12/11

I went down to my parents' house on Thursday after work, just to spend some time with Z-man. My Mom had picked him up from my apartment on Wednesday when the sound of me vomitting had made Zac start to cry and then vomit as well. It was a vicious cycle: I couldn't take care of him because he smelled like puke, the smell of which made me puke, which made him puke and further smell like puke.

The comedy of horrors was made even worse when my Mom and Dad got the same stomach virus that Zac and I had. This weekend we all took turns puking, sleeping, taking care of Zac, wiping up someone else's bodily fluid, and then tending to our own misery. Zac managed a puke free day on Saturday, only to hurl twice last night onto my pillows and sheets. He kept pointing to his stomach and crying. He's back at daycare today with an emergency babysitter on-call if he starts to hurl on the other kids.

I feel numb and raw. On Sunday, I had the humiliating task of returning the Christmas presents that I had purchased for Mr. Tugboat and his son J. I cried at Watch World, which made the 17 year-old behind the counter question, inquisitively: "Are you ok? The watch didn't hurt you, did it? Is there anything wrong with the watch?" Yes, Miss Not-Out-of-Highschool, there is something wrong with the watch. What is wrong with the watch is that the person who was meant to wear it went out on a date with a woman the night after he broke up with me and he told me about it.

That's the problem with being friends with your ex, even if you only dated briefly like Mr. Tugboat and I. You always end up broaching the subject of dating someone else, someone that isn't the person that you are talking to on the other end of the phone or sitting across from you. It's hard to engage the "there-are-things-better-left-unsaid" policy with a person that you've talked about everything else with free-spirited abandon.

Oh - and my on-call babysitter for today? That would be the same Mr. Tugboat. He's back from his four days on the water and agreed to watch Pukapoolza for me today if he got sick. None of the adult members of my family have any sick time left for the month of December.

That's the positive side of being friends with your ex: they'll do things for you that you wouldn't ever dream of asking anyone else for and for that, I'm grateful. Really, I am grateful that he and I are working on our friendship. So much for being bitter.