Skip to main content

That was a long sicky, mama

After spending two days recovering from food poisoning, I awoke yesterday morning, stubled into the kitchen and felt like one of those commercial moms who get saved by their disasterous kitchens by a miracle cleaner.

The Prince has rushed home Monday afternoon after I called mumbling something about the rabbit needing watching and me curled up on the bathroom floor. The next 36 hours remain something of a blur, but I recall hearing them go out for dinner that night, his getting her into bed (sans bath) and scrambling something for her for breakfast the next morning.

I do have one flash as I crawled into the kitchen at night for a sip of water (bad idea, FYI) of seeing dishes and food lying about -- but even at that moment, I couldn't muster the energy to be furious. That came later.

So when I really came to yesterday, with the rabbit at school and the prince at work, I saw my penance for getting sick: food, crumbs and dishes scattered about the kitchen. Clothes covered in chocolate ice cream on a shelf. Garbage in a bag -- on the floor.

When I picked the rabbit up from school, after cleaning the apartment, answering the 200+ emails blinking in my inbox, and trying not to call the Prince at work, she asked me if I was feeling better. "Much better sweetheart. "Good. That was a long sicky mama. You was sicky too long." No kidding.

Comments

Sugarmama said…
It never pays to be sick when you're a mama. Or to sleep in late. Or even to leave the house for a little while unless possibly you leave during naptime. The guys, they just don't SEE stuff and they're too busy mentally patting themselves on the back for taking care of the kid at all to take care of all the additional stuff YOU take care of. (Oops! Did that sound bitter?)
Jill said…
Not to bash my sweet life partner, but the same analysis applies to going out with the girls. "Go out with your friends more" he urges me. But it's not the going out that worries me, it's the mess to clean up when I come back home.
Manhattan Mama said…
I know...but how do you not see chocolate covered clothes sitting on a kitchen shelf?!?!?!
KPB said…
Eugh. This gets me every time. When they say - just go to bed, I'll do it, don't worry! And it's like, you know, I can drag this sorry sick arse around cleaning now, or do it as punishment for getting sick in three days. I'll do it now. I'm drawing comfort from the fact it is obviously a universal thing.

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the