Shortly before my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, Tapas puked on our bed. She had just finished her morning milk and chucked everything back out in a gush. At a time when, in a previous life, I wouldn't even have opened an eye, I rolled out of bed, grabbed the mop from the bathroom and cleaned the mess off the floor.
As always, I had it easy. Flucha kept sitting in bed, petrified. She was covered in all the puke that hadn't made it to the floor for me to clean. The ratio was about 50:50, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Tapas also had some splashes of white on her body and face. What a way to start the day.
It was in fact the way the day before had ended. Tapas had had her evening milk and we were fooling around a bit. I held her on my shoulder when I heard something that my mind couldn't interpret but my subconscious was fast enough to react to. The ominous retching sound, my pushing my daughter back by just enough, and the spill of warm milk happened almost at the same time. When I turned, there was a white puddle on the chair. My t-shirt was unharmed.
A couple of months ago I had got a call from an insurance agent. The guy had sold us renters' insurance and now wanted to know if we'd like to augment coverage for our belongings. We had opted for the basic package. In light of our growing family, this seemed a bit modest to him. "You must have bought quite a bit since we last spoke," he said.
I almost laughed in his face. "No worries," I told him. "We're fine with what we have." We might have bought a bit, but with a toddler and a baby, we had stayed away from anything precious and picked our furniture to be essentially disposable. Stains, chips and cracks don't scare us. There's nothing of value that might break.
That's why I wasn't concerned about the chair. If it were ruined, I'd simply get a new one, and maybe a few more to fill the space around our dining table in its extended configuration. We were running embarrassingly short during a recent family visit.
The chair wasn't ruined, though. We took it out to the garden, hosed it off, and let it dry overnight. Not something to do with fancy furniture, but good enough for us. The chair is back in use now, looking good as new. With the bed, the story was similar.
Tapas took it easy today. When I left the house to ride to work, she was huddled up with mommy, clearly shaken from what had happened, weak and a bit frightened. As the day progressed like any other, with no further disturbances, she let go of the sour memory. She started eating, playing, running. By the end of the day, she had fully recovered and was happy to finish a big bottle of milk before going to bed.
