We got a later start getting to Maryland for Christmas this year; our plan was to leave when I got off work last night but a family-wide flu delayed us till this morning. Boy, was it a nasty bug we caught! I thought it was something I'd eaten when I got it on Friday evening since I didn't have most of the other symptoms, but on Saturday morning, as I was leaving Rob and Olive to work the stand at the market, Olive was acting unusually upset and Rob said he was starting to feel sick - a rare occurrence indeed. I went home to make up for the night of sleep I'd lost and waited for his call. It came a few hours later; Olive was vomiting all over the place so I got up to go relieve them. I'd gotten enough sleep to recharge me to the point where I could work the last few hours without too much difficulty. I returned home to a house where the virus was in full swing - a troubling situation for a mother and wife - so I immediately commenced preparing my very first chicken stock from scratch. We all needed to replenish our fluids and I figured that was the best - if not the quickest - way. I roasted the chicken then picked it apart and simmered nearly all of it in a broth with an onion lots of garlic, salt, and rosemary, and let it slowly cook all night. Its hot, salty fattiness was unbelievably soothing on my empty stomach.
So this morning we decided we were all well enough for the 3 1/2 hour drive to my parents' house. A busy day was in store for us with an afternoon stop into Baltimore so I could see my old friends-employers at Amaryllis followed by a visit with my old friend Rita. It had begun to snow lightly before we left my parents' house but the roads were just wet and posed no threat. While we were in Amaryllis (the best jewelry store in Maryland - wait - the country), Olive busied herself leafing through magazines and admiring the inventory while I caught up with Allie and AnnMarie. Rob had been keeping an eye on her but she suddenly disappeared. We looked all over the store and she was nowhere to be seen. I poked my head outside and didn't see her, but when Rob did the same we heard a car horn and then we saw her, up the block and a across the street, being taken into the care of an officious-looking gentleman on the corner. Rob dashed across to retrieve her and she appeared to be oblivious to the danger of the situation and our fear. I suppose she'd simply wanted to check out the feathered deer in the Anthropologie window display (I could hardly blame her). Still, another brush with something like that made me that much more conscious of how easily and quickly terrible accidents can happen with children. I'm so thankful that it turned out the way it did and that my dear child is safe and asleep, warm in her crib.
We ended up nixing church and my longtime tradition of my friend, Natalie's parents' Christmas Eve party, and stayed home because the roads had become too horrific. Fortunately our car performs well in wintry conditions, and Rob and I have plenty of Alaska- and Maine-driving experience, but we saw an alarming number of cars off the road so we opted to play it safe and relax. Being in Maryland this year sure beats the way I spent Christmas last year, laid up in bed with the flu (?) while Rob worked. There was nothing Christmasy about it.
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