5 than 6. He woke up crying and I sprang out of bed before I realized the time and had a chance to play possum and ignore him.
We are now an hour into the televsion and I am starting to feel somewhat guilty. At the ungodly time PBS does not offer chidlren’s programming so we are either at the mercy of Cartoon Network -the channel I most abhore- or we watch some VH1. I usually opt for VH! as I figure it is better than CN.
Speaking of TV, last night I let Cassidy stay up and we watched inappropriate shows togethter. She loves Law and Order and CSI almost as much as I do. At her age I lived for the rare nights that I would be allowed towatch Quincy. I am none the worse for my parents’ rare indulgences, so I fugure Cass will heal from mine. My thinking also went along the lines that if she stayed up late then this morning she would wake up tired and distracted and not get too freaked out about her ultra sound this morning. She won’t be allowed to eat or drink anything before her 8:30 appointment, so if she sleeps until we have to get in the car, all the better. But this morning she will be especially beat because at 12:24 she started caughing, I was sleeping in her bed to keep her company and comfort her. I patted her to help her settle down but that was when it hit me: a ground zero, gale force hurricane of vomit slapped in my face, on my arm and my pillow. It wasn’t just your run of the mill dinner barf. It was some evil stank from the depths of puke hell. It was worse than dog barf. And it was all over me. So as gently as possible, I got her upright to prevent choking. This only enabled the next batch to land on my feet. So I steered her towards the bathroom, but for some bizarre reason she returned to the bedroom and again spewed barf all over the dirty laundry basket and comforter. By this time she was waking up and starting to get upset. I took her to the bathroom, washed her off, helped her rinse out her mouth and we found a new bed. I could hear the dog in the other bedroom, pawing through the mound of dirty laundry and looking for tasty puke chunks, but I was just too tired to care.
The doctor is hoping to find kidney stones this morning during Cass’ ultrasound. These might account for her belly aches and lack of desire to eat. Her blood and urine tests showed that last week’s bladder infection was, in fact, non-existent. They also showed that her kidneys and liver are functioning just fine. But our doctor thinks that maybe kidney stones would account for the blood in her urine. He checked her over and assured me she is not yet going into puberty. Thank the heavens above for that small favor.
We have no known history of kidney stones in our family, especially not in the under 10 set. I emailed Matt’s birth mother yesterday and asked her about her history. I sort of felt like I was complaining about a purchased product, as though there was some malfunction and I wanted to know its origins. She did tell me that her daughter, now 29, recently had kidney stones and her mother, a gazillion years old, has had them.
I don’t know and I don’t get it. At least when Devon was diagnosed with his heart defect we had no idea it was coming. And when it did, they gave us a diagnosis, solution and prognosis all within the same visit. Yesterday was hell to sit through and wait until today’s unltrasound. I couldn’t concentrate. I kept playing the what-if and woulds-coulda-shoulda games in my head. Hopefully Cass is just fine and we can get on with the business of being us. I have a pile of bad, bad laundry to tackle, that will take my mind off the noise.