Glass House

Its cold and flu season everywhere in the United States. Most people I know either are sick, are getting sick or are recovering. In comparing notes with fellow sufferers, one of the recurring topics is the plethora of mucus that the human body can produce. How do we do it? Where does it come from? And, more ominously, what is it for and where does it go? I received the following from my sister (written by one of her friends) via email, it is a horrifying account of a few hours with a pair of snotty children. Readers be warned, graphic material is contained in the following…
“Yesterday I was reading to the kids when we got to a page that was stuck together. I pried the pages open only to discover a disgusting slimy substance squashed between the pages. When I wiped it with a diaper wipe it was yellowish----more SNOT yucky, yuk, yuk One of those darling babies must have sneezed into it! UGH The day before that, it was early morning and Noah had just finished a sippy cup of juice. I was holding him when he got a coughing attack and proceeded to vomit a snotty substance all over me. He missed himself completely as well as Mika's head but I was drenched. (I was wearing a tank top and pajama bottoms). I managed to scrape the tank top off without getting my hair. Both kids were crying and I ran to the bathroom, grabbed towels, wiped myself off, wiped snotty noses, threw the cover off the bed and sat between two crying sick babies. We put on "Busy People” for the 100th time and everyone got quiet. The remainder of the day was spent wiping snotty noses and watching DVDs and Videos. Later on I came out of the kitchen to find Noah sitting in the middle of a mound of white tissues, pulling them out of the box one at a time all 700 of them. I looked over at Mika a few feet away and she was staring at the rug. I crouched down beside her only to discover she was picking alphabet pasta out of a pile of cat puke and lining them up neatly in a row.”
Ah, the joys of parenting!