We are sick, we are sick, we are sick, sick, sick ...
Well, SP is sick, that is. Yesterday morning she woke up complaining of a "sore tummy" and wanted to stay home from school. I said okay, but within minutes she was dancing around the house with the long-handled duster and giggling (etc.), and reverting to acting sick only when I called her on it; eventually I said, look, you don't seem very sick, is there some other reason you don't want to go to school? "D," she said. "I don't want to go school anymore, because D pinches people. And kicks dem, and pushes dem."*
So, after we shlepped down to her (possibly) new school to pick up the Senior Kindergarten registration package we have to fill out for next week, I took her to daycare.
She was fine all day, a little tired in the evening, went to bed, fell asleep shortly before 8:00 ... and woke up promptly at 9:30 to throw up all over the bed, herself, and -- especially -- me. (Fortunately I was wearing a long skirt, which caught and trapped a lot of the, er, mess, keeping it off the floor. For those who have never had to clean barf out of an elderly carpet, it's one of the more unpleasant tasks in the world. But we did have to change SP's pyjamas, my clothes, and our whole bed.) She threw up twice more over the next two hours, much less spectacularly, and then fell asleep. This morning she woke up around her usual time; she's much more cheerful than last night, and doesn't (so she says) feel barfy anymore, but is rather paler than usual and a bit lethargic. DH is staying home with her for the day.
Now, SP rarely throws up (not since she outgrew being a baby and spitting up, that is), and when she does it's pretty spectacular. But I'm always blown away by how calmly she handles it. She doesn't cry; she might whimper a little, but after the first shock is over she's remarkably stoic about the whole thing. She has a special barf bowl, an old plastic mixing bowl that we found for her to throw up in the last time this happened, about a year and a half ago, and last night she sat very calmly on our couch (which I had first covered with clean towels, because it upsets her when barf gets everywhere -- I figured I could just whisk the towels away, in the worst case), with the bowl in her lap, while the rest of us rushed around doing laundry and changing the bed. (In our old place the barf bowl used to live under our bed; when we finally got her new bed last month, and set it up in her room, she ceremoniously moved the bowl in there and stowed it under her bed, with the result that DH couldn't find it anywhere ... and I got copiously barfed on.) Considering how much DH and I whinge and kvetch and moan when we're sick, I find this stoic acceptance remarkable.
So, after SP fell asleep, more or less on top of me, so that I was trapped in the bed, afraid to move lest I wake her up, I heard banging, swearing, and central-vac noises from the general direction of the laundry room. Turns out that the drainage hose on the washing machine had chosen that particular moment to develop a crack or leak of some kind, leading to assorted aftermath. I had a look at it this morning and I'm pretty sure we can fix it ourselves, given the proper equipment. This is a relief, since we are certainly not in a position to pay anyone to come and repair our washing machine, let alone buy a new one ...
* D is a little (big) girl in SP's daycare class who, for whatever reason, seems to spend most of her time attempting to beat up the other kids. The teachers are of course well aware of this, and do their best to deal with, prevent, and address the behaviour; but there are 16 kids in the class each day and only 2 teachers, so it's not like they can spend all day every day keeping D out of everyone else's hair. SP isn't singled out for victimization, as far as I can tell -- it's a generalized problem.