Nowhere to step

Last night we were ensconced wonderfully in our warm bed, drifting slowly into sleep when there was a little sound next door in our younger boys room.

Then an urgent voice, "I vomited!"

I went to get an ice cream contain from the kitchen for the lad before I went in to see him. David went in and I encountered him on the way back up the stairs.

"Don't rush in," he said, "there's nowhere to step."

Oh.

When I opened the bedroom door, the smell overtook me before I could glimpse the magnificence of what a vomit, from the top of the ladder of a double bunk bed, could achieve in a room where the floor was covered in beloved Lego.

Many things to be thankful for, though. The room doesn't have carpet or tatami (traditional Japanese woven straw flooring). There were no Barbies or fluffy slippers in the way, and only one book. And he missed most of the bedding and got none of his own clothes. I'm also thankful that his brother's head was down the other end of the bed, otherwise his brother would have ended up in the shower. I'm also thankful that the bookshelves are a long way from the bed (curtesy of the earthquake vulnerability of Japan).

And I'm especially thankful for a husband whose nose doesn't work brilliantly. He could hardly smell that quintessential aroma. He wondered why I dragged out a hibernating fan and opened the windows on a sub 10 degree night. He did the worst of the clean up. I buzzed around the edges and together we got the job done before midnight (except for washing Lego, which was done this morning). I'm so thankful for the partnership we enjoy in sickness and in health, in good times and bad.

Now we wait and see whether we need to cancel our New Year's Eve plans for tomorrow night. Everyone else is still well . . . for now.