Thursday, December 29, 2005  

A Very Dysentery Christmas

At about 8:00 pm on Christmas Eve, Jude looked up from the fourth straight viewing of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, turned to face us, and with a yelp, vomited about a gallon of hot milky puke all over me and my wife.

The holiday only got worse from there.

Sixteen hours later, my wife was announcing that she was going to be taking a nap on the bathroom floor, and the only emotion it evoked in me was a faint twinge of jealousy, because that tile looked oh so nice and cold.

And the holiday only got worse from there.

I can now report that contrary to my own assumptions, every year's episode of ER where people dress up in Santa hats and bake cookies and walk the hospital caroling is not entirely inaccurate, because the good folks at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Medford, Massachusetts, do exactly the same thing. I can report this because that's where we spent Christmas night after my wife passed out from puking and knocked the sink off kilter.

It's not the first Christmas I've had where someone passed out. It is, however, the first Christmas where it wasn't me.

Camden, of course, was fine the whole time, because he got his flu shot. He got his flu shot because he's a baby, and babies get priority and because we're apparently no longer a first world nation that can make enough medicine for all its citizens. Of course, we don't seem to ever run out of prozac or viagra, but then again, who I am to stand in the way of boners and smiles?

But I digress.

The kids, for their part, had a great holiday, devoid as it was of any parental supervision whatsoever. As I was lying on the couch, praying for swift yuletide death, Camden waddled by with a steak knife in each hand. I lifted my head shakily and murmured, "Merry Christmas, buddy. Merry Christmas." Then the world spun and I had to close my eyes. Just the knowledge that there was CREAMY EGG NOG IN THE FRIDGE made me want to hurl, purge, and die. We've been pretty lucky with illness, but this time, illness won by KO, while the flu galloped through our house like a band of whooping Sioux.

By Monday, we were all on the mend. By Monday night, everyone's presents were opened and it even felt a little like Christmas.

And then on Tuesday, Cam sprained his ankle.

Tonight, I'm at Steve Sweeney's Comedy Cafe at Jae's Asian Grill at 711 Boylston Street in Boston. Showtime's 9:30. It's my first time at this new club, and I gotta say, I'm pretty excited to be working a room where the likelihood of seeing NASCAR jerseys is less than 2 percent.