The worst part of the whole deal was that I missed celebrating an early Christmas dinner with Kip--my youngest--and Dan--my third son--his wife, and their daughter. They came up from Tennessee the day before to be with family in Portsmouth and they decided to come the two and a half hours west to visit with us the next day. Amy has had some kind of bronchitis for a month now but she pushed through it to make the whole turkey dinner for everyone. What a trooper! I had the bread cubes prepped for her from the day before and had made two pumpkin pies. So all she had to do was put the turkey in the oven, make the stuffing, prepare two versions of yams, shred the Romaine lettuce for Caeser salad--which included boiling some eggs and then making the Caeser dressing that goes with that salad, make the Waldorf salad, make cranberry sauce, and then gravy. Kip made the green bean almadine. I'm not sure if Todd was able to help with anything. Maybe setting the table and getting dishes out. Todd and/or Kip. I was impressed and still am that Amy pulled all that together even though she was having her own bouts of tiredness and nausea.

I didn't have a single bite of the scrumptious dinner that day and the next very, very little--a bite of stuffing, some turkey. Funny, I didn't mind, by the time dinner was done, smelling it. It smelled rather wonderful but the thought of eating any of those components just didn't jive with my stomach. I had had only two pieces of toast, one poached egg, and a jelly glass of grape juice the whole day. Took me all morning to eat that first piece of toast. I drank lots of water that kept me having to go to the bathroom every two hours. Or maybe it was just the diarrhea that was doing that.

Now, as of Tuesday, I am functioning but I still get to feeling weary. And my intestines gurgle all the time. The diarrhea can still be there.

Wuz gonna make lasagna for dinner today but Todd got in the kitchen and boiled pasta. For some reason, my stomach rebelled at the smell of that boiling pasta. I should have made the lasagna earlier because I had planned on making it for the whole family. Sometimes we share a meal and this was going to be one of them. But I laid in bed for a couple of hours watching a movie because it felt darn good to lie in bed and because I couldn't stand to do anything else. How long is this weary feeling going to hold on? Ugh.

There's not much to say about Dan and Jeania's visit since I was absent for all of it except for the twenty minutes I sat in the dining room with them while they were finishing up dessert. I mentioned to Dan I had mincemeat cookies and he said he didn't have room for them but he hadn't had them in years so he wanted some later. I had some fruitcake left over but they were too full for that, too. They stayed for another two and a half hours after I had wobbled back to my bedroom. I had to go pee again so I was able to look out the door and wave goodbye to them as they were leaving. Kip stayed overnight again and then left the next day at 10:00 p.m. He felt like he had a touch of something. As of today, I don't know if he got full blown sick or not. I hope not because he was supposed to drive to Cleveland the next day to see his girlfriend and have Christmas Eve and day with her parents. I still felt weary so I didn't spend much of the remaining time with him either. I haven't been sick at Christmas time for many, many years so I can't complain.

I sat with them till I started feeling a little woozy and then begged my pardons and left the room. Back to the bathroom I went before going down the steps. While sitting there, I started getting a ringing in my ears. I know what that means. For me, that means I'm going to pass out. I put my head as far between my knees that I could and used my last bit of will to hang in there until the diarrhea I was again experiencing came to a halt. Then I was determined to make it to my bedroom without falling over. Somehow I managed to do that. I was just exhausted. Bill came in and helped put the covers back on me.

I must sing praises for my dear husband. He was just a saint to me for two days. Well, actually for the last four days. He came when I called him on the megaphone and got whatever I needed without complaint. It was his idea to give me the megaphone to summon him. That megaphone came in handy to talk with everyone else, too. On Todd's birthday on Sunday, I sang "Happy Birthday" to him from the bedroom over the megaphone. Back to my saint of a husband, he gave out many "Wah" hugs while he was in with me tending to my needs. "Wah" hugs are where you stretch your arms out to the sides, approach the bed headlong, and sink yourself into a hug with the intended person you want to "Wah" with. You say, "Wah" many times as you are doing all this. It also has the added bonus of helping one to heal, maybe more emotionally than physically.

Bill had put our Santa bear lamp in our bedroom the week before. He suggested leaving it on during the night to help me see as I stumbled out if I was going to have to 'go' again. So we left him on. It was rather comforting to wake up and see the warm glow he gave out and see his friendly wave. I slept surprisingly well for five hours. Woke up, didn't have to urgently go to the bathroom, and fell easily back to sleep again. I woke up two hours later and the bear was still glowing at me since it was still dark at 7:00 a.m. I fell back to sleep again for another hour. Woke up and went back to sleep again for another hour amazed that I hadn't had to get up in the night to make a bathroom visit. Not once. Finally at 9:00 I decided that I might as well get up and see how I felt upright. I definitely felt better. Chipper, even. I did some of my usual routine--pee first thing (no sign of the other, thank heaven), to the kitchen to mix up my Citrucel, then onto the computer room for my usual morning at the computer. There were a lot of messages. My mind was still foggy so I wasn't really into reading much. I saved what I wanted to really answer till later. After two hours, I got up and made Bill and me some breakfast--a poached egg on a raisin/cinnamon muffin and juice on the side, then realized that I needed to go back to bed.

That was Sunday. Two days later, like I said, I still don't have much energy and the gurgling in the intestines persists. It will eventually go away, of course. I guess I'll be well by New Year's. There is a party we've been invited to but we've declined the invitation. We are too much the homebodies, or maybe the old fogeys. It's not that fun anymore to drive the twenty minutes from Oxford after midnight.