Friday, March 6, 2009

The Vomit Dialogues



[Posted for a Cyber Friend to fulfill the assignment of "7 Quick Takes on Friday" -- hopefully, I won't come up with all 7 .]

[The following play made its debut last weekend in a small, lesser known, off-off-off ... off ... Broadway Theater, also known as my living room]

Act I

Setting: My pancake syrup-drenched home. I return from Mass (my husband and I having gone separately in order to keep kids at home and their puking epidemic from spreading throughout the diocese).

Husband is relaxing & reading a book on the couch. Children are smiling but, like the walls, are evenly coated in a sticky, maple hue.

Husband: What's for lunch?

Wife: I don't know; Turkey sandwiches, I guess.

Husband makes and eats two sandwiches and returns to couch while wife cleans children and walls and tables and chairs and couches and carpets and stairs and rails and toilet seats and bird feeders of maple syrup.

Husband leisurely walks to bookshelf to make another selection while Wife feeds children, changes diapers and settles over- sugared tots down for afternoon naps. Wife then surveys the war torn state of the kitchen and approaches husband with an observation:

Wife: Oh, Dear One?

Husband: Yes?

Wife: Do you realize that I'm doing enough work here to deserve a medal of honor while you hover nearby taking up space? Not to mention, you've had breakfast and lunch while I haven't had a thing but residual maple syrup via osmosis! WOULDJA MIND CHIPPING IN ALREADY!!!!????

Husband: Oh yeah ... of course ... why didn't you mention you were stressed?? Here, let me help ... and oh, I forgot to tell you ... Haven threw up on your side of the bed ...

Wife: What do you mean he threw up on my side of the bed?! Did you clean it up?! [note to reader: my bed, with its white quilt is OFF LIMITS to tots; I know that's mean but it makes me happy to have one spot in my world sacred.]

Husband: [Triumphantly, with fist to the sky]: No! But I can SHOW you where it is! [He runs to the bedroom; I follow] It's RIGHT THERE!!

Not surprisingly, a fight with vicious name calling ensued. But all I know is that after I stripped that bed, laid down in it and slept deeply for 2.5 uninterrupted hours, I woke to find the whole exchange hilarious and obviously blog (and theater) worthy.

ACT II

Setting: Later that same Sunday. While preparing family for afternoon walk, Husband waves a sock cap at me accusingly.

Husband: Did SOMEBODY use MY HAT to clean up VOMIT??!!

Wife: Well seeing that the 2-year-old probably wouldn't clean up his own throw up, it appears you are accusing ME of such an act.

Husband: Well did you? You probably did. I mean look!!! Wait ... is that vomit? Or something else?

Wife: If I was on the fence on such an issue, I'd probably just find a different hat."

Act III

Fortunately, I don't have my own personal ACT III to share as there wasn't one. Fortunately. However, for the sake of The Rule of Three, let me conclude with a story about one of my dear friends and her new mini van and her son Noah. Here goes: he puked in it.

The End

***

Moral: Puke and kids are oftentimes, literally, bedfellows. Add laughter to keep it light.


5 comments:

Kaycee said...

I have several "acts" that I could add to this, most involving Orange Crush and freshly cleaned carpets, but I'll spare you. It sounds like you've been there,

Thanks for this, it made me laugh.

Sarah said...

Glad you enjoyed it Kaycee;

Also, just so I give credit where credit is due: my husband took me out to dinner tonight BEFORE he read this post.

He then came home, read the post, laughed out loud and said, "hey, that didn't paint me in the best light."

He's right; but he's laughing and that's the whole point anyway!

Abigail said...

I laughed so hard reading this post, and knowing how awful it must have been at the time, I felt the smallest bit guilty doing so.

Husband: [Triumphantly, with fist to the sky]: No! But I can SHOW you where it is! [He runs to the bedroom; I follow] It's RIGHT THERE!!

Seriously, there can't be a funnier line in any current blog post in the world.

I'm still laughing!

Cherie said...

Ah. Vomit.

We had our most fun experience with it while on vacation in Niagara Falls. Rory puked all over the car, car seat and herself. She then had explosive diarrhea. We spent most of the night rinsing out the car seat in the hotel bathroom and drying it with my hairdryer. We scrubbed the car, but really? How clean can you get it while on vacation? Oh the smell! It lingered. The entire trip.

Kids are fun. (So says she with the projectile vomiting twins...)

Peter said...

Abigail, part of the reason you "get" this post so well is cause you can just picture that brother of your with his fist to the sky ... that was so funny, I even kinda laughed in the moment.

And Cherie, projectile vomiting twins? Just in time for Lent!