Hate and Love

Things I hate: bin juice, vomit, dog poo, paedophiles and leeks.

Come with me if you will, into your imagination...
It's a scorching hot day, you are staying on a secluded tropical island and basking in the midday sun. To cool yourself down you find a beautiful waterfall and bathe beneath its waters. The refreshing and cleansing flow from this natural spring cascades over your skin and you think to yourself this, precisely this, is the best I have ever felt. Perfect, just perfect.

The exact opposite of this is what happened to me last night.

We were staying away at the in-laws for the weekend, my poor husband was on the verge of a meltdown trying to complete his coursework with his already crippling dyslexia being exacerbated by a slowly dying laptop. It had been a long day of cables, inverters, phone calls and stress. I went to bed at 9pm; the house is pretty cold in the evenings so I thought I would snuggle up with a book and go to sleep. And that I did.

At midnight I heard a grumble from Mr Gubbles's room. He rarely wakes up but he has recently been playing "no I don't like it" at dinner time, so he has been known to wake up asking for milk or snacks recently. Since hubbo wasn't in bed yet I assumed he would go and have the inevitable tired snacks row. 5 minutes of grumbling later and no sign of hubbo I sighed and got up. It's very cold, remember how this is opposite? At this point I made two fatal mistakes: 1. I did not put my glasses on and 2. I did not tie back my hair.

Bad. Moves.


Poor Mr Gubbles was sat on his bed crying. I sat on the floor, "what's wrong baby?" ..."mummy a cuddle" came the reply. I do love him when he asks for cuddles. Sneaky little sh.......

As I put my arms around his pudgy neck, my back suddenly feels warmer than it was. It took a few seconds before I identified the sorrowful sob as the telltale 'huukbleurgh' of a full-on gurge. Delightful. Why didn't I tie my ruddy hair back??

So I stood him back on his feet, "oh no, I'll get Daddy". I don't know what the response was going to be, because when he opened his mouth to speak all that came out was "huukbleurgh". TV child-rearing experts have told me to always speak to children at their level. In this situation, and not wearing my glasses, that is NOT good advice. Remember the waterfall? The cool refreshing water cascading over your face? Now imagine that's vomit. Remember how I HATE vomit? Yeah, so now I have vomit not only seeping into my arse-crack but also covering my face and hair, front and back. I say nothing. I am in shock. It is dribbling off the end of my nose like a summer rain in Hell, it's stinging my eyes like tears of fire, it's invading all the places I least want vomit to invade. He adds a final top up to my legs as I sit on the floor. At least he's thorough, though I do now look like some macabre Dr. Who Puke-Monster.

Hubbo finally came to the door.

Now, the first time Mr Gubbles projectile vomited, hubbo was a bit slow on the uptake. Where I had expected him to leap into action in a manly way and either take the kid off me or run to find a muslin he instead had stood, somewhere between dumbstruck and impressed and simply said "he's never done that before". Yes, well done. So this time I was less surprised by his silence but twice as bothered.
Because instead of him rushing to my aid I was forced to say "help me".
Under the waterfall in the land of dreams, opening your mouth is positively encourageable. When you have a face covered in vomit, coupled with a big hatey phobia of vomit, opening your mouth is probably the absolute worst thing you can do.

You know when you're sick and you get some left in your mouth and nose and it's really really gross? That feeling is worse when the vomit is not yours.

So my early night of warm snuggliness turned into a midnight shower in a house of ice where I have no clean pyjamas (hubbo kindly donated me his) (this does correctly imply that I have married a man who still wears jammies, but I've dealt with that). I finally got back to bed at 1 and dreamed of bathing in vomit until morning.

But when Mr Gubbles rudely woke me back up at a frankly stupid hour for what should be an ill child (turns out he's actually fine) all I thought about was whether he was ok. I was happy to rush in to him and get him up and dressed, sing five little ducks while I brushed his teeth and go downstairs to watch the only episode of Thomas I managed to record on the in-laws' telly over and over and over and over and over and over... Because he's my boy and I love him, right down to his insides apparently.