Noroviruses and Cell Phone Fails

Valentine's weekend 2010 was a fail.

Wesley brought home a Norwalk-type virus from school.

It is still unclear how it was transmitted throughout the school ~ if it was via food, water, etc. School officials, however, spent two days sanitizing the entire school and arrangements were made to serve only pre-packaged food this week.

The means by which it was transmitted was super duper efficient, though ~ in a germy sort of way.

It literally incompacitated 1/3 of the school's children from Friday night into Saturday (as well as about 20 faculty members). Because of the district's request to keep children home for three days after the symptoms subsided, about 550 kids were absent from school on Monday.

Saturday was eerily quiet on our street. This is unusual as there are usually a mess of kids out playing. On this particular day they were all inside causing their parents acute distress.

By Saturday afternoon, Wesley had gotten the hang of it. He would take a drink of ice water or 7-Up. Fifteen minutes later, he would calmly walk to the bathroom and vomit.

The virus swiftly moved on to the secondaries.

I'm certain Maggie contracted it because she successfully attempted to score a swig of Wesley's 7-Up.

I attempted to grab the cup out of her hands, but her greedy little mouth closed over the sippy cup's spout with lightening speed. I suspect this was the precise moment when the nasty little germ was ingested. It gestated for exactly two days before it wreaked havoc.

Most 22-month-olds have no concept of a toilet... let alone finding their way to an appropriate receptacle with an impending bout of vomit.

Maggie would start to cry, then empty her stomach contents where she was standing. If we were fast enough, we would hold towels out in front of her. Most of the time we were not.

It developed into a tag-team effort. One of us would clean up the violated area while the other would carry her at arm's length to the bathtub. I can't stress how not fun this was.

This went on for twelve hours. Twelve. Long. Hours.

During this twelve hour ordeal, we did approximately as many loads of towels. AND washed our down comforter (it said dry clean only, but I took a chance). AND our sheets. AND we threw out the area rug in the family room because it was irreparably soiled. Frankly, it needed to go anyway.

In our haste to wash the sheets, my cell phone found its way into the washing machine. And subsequently the dryer.

As I observe the washed phone, the laundering experience doesn't explain the teeth marks on the non-functioning battery. But it doesn't matter. No part of the phone currently works.

This wouldn't be as big of deal if we had insurance on the phone. But we don't, as we were informed by AT&T's Customer Care yesterday afternoon when my husband called to discuss our options (i.e.: His wife getting a new IPhone).

This upset him as we had recently been into the local AT&T store and had talked about insurance with the sales clerk, at which point she informed him that his phone(an IPhone) was uninsurable.

This conversation was exactly why he purchased the gaudy rubber armor unit that is supposedly going to protect his phone from any woe it might encounter. I argue that our biggest liability for destruction in our house is Maggie. But anything can happen, I suppose.

Why, when the clerk had our account open and directly in front of her, did she not inform us that NONE of our phones had insurance? We had assumed we were paying for insurance for the past five months because we have always carried it on our cell phones. We have learned over the years that sh** happens.

Not only do we NOT have insurance on the unit, a new IPhone for yours truly would cost hundreds of dollars, since I am not yet six months into our contract with At&t. The six month mark is March 26th ~ too long to go without a phone.

Our reason for the visit to the AT&T store recently was to add an additional phone for Calvin, our fourteen year old. He had pulled some sort of righteous trick out of his ass at the eleventh hour and pulled a 3.0 GPA. A 3.0 GPA is easier to recover from than the 2.0 GPA we were expecting.

I think he pulled this entire "ooooo, I'm gonna fail" stunt crap on purpose.

Because when he handed us his report card, we were mentally prepared for the absolute worst. Hence, the reality was so surprising ~ so exciting ~ to us that we ran out in search of the perfect reward.

A reward that in two weeks, he has used to send 4,401 text messages. If we hadn't spent the extra $20.00/month on an unlimited text message plan, we would have paid almost $900.00.

Therefore, Calvin wasn't really happy when I asked him to leave his phone home this morning. His phone started vibrating shortly after he walked out the door with incoming texts.

So, I am phoneless. But on the bright side, no one is throwing up.

There are some sinus issues, but I will take sinus drainage over vomit any day.

The week had no where to go but up.