Merried out

It's Friday already? Geez.

After we got around and got exposed to everybody's germs, we've been illin' all week. Mikey has a sore throat/coughing thing, I have a queasy stomach/body aches thing, and Britt has a fever/barfing/snotting thing.

Poor Britt -- it's only the third time she's ever been sick, and she's not sleeping much. Neither are we. She won't eat much, either. Trying to get baby Tylenol into her mouth is like wrestling a bear. She doesn't like the booger-puller much, either, but we gotta do what we gotta do.

I've managed to get through without barfing on sheer willpower so far -- I hate throwing up that much. Finally got over over my anti-pharmaceutical self long enough to pop an Advil for the body aches, and that made me perky enough to try out my new Swiffer Wet-Jet that Santa brought me (yes, I did ask for one). Well, not perky enough to try out the special scrubber pad, so the stubborn spots are still there -- but otherwise my kitchen floor looks pretty good. The rest of the house is a pit, though. It's been a rough week.

Anyway, we took our first long car trip with Britt -- three hours to Tahlequah on Friday and three hours back on Saturday -- and she slept a little and squirmed and fussed a lot but mostly she glared at us like we were the two most heartless people in the world for keeping her strapped into the car seat all that time.

Tried to get her to show off her dancing skills for my family in Tahlequah, but of course she wouldn't do it. Then we spent Christmas Day back here with Mikey's family and she danced her little butt off for them.

Had a couple of misadventures over the weekend -- one of Kenny's boys was chasing Britt around Debbie's sofa and she fell face-first with her binky in her mouth and busted her lip. It bled a little -- all over the front of my new Ralph Lauren sweater -- but she got over it pretty quickly. On Sunday at Mikey's folks', she went to give Buddy the Bernese Mountain Dog some love and he knocked her down and did the Happy Dance on top of her tiny little body -- a horrifying moment because Buddy is one big-ass dog. He knocked me down a time or two while I was trying to grab her out from under him. It's a miracle that there wasn't any damage done -- to her or to the dog.

I was pretty well used up after that but the holidays were not yet over for us. Oh, hell, no, because my mother-in-law's birthday was Monday. We usually go out to a restaurant for a family-only celebration, but Candy and her husband just moved into a new house and wanted have the party there, so we showed up at the appointed time and it was one of my worst nightmares -- a roomful of people I didn't know. And a few people I knew slightly:

WELL, HIIIIII!!! HOW YA BEEN? HAVEN'T SEEN YEW IN AAAAAGES!!!!

(Oh, God, don't hug me please don't hug me don't don't oh nooooooo...)

By this point, I was ready to spill my own blood on my other new Ralph Lauren sweater.

Anyway, we got through it and then we went home and got sick. And that's about all we've been doing all week.