Feeling Bratty

The good news is that I almost certainly didn’t contract listeriosis or some other horrible, food-borne, fetus-hating bacteria yesterday. The bad news is that I did come down with some sort of gastrointestinal virus on top of my still-extant pregnancy nausea and barfing.

When I called my OB for confirmation that my symptoms were likely viral (i.e. not from eating deadly turkey sandwiches) the triage nurse assured me that something nasty is “going around.” And as the mother of a preschool-going toddler and an emergency-room-working husband, I have ample opportunity for exposure.

I won’t go into detail, but...
suffice it to say that adhering to the nurse-recommended “BRAT” diet of bananas (fine), rice (fine), applesauce (yuck), and toast (usually fine but yuck right now for some reason) does not exactly jive with the fetus-demanded, barfing-prevention, high-protein diet of chicken, cheese, milk, and chicken.

The one area of overlap appears to be Gatorade. More fucking Gatorade. They should totally make a line of those drinks specifically marketed to sick and pregnant people. They could make them in slightly less garish colors (“red” is my flavor of choice, but it’s not my favorite color to see, um, reappear out of my mouth, if you know what I mean) and call it the GI-Series. I for one would buy a whole case.

To be fair, I don't feel that bad. It's not that bad of a virus, and nine weeks of nausea and barfing really lowers the bar for what "okay" feels like.

The other bad news, though, is that the cat isn't feeling well, either. The baby cries in distress when the cat makes those funny throat noises and when she sees messes—like, say, a giant mustard-yellow stain on a cream-colored uphostered chair—so it's been a pretty great day, as you can imagine.

Anyone out there know how to get cat puke stains out of upholstery or oriental (am I allowed to use that word?) rugs? If so, please respond ASAP. Otherwise, I'm going to have to Rit-dye both items mustard yellow, and I just don't have that kind of time or energy right now. I mean, I still haven't imported all my CDs into the laptop I got four years ago or begun to get our third bedroom ready for baby #2 or shopped for baby #1's second birthday gifts (3 weeks left!) or, ahem, done anything with my wedding photos from 2009, or Occupied Seattle or... ... ...

photo courtesy zabmo, morgueFile