Inside Gigi's World

1:59 AM- “Mom. Mom?” -I feel a slight nudge that wakes me. J. is standing by my bed giving me a half second to collect myself. 

“What’s wrong kiddo? Everything alright?”

“I threw up on the carpet.”

I’m awake. 

“Are you okay?”

“I think so. I couldn’t make it to the bathroom. I’m sorry.”

“It’s no big deal. Come on, let’s go get you cleaned up.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“No biggie.”

We tip toe out of my room and down the stairs. As we descend she says, “It isn’t a lot.”

“No biggie kid.”

“I’m really sorry. It’s the carpet.”

“Really, it’s okay.”

We round the stairs and there is the small mound of half digested pizza. 

“Is that it?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

I take a small sigh of relief. It’s only a little bit. I can handle almost anything but vomit isn’t one of them. I usually dry heave. I get lightheaded. I pray to sweet baby Jesus that he takes me now. But this, this isn’t bad. I can handle this. It’s just pizza, right?

“It’s okay. No biggie—it’s all I’ve got. I’m not my best at 2:00 AM—. Is this it?”

“ No. There’s a lot in the toilet. I didn’t flush it in case you wanted to see it.”

I don’t. If I examined it, I’d surely puke all over the place. I start to sweat thinking about it. “It’s okay. I don’t need to see it. Flush the toilet.”

“It was on the carpet. I didn’t know how to clean it.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got it under control. I think maybe you just had some reflux.”

“ Yeah… I had Dominos for dinner on Monday and then again for dinner tonight. I wasn’t feeling so great.”

She wasn’t lying. She ate more than a whole large mushroom pizza on Monday for dinner. Plus she tried some of her brother’s stuffed crust pepperoni pizza. She doesn’t weigh more than a buck-twenty soaking wet, I have no idea where she puts it. I envision the whole large mushroom pizza floating around in the toilet and pray it doesn’t over flow when she flushes. 

I look at the clock on the stove. 2:01. 

I stare at the small, funky pile of retch on the floor. It has me hypnotized for a split second while my brain tries to wake up long enough to remember what to do next. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a sick kiddo wake me up. She mumbles something about school in the morning. She has her MCAS tests, the thought of those tests makes me sweat even more. I’m getting queasy. 

“Are you feeling better?”

“A little.” 

“Okay kiddo, off to bed with ya. You’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

“Alright. Good night. Love you.”

“Night. Love you too.”

I make my way over to the kitchen sink because naturally that’s where every cleaning supply ever known to man resides in this house. I grab a fist full of paper towels, pop open the cabinet doors and before me, I have bleach…nope. Lysol…nope. Glass cleaner…nope. Stove top cleaner, disinfectant wipes, hand soap, jewelry cleaner, multi surface floor cleaner…nope, nope, nope, nope and nope. I make a mental note that I need to add carpet cleaner to the grocery list. I convince myself that I do not actually need to write it down because I’ll remember—a lie I often tell myself because I’m sure that we are all confident that I surely will not remember—and I decide the bleach spray is the best option, praying it doesn’t remove the (hideous) brown coloring of the carpet. I pee, scrub my hands and send myself back up to bed. 

2:07 AM: I feel a dreaded hot flash begin to creep up my body. I can’t get comfortable. I snuggle up to my favorite blanket but it feels like the inside of Satan’s asshole in here. Plus all of a sudden my blanket is itchy and my legs are restless. I start to violently kick my blanket off. 

2:09 AM: I settle…for about two seconds. My pants are riding up my legs again. I hate that. I don’t like elastic around my ankles but I also don’t like it when my loose pajama pants don’t stay perfectly settled at the bottom of my legs. Like, honestly, how can they travel so far up my calves when my legs are only about a foot long?  I pull my pant legs down. First the left and then the right. By the time I fix my right leg, the stupid left pant leg has moved again. I resign myself to the fact that my pants hate me…almost as much as I hate the sound of the guy’s voice that is booming from the television. 

2:10 AM: the tossing and turning begins. I pull out my phone and start scrolling TikTok. There must be something better to watch on there than on the tv. 

2:13 AM: Madness begins to settle in. Not my normal madness but the crazy one. The madness that has me contemplating whether or not if I smash my head straight into the wall, hard enough if 1) the plaster would hold up and 2) if I did it hard enough, would it knock me out because that might be the only way I’m getting any kind of sleep tonight. 

2:18 AM: I don’t know why TikTok insists on showing me doom videos. I have somehow managed to get out of the cross stitching and embroidered side of the algorithm. I type in the words “French knot” and click on the first video. I start scrolling through the videos. 

2:20 AM: I start thinking about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Mmmm…jelly. I haven’t had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in almost a year. Not that I have been actively trying to not eat them. I just haven’t. Strawberry preserves. Raspberry jelly. Apple jam. I make another mental note to add jelly to the grocery list. What else was I supposed to put on there?

2:21 AM: I decide to make up with my blanket. I apologize for being so irrational. I shove it underneath my head…I thought she forgave me but she’s being lumpy and making my head burn up so I pull it back out and decide it’d be best if I covered up with her—itchy side facing out. 

2:25 AM: My eyes feel heavy but sleep still escapes me. I think about the nice weather that’s hopefully coming soon. I think about the beach. I wonder what the chances are that I’ll get eaten by a great white shark if I go swimming at Cape Cod this summer. Then I remember I don’t swim in the ocean and I have no desire to go to the Cape. I should be safe. I decide I’ll stick to the lake this summer…

2:27 AM: Then I panick a little. Is it brackish water? Because even though it’s miles and miles away from the ocean and has no inlet attaching the lake to the ocean, clearly there could be a school of bull sharks swimming around my beloved Lake Wyola. 

2:28 AM: I toss and turn more. My blanket, she’s being a real biotch. She’s making me run hot. But when I get hot, I rip her off and then I’m freezing. There goes that goddamn right pant leg. I roll over again. 

2:30 AM: TikTok is pretty uneventful tonight—or this morning. There was a cat singing, a few cool photography videos (I make another mental note to try some of these techniques) and wait…what’s that? I feel a lump underneath my leg. I begin digging around. One of the socks I wore to bed made it off of my foot and somehow traveled up to my thigh. I hate lumpy things. What was I saying before?

2:38 AM: I begin to think school may be a lost cause for tomorrow…wait, today. It is today, isn’t it? These stupid, fucking pant legs. God!

3:02 AM: I could shower and eat some breakfast. That might help me fall back asleep…but what if a snake comes through the light fixture of the drain, wrapping itself around my neck. I know a girl that happened to before. No wait, it was on TikTok but that kind of thing happens all the time, doesn’t it? I shudder. 

3:04 AM: The never-ending jukebox in my head fires up and this bitch is ready to go. We come to an agreement, an agreement that I’m not happy with. We agree I’m not going to give her any quarters.She decides she doesn’t need quarters and starts belting out show tunes like “Hello Dolly,” and “It’s A Hard Knock Life.” I hope she’ll quiet down soon and stop playing, she hopes I’ll start singing along.

3:09 AM: After an encore of “Hello Dolly,” we move onto 1980s rock ballads…a bit of gangsta rap and some one-hit wonders. 

3:17 AM: The jukebox decides to play even louder. My blanket gets itchier. And my thoughts wander back to the bull sharks in the lake…maybe if I sacrifice a pig they’ll leave me alone. 

3:32 AM: The next song fires up. This bitch is on a roll. Every so often an ad for McDonald’s or Verizon interrupts her playlist. I could go for a Happy Meal. 

3:40 AM: I toss and turn on beat with the music my internal jukebox is playing. I keep waking up the hubby. I feel terrible. His blanket touches me and it feels more itchy than mine. I finely cool off a bit but only long enough to brace myself for the next hot flash. I see the jukebox changing records…I used to love watching the record change when I was a kid. The beat drops and I start to settle a bit as The Beastie Boys fires up. Adam, Ad-Rock and Mike D’s voice chimes through the speakers…No. Sleep. Till. Brooklyn. I wonder how long it’d take me to walk to Brooklyn…