Crook as Rookwood

HouseGoesHome has been out of action over the past few days. It takes a lot to stop me blogging, but I was a total mess.

Lots of people were kind enough to post messages about missing the blog. One follower commented on HouseGoesHome’s Facebook page: “No blog! Where will we get our laughs. Enjoy your writing. You can turn the weirdest happenings into amusement.”

I’m about to fail her on this one. All the humour has been vomitted out of me.

Let me rewind: a few hours after I ate sausage sizzle for dinner at the kids’ netball games on Friday night I started to feel a bit dodgy.

Then I started to feel really dodgy.

Then I started throwing up.

And I didn’t stop for HOURS.

In the middle of the night, stuff started erupting from another orifice in a disturbing fashion made even more harrowing by the fact I’d been to a particularly brutal gym session that morning. Every lowering onto the toilet seat was accompanied by yelps of muscle agony.

I spent most of the night lying in bed moaning. Every bit of me ached, but whenever I rolled over to try and get comfortable, the motion made me puke again.

I didn’t even curse being alone in my time of need. I was so miserable that the idea of someone sharing the bed would have been torture (for them and me).

At first, I thought I had food poisoning from a dodgy sausage.

I’ve never had food poisoning. Ever. I have an iron gut when it comes to eating food from questionable sources. The places I’ve scoffed food in South East Asia … So I was a little surprised a suburban bbq had set me off.

I was also annoyed. I love my suburban sausage sizzles. I didn’t want a bout of food poisoning to mean I’d be too mentally scarred to ever indulge again. Sob.

By mid-Saturday it was obvious I had something more than food poisoning. It was confirmed when a few school mums texted to say they’d had a gastro bug recently.

As for the poor, misguided souls who suggested I might be pregnant … I replied to one: “Sigh. Not pregnant. Barren. Old. Sick.”

I felt sorry for the kids, they spent the whole of Saturday on the couch, watching tellie and playing on iPads as I dozed. We’d had big plans for Saturday – a dinner party with each of us cooking a course.

I struggled off the couch to make them bacon and egg sandwiches instead … with a pause in the middle for a shower after an ill-advised fart.

I doped myself up that night and slept 10 hours.

Sunday dawned slightly better but still wretched. Cue pity weep and the cancelling of numerous plans for the next two days.

Now it’s Monday and my stomach still feels like it’s on the high seas.

But there’s no rest for the wicked.

Hi-ho, hi-ho … it’s off to work I go.

Let’s not even TALK about the child who just staggered up to me and croaked: “I’ve got a sore throat.”

No. You. Don’t.