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All I Wanted

Last week I got the stomach flu. Not the fun kind, not that there is a fun kind of stomach flu but I want to make clear how awful it was. It was the kind that kept me awake most of the night with sharp pain and chills that would sweep over me right before I had to run to the bathroom again. It was the kind where I felt better if I was lying on my cold ugly tile floor of the ensuite bathroom that used to be a closet and I wished still was a closet until Kenneth was born and then I was grateful to have a place far away from his bedroom to pee. And then I only felt marginally better. It was a flu that marred any desire I might have to eat sushi again as that was what I had eaten for dinner. Sushi from Makomae the highest end sushi place in our general vicinity. It had been our eighth (that is strange word construction, eighth) wedding anniversary and we wanted everyone to have a nice dinner and Makomae is higher end than we can usually afford. It was perfect, then while watching John Ford's silent movie classic "Iron Horse" I turned to my husband and said I did not feel well. Things declined from there and it was not my favorite anniversary.
The next morning my husband watched, played with, entertained and fed the kiddo so I could stay in bed until I felt human again. After a morning of fitful rolling around the mattress I got some sleep and began to feel better. I was finally able to finish "Prairie Fires" and start "On Gold Mountain" and drink some gatorade. In the evening my body slowly returned to normal and I thought about how I had prayed for a day fully to myself not long before. I missed being able to lie in bed all day and do nothing in the middle of summer. So the stomach flu brought me one and it was all I wanted. Thank you flu for the anniversary gift, but please just skip me next year. 

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