A Week of Whoa!

Yes, it has been a woeful week. First, my beloved Conan O'Brien was informed that he was losing the Tonight Show. True, this really doesn't affect me, but I hate it for him. I really like him. He's a genius, but apparently too goofy for the mainstream. I started watching his Late Night show early on after seeing clips of it on another hilarious show, Talk Soup.

What piqued my interest was a sketch he and Andy Richter did where they played a practical joke on an oscillating fan. They actually placed it into a walk-in freezer and then sat back and commented on how this fan must be wondering why in the world it was in a freezer. The sketch was reminiscent of TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes where Ed McMahon and Dick Clark would provide a voice-over while the practical jokes were taking place. During the fan incident, Conan and Andy would remark things like, "this fan has NO idea why it's cooling off a freezer!" It was absolute lunacy. And I thought it was the greatest thing I had ever seen. And don't get me started on one of my favorites from his Late Night days - Country Cuckoo Clock Codpiece Zulu Warriors. Seriously, don't get me started. I will sing the theme song ad nauseum.

Conan will be okay, of course. They'll pay him millions of dollars to leave NBC. I hope he'll be able to start a new show. I have the DVR set every night to record him. Once he goes off the air, I'll really miss my CoCo. The girls will, too. They love his crazy dancing around the stage. Who knows what the real story is, but Jay Leno sure seems to be the common denominator in both this and the David Letterman Tonight Show mess. I don't think I like him. I'm on Team Conan!!

Second, I lost the previously-blogged-about photo contest. I didn't lose it, per se. I just came in second. Lost to my neighbor. On her blog, she informed her readers that she "smoked the competition". That would be me. Smoked. Toasted. Squished. Obliterated. Ground into a million tiny pieces then flushed down the toilet. In other words, I got second place. I thought I made it clear in my post that she didn't deserve to win - what with her cute hair and great personality. What part of that didn't my readers get?! Oh well. Second place isn't so bad. Let's all remember Suzette Charles if we need to be reminded of how awesome a second-place finish can be.

What? You don't know who she is? I find that pretty hard to believe, but if you really don't know, she was the first runner-up to Vanessa Williams in the 1984 Miss America pageant. After it was discovered that Vanessa Williams had posed for some tawdry photos, Suzette became Miss America. So see? The same thing could happen to me!!! I'm not saying that Amber has any of these kinds of photos on the web. I'm just saying that it wouldn't surprise me if she did and I think it should be investigated. I mean geez, her photo that won the contest was a picture of her topless baby. Where do you think he learned to pose like that?

Finally, I rounded out the week with a lovely bout of the horrendous stomach bug that is going around. I should have known better, but I have previously bragged about how my family seems to have a pretty strong constitution. I mean, every time there is something going around it seems like all of my friends pass it around their entire family. That just hasn't happened in the McCallie household. Until now. And what a bug to catch for the inaugural communicable illness!

It hit Meg first, but at the time I did not recognize it for what it was. She vomited once Tuesday night, but it wasn't very much and she seemed to feel okay, so I thought maybe she had just overeaten. Then, she vomited twice more (low volume) on Wednesday morning. Then nothing. No other symptoms. I thought we were in the clear. Fast forward to Sunday evening when I'm in Birmingham for a quick, overnight visit because my sister and her kids were in town. I was drinking wine on the couch around 7:00 p.m. and I began to feel a little queasy. Then I began to feel REAL queasy. Then, I was begging for death.

I won't go into the gory (and I do mean gory) details, but I was completely empty after about 6 hours. I finally was able to go to sleep around 1:00 when the agonizing pain in my stomach subsided only to be awakened at 1:30 by the sound of Kate crying and the scent of vomit wafting in from the next room. I dashed into her room and was quickly reminded that she had been served spaghetti for dinner and had, for once, eaten a good amount. I got her all cleaned up and sprayed as much room deodorizer as I could find leaving the room smelling like freshly squeezed lemon-vomit.

She threw up one more time (no diarrhea, thankfully, however, I was not so lucky) and we both managed to get a few hours of sleep. By the time I arrived back in Chattanooga on Monday, it was beginning to hit Mike. The tally climbs, however, because my parents informed me tonight that they were both visited by this nasty little bug in the wee hours last night. This thing is just the gift that keeps on giving! I am keeping my fingers crossed that I don't get a phone call from my sister telling me that we've infected her household. I've never had a stomach bug before and this one was a doozy. The best way to describe it is to quote a friend of mine, Victor, who went through something similar years ago when we worked together. Upon his return to work, he said very little about the effects the stomach virus had on him. He simply summed up the experience by saying, "I've got a lot of laundry to do".

So, there's my week in review. The "poop" if you will. (Couldn't resist the pun, sorry!) Here's hoping you are having a good week and that next week finds me with lots less laundry.