YOU'RE SO LUCKY THAT YOU'RE NOT ME

Gah.

Don't ya just hate it when life comes up and latches on to your ass with its sharpened fangs and begins tossing you around like a rag doll?

Me too.

Let's go back about five days or so.

On Wednesday, the last time I updated this godforsaken thang, I posted my entry and went to wake the wife up.

Andrew was in the bed with her.

"He's sick," she said. "He's got a fever and he had two stinkys in the middle of the night."

("Stinkys" is our code word for "shit-filled diapers")

Now, in my book, just because you shit and your head's warm, that doesn't make you sick.

It wasn't until we discovered the dried orange vomit in the middle of his bedroom floor that he had so sneakily covered up with a blanket in the middle of the night that I finally caved and admitted the boy was sick.

So, because I'm currently the unemployed half of this blissfully wedded union, it was decided that I would stay home with the child on Wednesday.

This would have been fine if the kid were really sick and just wanted to lay in bed all day and watch TV.

But he wanted to plaaaay.

And with Andrew, he only wants to play in a room for five minutes at a time. Then it's time to move to a new room.

And naturally ... "Daddy" is forced to play with him at every turn.

So all day Wednesday, I played with a kid who, for all intents and purposes, seemed hunky dory.

On Thursday, he went back to daycare.

I stayed home and wrote my TWoP stuff in the morning and then went and rented a steam cleaner to clean the vomit out of the carpet.

While I'm cleaning the carpet, my tummy started rumbling.

I barely made it to the toilet before I vomited up several meals.

I could have fed a small Indonesian village with all the vomit. That is ... if Indonesians relish their American vomit.

Tons o' vomit, I'm talkin' about.

Vomitpalooza if you will.

I finished cleaning the carpet and laid down where I unsuccessfully tried to keep the bed from spinning out of control.

Susie came home and I had the sheets and comforter pulled to my chin while I shivered underneath.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"N-n-n-n-no," I shivered.

"Me n-n-n-neither," she shivered back.

Friday I fought off the dizziness long enough to take Andrew to daycare and then came home where my wife and I laid in bed all day and shivered between puking spells.

Saturday we were supposed to go to Georgia for my sister's bridal shower but neither of us felt like we could make it in a car for six hours without merrily vomiting out the windows as we drove so we had to skip on that one.

Saturday night I started feeling better.

Sunday morning, Andrew woke up coughing and wheezing with severe chest congestion.

He just wanted his Daddy to hold him all day.

Last night at 1 a.m., he stumbled into the bedroom crying.

I broke the cardinal rule and let him sleep with me.

Susie was still sleeping in the guest room because she still feels like she's been run over by a Chevy Caprice with an engine block in the trunk.

Now I'M congested, coughing and wheezing, having gotten three hours of sleep last night.

Andrew's still coughing and wheezing and can't breathe.

Susie has strep throat.

When it rains, it fucking pours around here.

Since all the cool kids are doing it and I'm always the one chasing the bandwagon, I'd better mention this.

Go vote for Chrome's diary as the Hall of Fame winner at Diarist Net.

Click the link. It'll open in a convenient little window for you so you don't lose your place here because God forbid you lose your place here.

For those of you completely out of the loop, Chrome passed away last year at the age of 27.

The guy lived for Diaryland. There are very few people out of the thousands of people here who had the same enthusiasm for this community that Chrome had.

He was constantly striving to use his diary to do everything from make us laugh to push his views of the world on us, however warped they were at times.

He was a good guy.

And it would be a fitting tribute to a good guy if he were able to win this award.

As for the other contestants running against him, they're both worthy of the title themselves.

But they've got the rest of their lives to win the award.

This may be Chrome's only shot.

Make me happy.

Go vote for the guy.

And remember ... we'd do the same for you if it were you that were taken from us too early.