Mature content to follow; not recommended for the very young or easy queasy.

This weekend was terrible, and I could, I suppose, go on and on about it. I probably should, in fact. But as a corollary to the horrible weekend, I'm really bloody tired.

Ah, what the hell. I don't think there's ever before been a time when all four family members were sick at the same time. There was the food poisoning episode, where D and the wife got sick emergency-room-style, but I escaped because of my strong, principled aversion to spinach-related foods. And since E was born, I hadn't gotten sick at all--new babies are wonderful incentives for continual hand-washing, and that, my friends, is better than Echinachea, Vitamin C, or whatever flavor of the month gets your cold gone in a week while the poor uninitiated have to suffer seven days. (I did get a nasty cough that stuck around for almost a month recently, but that was because E hacked the entire contents of Lake Michigan onto my bare shoulder while trying to sleep one night; and let's face it, there's not much you can do after that.)

The weekend, one could argue, began on Tuesday night (yes, a long weekend, six days of fun! fun! fun! 'til our daughter took the wellness away), when E woke up around 9:30 P.M. with vomit and diarrhea galore. Fortunately she was more stunned than upset, staring out into space, maybe wondering "Did I do that?" Yes, dear, you did. Several changes of sheets later, she finally stopped upchucking, and K and I settled down to bed, making plans as to what we'd do if she was still sick the next day. Fortunately, she was completely over it by Wednesday morning, laughing and enjoying her new-found superpower of Walking On The Dog's Tail. In fact, everything was great all day Wednesday.

On Thursday, the crap started to pass the fan in earnest for me. At first I thought, well, okay, last night's pizza didn't agree with me, and I didn't make a connection with E's bug because I wasn't throwing up. Also, it was manageable; I was able to drop Drew off at school and pick him up three hours later, but by the time I was done with that, I had to call K and demand that she come home. I had a stomachache, a headache, and muscle aches all over my body, and I still had to run for the toilet more often than I'd like.

K takes transit to work, so I was in for an hour and a half wait at least, so we watched the "making of" documentaries for Temple of Doom and Last Crusade, with strategic placement of hands over eyes during the scary bits.

Anyhow, K came home and I slept for a week. Or at least a few hours. I didn't feel much better and couldn't even watch the videotape of Angel from the previous night. I do remember that when I woke up at 11 after judicious use of Kaopectate, I almost felt back to normal. I also remember the reason I woke up at 11. D was sick all over his bed.

So, victim three; unlike his sister, D can communicate when he feels the need for bleah, so we placed a bucket by his bed and managed to only have to change the sheets once; but we still got up every few minutes with him, each time he did the deed.

Well, I did, anyway. Soon enough K was just reading in the bathroom. Yep; victim four. I think she may have got hit harder than the rest of us. She didn't go to work on Friday; nor did D go to school, although it had been cancelled due to weather anyway. By this time, the only one of us at 100% was E. I instructed her to take care of us, and I think she did her best, but it wasn't enough. I suppose I ought to cut her some slack, I mean, she is only 18. Months. I was better, but still sickly, full of pain, and witness to the occasional evacuatory need. But things seemed to be turning a corner, and at midnight, I had never been happier to have a constipation attack.

Saturday. (Yes, gentle reader, the actual weekend had finally begun!) This day was an anticlimax, with K and I feeling our way with caution, and D and E grabbing said caution and throwing it to the winds. We got through it mostly unscathed. Sunday was to be the real test; K had to go into the office to make up some of the work she missed, and just as this was about to happen I had a wave of exhaustion and dizziness. She still had to go, of course, even though she was starting to get a bad headache herself, so D took over my care, letting me know that I felt like I needed to throw up and handing me the bucket, just like we had done to him. He even patted me on the shoulder: "It's okay, Daddy, you can frow up in the pucket."

We settled down to watch The Muppet Movie, which my brother had given me for Christmas. I teared up at "The Rainbow Connection." Maybe it was because I saw the movie in theaters, and that would have been just before my parents' divorce; more likely, I was just experiencing my usual Coke-commercial sentimentality times ten. I felt better after drinking a lot of water and grabbing a little nap with the kids. When K came home from work, she saw us all napping and joined us for a half-hour (or so she said; I was deep asleep), and that, my friends, was the only good part of the weekend.

Over dinner I had a panic attack in anticipation of today, when I dropped the cat off for dental work, dropped D off at school, brought E to the doctor for a checkup, picked D up, took care of them alone for much longer than usual because K was in a major meeting (I had actually forgotten about the meeting during my panic attack; probably would have shot myself if I hadn't), made dinner, picked the cat up at the vet, and finally greeted K at home, and now here I am, blogging about it, when all I should do is