Auspicious Beginning...

...NOT!!!

Note: please rest assured that this blog post will contain no photos or other objectionable material. Well, no photos anyway.

At 5:45 am, my day got off to a raring start of the wrong sort.

BLEARGH!!!!!!!!

That stupid Mr. Clancy-pants barfed a giant pile of Ol' Roy Gravy Chunks all over my bedroom floor. Red-eyed and bushy-haired, I retched and heaved my way through the cleanup. Only the day before, he'd had diarrhea all over Tiggy's room, and how grateful I was that I didn't have to clean it up myself. Now it was my turn. Erp.

By the time I finished, it was time to wake Damon and Tiggy up to get ready for the festival. As I walked through the living room to call them, I saw that Clancy had also thrown up on the carpet. Twice. "Damon!" I hollered up the stairs, "Hurry and get down here - I need your help. Clancy's been puking."

Just then, Clancy started hacking at the front door. "Damon!!! Damondamondamondamondamon!!!!!!!!! He's going again - huurrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!" Sigh. "Take your time."

He hurried anyway, and there was a sudden bellow. (Hmmm, a lot of that going around.) "MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" [insert wordless growl/roar] "THE NEXT TIME YOU CALL ME TO COME CLEAN UP PUKE, TURN THE STAIR LIGHT ON FOR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

All good humor instantly restored at the thought of his cute little bare toes, I twinkled up at him, "Oh Honey, you're a big boy now, and you need to turn on your own light."

Step, squish, step, squish, step, squish.

He got his foot cleaned up again, and with about 20 minutes till the scheduled departure time, we found out that Clancy had also had diarrhea - again - all over Tiggy's room.

What followed was not pretty. As quickly as we could, and only a little behind schedule, we got Clancy chained up and us out the door.

After that, festival could hardly help being anticlimactic. No one spewed anything at all, and the performances were very nice. The choir judge worked with the young men first, talking about the differences between speaking and singing. "You don't dance like you walk," he quoted one of his old professors as saying, "so you also don't sing like you talk."

He had them work their voices higher and higher. "If you're flat, and I tell you to go higher, lift your hands up. Lean back if you have to. Raise your eyebrows." He pointed to one student with eye-level bangs. "I know he's got eyebrows under there somewhere."

The house still smelled offish when I got home, though I was nice enough to let Mr. Clancy in for a while to warm up. It's probably going to take several days to get it completely fresh in here. The kids have to sleep downstairs while we run a fan in the upstairs window to air things out. With a low of 25 predicted, it's just a little nippy to make even naughty children sleep up there.

Tomorrow is the last festival day, with solos and ensembles. The best are chosen to go to the state performances in Billings, come early May. If they go, I go. Woohoo! Come on, guys and gals; I'm rooting for ya!

I'm going to try very hard to get a good night's sleep tonight. No staying up late, no dreams of WWII-era behemoth dirigibles crashing into warehouses, and definitely no early morning ralphing.

May the next adventure not involve any bodily functions,

Noni Beth

PS We've been here too long - both boys just called soda "pop". *THUD*