I thought winter was the time for the stomach flu?
Not so much with my little man – he’s been hit hard with it in the past few days.
Yesterday, the poor little guy just could not keep anything down. He’s been puke-free for a solid 10 hours now, so we’re hoping it has passed (and not passed on to one of us…) but he was feeling so bad while it lasted. He couldn’t sleep (and so, you know, neither could we) because he could not get comfortable. I changed the sheets in two different beds at least three times last night. I’m running on coffee and adrenaline this morning. I’m going straight from work to Kate’s swim meet, which is at a pool infested with bugs and will last until at least 10pm and is 45 minutes away from our house.
Did I mention this is the busiest week of the year at work?
Wow, I’ve taken a post that was supposed to be about my sick baby and made it totally about me. That’s messed up! But I am feeling just a tad bit sorry for myself. At this very time last year, during said busiest work week of the year, I had a bone spicule in my gums that caused me excruciating pain for about a week and a half. That, on top of the stress at work, is what started my downhill spiral into adrenal fatigue. I am very, very nervous about the lack of sleep, busy schedule, and stress level that’s becoming a reality this week.
I am stressing myself out about potential stress. That’s really going to help.
‘Twere I a lady of leisure, I’d buy me a fainting couch
Have you ever wanted a fainting couch in your living room? You know, so when you’re having one of those days when things are so desperate that you’re making pancakes for dinner, and when you walk into the dining room to serve said desperation food, your toddler has gotten hold of your coupon inserts and strewn them all over the living area of your entire first floor? Not that that’s ever happened to me (last night) or anything…but sometimes, I have a day that calls for a fainting couch. But alas, I do not possess such frivolous furniture.
I found it amusing, then, that we had a fainting couch in our room at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel at the Mom 2.0 Summit. I mean, when my kids are a couple thousand miles away and someone’s cleaning up after me every day? I don’t need a fainting couch. But there was indeed, a very lovely one in our room, positioned at the end of Emily’s bed.
And it’s a darn good thing. Because Friday night, Emily had occasion to NEED it. “Why?” you ask? I’m not quite sure. How about I tell you the story, and then you tell ME why. Here goes:
Friday night we went to a rockin’ party given by the CVS ExtraCare people. Say what? A CVS party!?!!? You know that’s like my dream come true! We had an awesome time and met some great people. And we got our picture taken, a lot.
Oh em gee! CVS red carpet!With our lovely and tall friend Rachel, backngroovemom.comWith the hilarious Jenny from the Blog, SuburbanJungle.comMe getting interviewed about how I big puffy heart CVS and their ExtraCare BucksEm and Glennia Campbell, who grew up in Emily’s teeny tiny hometown – yet they met in California!I love this pic of us taken by Glennia herself!
See? LOTS of pictures!
The party was great. But we were hungry, and I’d been surviving on gluten-free slim pickins for a couple of days, so Em and I went out to dinner…by ourselves…because MAYBE we’re not as popular as we think we are. But us being us, we had a great time. AND steak. And Emily had a blueberry martini, which MAY have contributed to the next part of this story. The part that involves the fainting couch.
After a delicious dinner, Emily and I headed back to our room at the Ritz. I’m not really sure what time it was…probably before 10 p.m. We entered our room which was quite dark, even after turning on a light. That’s my one complaint about our otherwise wonderful room, I felt like it wasn’t very well-lit (which makes it difficult to perfectly apply your makeup, which as we all know is very important to me) and I would just like to say for the record that I had pointed that out SEVERAL times already before this incident occurred!
Anyhoo, we turned on the light and found that the nice staffers at the Ritz had left us a little present. This present, in fact. (Picture stolen from everydaymama on Instagram, please don’t sue me!)
I took a look at this new addition to our room, leaned in really close SINCE IT WAS DARK, and said, “Is that…cookies?” Because honestly, I couldn’t tell!
And Emily Berry, well, she lost her fishing mind. She howled with laughter and immediately collapsed on the fainting couch, cracking up and repeating, “Is that…cookies?” and oh, CRYING she was laughing so hard. Girlfriend was immobilized on the fainting couch. See?
Image at left has been auto-corrected, image at right is the original TO PROVE HOW DARK IT WAS IN THE ROOM!
I have no idea why Emily thought what I said was so funny, but seeing her weeping with laughter on the fainting couch cracked me up as well, and soon we were both crying so hard from laughing that our formerly immaculate eye makeup was down to our shoulders. All because of those three little words:
Is that…cookies?
It must’ve been that martini. Perhaps this re-enactment will help you be the judge.
Thank God that fainting couch was there! I hate to think of the damage that would have been done had Emily had to plunge all the way to the carpeted floor in her hysteria.
I have no idea what happened to the cookies. I can’t remember if Em ate one or not (I wasn’t about to due to the stupid gluten). Also, I didn’t find out til the next day that the starfish and sand dollar were white chocolate. DANGIT! I totally would’ve eaten those.
So you tell me, dear readers, what caused Emily to need the fainting couch? Any theories? I’d love to hear them!
I’ve been reading tons and tons of stuff about adrenal fatigue, and one thing that keeps coming up, in everything I’ve read from the very first time I ever heard of this condition until today, is diet. Certain foods wreak havoc on the adrenals, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m not going to feel 100% better until I address my consumption of sugar and processed foods.
While I’ve been making some modifications here and there in the last few months, I still found myself gorging on sugar-filled snacks at the end of the work day. And I hadn’t done jack about my coffee and/or diet coke habits. Last Friday I went to the nutritionist for a follow up, and the tests showed that my endocrine system is getting better (it’s no longer off-the-charts bad, it’s only in the sorta bad category), my liver has moved from the working swimmingly category into the sorta bad category.
These are all technical terms.
In any case, she said I am overworking my liver by ingesting crap foods, and I need to knock that shit off and concentrate on golf and eat some healthy stuff. LUCKILY, she had just the system for me – the Standard Process Purification Program, and it could be mine for the low, low price of… I’m not even going to tell you how much.
So, for the next 19.5 days (1.5 days down, woohoo) I’m going to subsist on vegetables, fruits, lean proteins (after the first 10 days, anyway), water and green tea. (Did you see diet coke and twizzlers on that list? Me either. It’s so sad.) I also have to take 21 pills a day for the first 10 days – pills that consist of dehydrated beets (which I like to pretend were grown by Dwight Schrute) and stuff. No chemicals, just food. But! I can eat Chipotle, and as long as I have Chipotle, everything is right in my world.
She swears my cravings will go away after day 4 and that I’ll feel great once my body is rid of the bad stuff. I shall believe it when I see it.
How about you, friends? Any sugar-giver-uppers out there who want to tell me how fantastic they look and feel? I’ll be anxiously awaiting your reply while I sit here and sip on liquefied turnips.
