Holy Hell I've Become the Calgon Lady.

Anybody remember this commercial?



To my great horror, I found myself thinking, "Calgon, take me away!" last week.

Next I immediately thought, "Holy crap, what has become of me? I've turned into a ridiculous chick with serious rage issues from a '70s commercial."

I hit my breaking point the day after my last post. I was only able to even write that post in the first place because we have a wonderful nanny who comes to help out with Baba G while I go upstairs and do my freelancing work. Last Monday was the first day she was back after our Vacation Gone Awry.

The situation I have is, on paper, exactly what I dreamed it would be when I quit working for The Man in mid-2007: I have a successful freelance writing business, can work from home, and finally have a kid — who I can see throughout the day while also getting stuff done thanks to our nanny.

What I didn't plan on is how LITTLE I would actually get done during business hours. Why? Because shit always happens.

Last Tuesday, a perfect storm descended upon our condo. After our nanny arrived, I went upstairs to start working and was hit by an extremely cold chill as soon as I got there. The thermostat confirmed it was only 55 degrees. The furnace had broken. Thankfully, I knew how to fix it, but this took up nearly an hour of my time.

Next, our alarm system — which had gone on the fritz the day before we left for the Dominican Republic — started going berzerk again. We had already had someone out the day after Thanksgiving to fix it... now I needed to call them back. As it turned out, they could get a technician to our place within a few hours. Once he got there, I had to pretty much stay with him as he did his work... which included him convincing me that we needed to add on two monitored fire alarms. (We already had fire alarms, but they weren't connected to any monitoring system.) This all took about 2 hours.

By that time I was nearly late for a client conference call. After that was over, my husband had come home and he, I and our nanny took Baba G to the pediatrician's office because he was still throwing up more than a week after our return to the States.

The pediatrician checked him out thoroughly but said there was pretty much nothing we could do except wait and see if he continued to throw up. I was told to touch base with them in two weeks if that was still the case.

We got home at 5, our nanny left, BG did in fact throw up again after his evening bottle... and then once he was finally asleep I got a text from our nanny saying that SHE was now sick. (I had bought her flu masks and all sorts of other anti-germ things to stop this from happening, but this bug is EVIL.)

That was when I busted out the wine and had my Calgon Moment. As my best friend Nerdy P said, "It's like CONTAGION up in your condo!"

The rest of the week went by in a blur as Baba G got better, our nanny returned on Friday (but then her husband got sick!), and the weather warmed up enough so that we could all finally get some fresh air.

Baba G hasn't thrown up since that Tuesday night, my brother and his wife had their beautiful baby daughter on Thursday morning, and my parents are almost out of the contagious timeframe so they'll be going to visit Grandchild #2 soon.

Please know that I am fully aware this wasn't THAT bad of a day or a week or a month. At one point when I was crying to my aunt about everything, she recalled how when she was pregnant with her second son she found out she had gestational diabetes, worked full-time, had a three-year-old AND was taking my grandpa to chemo treatments multiple times a week. Needless to say, I put my situation in perspective right quick.

I have also stopped feeling guilty about taking Baba G to the Dominican Republic. My pediatrician assured me that nasty bugs like what we caught are all over the place in the US, too.

But I'm going handle our next vacation very differently nonetheless. In the meantime I'm going to see if they actually still sell Calgon.

- e