the ickies struck with a vengeance!

Oh, what a night! And not in a good way. The queasies started hitting yesterday afternoon. I deal with a lot of nausea and feeling icky just because of the side effects of the meds I'm on... but I knew fairly quickly that this was different.  Fortunately I had not eaten much yesterday because everything from the past few days came up or out or... yeah. It was miserable. I spent most of the night on the bathroom floor. I've had a lot of *discomfort* over the last year or so but this was absolutely the most unpleasant thing yet. The worst part is that I knew I couldn't take any of my normal meds - no way in the world they would have stayed down - so my blood pressure was spiking, my head was pounding, I had unbelievable muscle spasms in my back and I was up all night.  For a few brief moments I wondered if I should call 9-1-1, I was that sick. Fortunately... eventually the sun came up and I survived. I'm still sipping on my gatorade and will try a banana in a little while. I've napped an hour or two since but for the most part, I'm just going to consider this a wasted day and aim for an early bedtime.

From a positive standpoint - I saw a great documentary about Kevin Clash, the guy who is the puppeteer for Elmo (you know, as in Sesame Street) and it was really amazing to see how determined he was in chasing his dreams, even from a really young age. I also watched a documentary about a little boy with an autism diagnosis and the dramatic measures his parents went through to treat his autism. I always am struck by the things that parents of kids on the autism spectrum say that absolutely echo my feelings and thoughts as I was going through the process with Austin. After those two documentaries... it was mostly Fox News and mostly from an odd angle so it was a really, really long night.

The hardest thing (ok, maybe not THE HARDEST) was that Trouble thinks we are siamese twins and he HAS to be glued to my side at night and the last thing in the world I wanted was anybody or anything touching me. Stubby is a nurse cat and any time he  thinks anyone is in distress, he wants to be glued to them. I spent half the night begging them to leave me alone and half the night just putting up with them. Whenever I'm sick to my stomach I want to stay as cool as possible. It was a cool night and I left the windows open so that helped. At some point I got up and threw a sweatshirt over my nightgown. I was seriously a hot mess.

I got a good bit of the genealogical information transcribed yesterday. (I type really, really fast.) I want to go back through and double check my dates and make sure it's in a logical format before I post it. There are two different records - one is for the DAR and the other is our family genealogy and both are fascinating (to me, anyways).

It's really struck a chord with me over the past week as I tried to recall information about my Great Grandmother and realized that I remember a lot about her house but I don't remember much about her. She died when I was seven... so that made me wonder what Jamie will remember about her Gramps. I think, if anything, I've realized how important it is to keep memories alive - not to live in the past, necessarily, but to keep telling kids stories about their ancestors so that they will know who they are and, more importantly, how much they were loved. I was ten when my mom's dad died and I remember so much more about him than I remember about my Great Grandmother. The other thing... different kids process relationships differently. Sarabeth is an introvert. She is less touchy-feely than Jamie but she soaks up every detail about people and the things that happen around her. Jamie is cuddly. She is less likely to remember what she heard and more likely to remember how she felt.

Ok. Time to try some solid food. Hope you have had a great Tuesday! Mine is definitely improving!