Pink plus or minus.

It was the best of times….

This has been my longest stretch without posting. Nearly a week. What’s even stranger, is that this week I’ve encountered not one, but TWO “once in a lifetime” moments. You’d think that would inspire some mad blogging.

But those were mere punctuation marks in a week otherwise fraught with frustration.

It all began with a stomach flu that was first born in my youngest. She of course happened to be sleeping next to me when it manifested itself from cries of nausea to actual vomit. Any parent out there will recognize that they have at one time or another been puked on by their child. This week, I got two more notches on that scorecard.

She got over it fairly quickly…but only to be met by a new more intense form of what had by then been deemed “The Flu from Hell.” This time in my son who spent the better part 18 hours in the bathroom crying aloud: “I just want to be me again!”

This is where “once in a lifetime moment number one” occurred. And it occurred on MLB.com where the Phillies were about to let the Mets score the go-ahead run in the ninth. Until when for only the 15th time in the history of baseball, it was ended with an unassisted triple play. To clarify, there have been 14 other unassisted triple plays in the HISTORY of baseball. This is only the SECOND in the history of the sport to end a game. The last one being in 1927.

The screams coming out of that house in Colorado Springs as we hovered over Johannes’ laptop momentarily drowned out the woeful moans of my ill son.

Readers may guess by now that this much exposure to the flu didn’t leave the parents unscathed. Assisted or Unassisted. Not to belittle bulimia, because it’s a truly horrid disease, but I cannot stretch my mind around how anyone would choose this form of torturous diet.

As the onset of “Flu from Hell” took control of my own body, the second “once in a lifetime moment” took place. This time, in the form of a poker game my friend was confident to win with three queens. Until the player next to him showed on the river card, a diamond ace, completing an INCONCEIVABLE royal flush.

Now, I’m not big for poker…or gambling in general. But I’m all for those moments of “NO WAY!” Everyone in the place took out their phones to snap a picture. It’s entirely likely that I’ll never again witness that insane kind of luck. According to leading Texas Hold’em stats, the odds are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 649,740. And I certainly am not one to argue with Texas Hold’em statisticians.

Soon after this moment, Johannes was initiated into our family’s special kind of hell. While the kids had recovered, they hadn’t managed to learn how to drive so we couldn’t get them to go to the store and pick up some pepto for mom and dad.

They actually needed to be taken care of.

Not to sound like a crybaby, but it’s doubly tiring to be sick, taking care of two kids.

On a number of occasions during this week of momentous joy and unbridled anguish, I sat here in front of my laptop with the intent of adding thoughts to my blog. Believe me, I had plenty of them. But as any PR pro knows, client work trumps everything. So what little energy I could muster, I spent justly there.

Needless to say, we’re all recovered now. In fact, we’re camping about 30 miles south of Denver, a stone’s throw from Columbine High School. There happens to be a huge state park here that makes it impossible to remember how close you are to civlization. Except that they have wi-fi. I think I could live here forever.

Honestly, though. After a week like this, I’m not sure if I should fall on my knees in thanksgiving that I survived, or run to the corner 7-11 and buy a lottery ticket. I mean, what are the chances? Unassisted triple play? To beat the METS, no less.! “Flu from Hell” taking over the entire family? And a real live royal flush? All within days of eachother.

Well, they do have Powerball here. And it only takes one ticket to win. I wonder what the chances are?