Something Wicked This Way Came

Contagion noun

1. the communication of disease by direct or indirect contact.

2. a disease so communicated.

3. the medium by which a contagious disease is transmitted.

4. harmful or undesirable contact or influence.

5. the ready transmission or spread as of an idea or emotion from person to person: a contagion of fear.

Something happened after we watched that movie for our anniversary date night....or maybe it was the flipping of the calendar to October.

Last Wednesday David came home from school looking a little green around the gills and said that his belly hurt. He'd had a rough week at school because a behavior notebook starting escorting him home and I thought maybe he was stressed about us knowing the dirty little details of his days at school. Oy! Emi was already en route to her Grandma Babe's for the beginning of Fall Break and the rest of us were getting ready to hit Sam's for a little midweek grocery shopping. The Little Ones were using the bathroom before we hopped in the car when David surprised himself and us by vomiting while he was standing in front of the toilet. Good timing! Thank God we hadn't rushed them to get into the car already...

So we had a change in plans and ended up ordering dinner in for the 3 of us who could handle eating that evening. David got the stomach bug that's been circulating around town and ended up puking several times through the evening (dry heaving at a couple of points, poor guy!) Scott and I downed Pau D'Arco and Activated Charcoal in a effort to NOT catch it (We were successful!). David was better on Thursday, not 100% but not throwing up and being cautious with what he did eat.

Later that day we discovered a note from Emi's school that lice was found on one of her classmates! She didn't bother passing the information on to us. We've never worried about Emi getting lice before because of the products we use on her hair, but still...would be nice to have a heads up on another outbreak.

Friday we planned on making the drive to visit the Little Ones' birth parents for their combined birthday celebration and we gave Emi the option to come with or stay with Grandma Babe for another day. She opted to stay with her grandma (good call) and during our 2 hour drive to the visit, it was obvious that Aubri was not feeling well. She didn't have much of an appetite that day and she started to feel a little warm. I kept bracing myself for the puking to start when we least expected it but she was fine. We gave her some acetaminophen that afternoon and she seemed better by bedtime.

But Saturday morning after Aubri helped Daddy with the shredding...

...her face looked a little puffy and flushed. And at breakfast when she was putting a bite of eggs in her mouth, she gagged and actually threw up. I couldn't tell if she just gagged on the eggs, or if she had the stomach bug that David had, or something else. Her tummy and throat didn't hurt (according to her) but that flushed face started to look like a little sandpapery rash. When Emi was 18 mos or so (OU-TX weekend too, coincidentally enough) she ran a slight fever and gagged while eating, but we suspected the congestion made her throw up. Soon after, she developed a rash on her face that felt like sandpaper. Her doctor knew as soon as she stepped into the examination room that she had scarlatina. I suspected that Aubri had the same.

This morning we confirmed that Aubri had scarlatina! Poor baby girl. She is just not a complainer....so sweet even when she's feeling like total crud.

So to recap on our health: Uncle!

In other scary news, Scott and I have been preparing for the new season of The Walking Dead by watching some tried and true and also new scary shows, and I am here to let you know that American Horror Story is scary! (and disturbing, so extra scary)....in a Shining sort of way.  After we watched it, we had to watch a little Jimmy Fallon (so funny) to rinse our brains of the images embedded in there from AHS.

And the other night I noticed that The Exorcist was coming on and DVR'd it. I guess I was thinking after 31 years, I might be able to handle viewing such evil again. I saw the movie originally in the 7th grade (and then partially again in college) and it forever scarred me. So I guess I needed more scarring? Last night after we got all of the kids in bed, we turned out all of the lights and proceeded to watch it again, the original unholy and scariest movie of all time (in my opinion). There was gentle rain falling and breeze blowing in through the window at the time.

The BBC station edited out a lot of the really gory stuff and I blocked a lot of the other images and sounds that had gotten through when I was in the 7th grade, but I was still tensed up the whole time. There was a photo of Regan on her mom's nightstand that scared me and that was before the demonic-possession. We paused the movie here and there for bathroom breaks and to check to make sure the rain wasn't blowing in the windows and then during the actual exorcism, when I was turning my head to face Scott and block the demon noises from coming into my earholes, the electricity flickered for 1/2 a second and the movie was off. Was it the rainstorm jacking with the satellite or God trying to cut me a break? Or both? Either way, I was relieved that the show was off.

We watched The Time Traveler's Wife after that to purge the unholy images from our minds. I read that book and loved it and thought the movie was really good too.

We had planned on carving pumpkins for Fall Break but instead, we spent time quarantining our kids, enjoying the cooler temps and the RAIN...and trying to scare ourselves silly.

What about you? Have you been plagued by anything good or bad lately? Are you ready for flu season? and Halloween?