Thursday, April 06, 2006

Our Shitty Week

Those with weak stomachs should tune out now.

Saturday night, before I went to sleep, I poked my head into the baby's room.

"Something smells terrible in there," I told Alma.

"Do you think she pooped?"

"No, I bet it's the diaper champ."

So I open the door, sneak in and take the old diapers downstairs to let the room air out.

The next morning Alma calls me in for an emergency, which means a mess. Baby Z. had puked all over the crib and herself in her sleep. Ah, that was the smell! Vomit! So Alma bathed the bath-resistant baby and I changed the sheets.

The next morning, while shopping for furniture, Baby Z. had a diaper explode in the store to such a degree we had to change her clothes and throw out the old clothes.

That afternoon, I noticed the laundry machine made the basement drain back up a little, so I made a note to call the plumber on Monday. But Sunday night, in the middle of a massive storm, the drain started to REALLY back up, to the extent that untreated sewer water (including sewage) started to bubble up. Alma and I worked as a bucket brigade, scooping the stuff up and dumping it outside about as fast as it was coming in. Hey, at least we had gloves.

The next morning Alma was hit by some nasty, no doubt sewage-related bug that made her sick as a dog. But she trooped it out at work all the same. Meanwhile, I took care of Baby Z. as scheduled.

The next morning it hit me - or at least the part of the illness that felt like I was hit by a truck - and I more or less spent the entire Tuesday in bed, virtually unable to move. It suddenly broke when I was watching TV, and I went from 20% to 80%, which was like getting a heart transplant or something. I used my renewed energy to bleach the basement.

Now we're both mostly better, and thankfully Baby Z. never got really sick. But, boy, was it gross. The stuff from the basement looked even more disgusting in the daylight when I washed the remnants out of a trash can in the backyard, taking advantage of the good weather to dump bleached raw sewage behind the garage. Because where else can it go?

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