A story wherein I had to tell lots of people I wasn't pregnant.

Less than twenty-four hours before I was supposed to be on a plane to attend a friend’s wedding, I was bent over the porcelain in the upstairs bathroom. To date, that bathroom has the best odds of “getting there in time.”

Every fifteen minutes I found myself returning there to give the heaves a place to ho. You know?

Frantic calls were placed to the Husband. Get here. Fast. The kids are motherless today. No I didn’t feel sick until just an hour ago. No I don’t know what it is. No I’m not pregnant. People throw up for a myriad of other reasons, like a bad batch of swiss cheese or LISTERIA!

More calls to family. Um, I don’t know if I’m going to need you to pick me up at the airport after all. No, I’m not pregnant. Geez.

Then I laid there and felt sorry for myself, and how this is the sort of thing that I’ve always worried would happen when I buy a plane ticket and NOW IT”S ACTUALLY HAPPENING and I thought over and over again about taking a drink of water but knowing full well that I would have to expel it in another ten minutes.

I had bad dreams in my delirious dehydrated (non-pregnant) state, you bet I did. Finding dead cats in dumpsters. Loosing my teeth, yet again. Being on an airplane and throwing up all over everyone which made them so mad that the flight attendant grabbed me and pushed me out of a secret hatch marked “TRASHY TRASH.”

The day was almost done and I had a 7AM wake up call the next morning if I was going to make my flight. Plus I had packed nothing in my suitcase. Nothing, because the whole puking thing was still ever present as the waves of nausea ebbed and flowed.

Then a call was made to the friend, the soon to be wed friend. The friend who said I better be at her wedding or I would feel her wrath. Bad news friend. It looks like someone doesn’t want me at your wedding because I’ve just lost my guts, am unable to walk, let alone sit between two smelly men on an airplane, or even worse two perfumey women. No I’m not pregnant. Food poisoning? Perhaps.

To make a short story longer, I went to bed holding on to the hope that my body would miraculously recover in eight hours and I would still be able to go to my dear friend's wedding. The trips to the bathroom had now stopped but the ever-horrible physical after effects of an all day gutting were fierce. I woke up every so often only to realize that barely an hour had passed which my determined self thought was great. More time for this miracle to take place!

7AM. I nervously got out of bed to check my status. If I could walk up and down the stairs and throw stuff in a suitcase and stomach a banana, I was going to do this.

Well, let’s just say someone may have thought it funny to make me lose five pounds in one day, but they also thought it would be a travesty to make me miss this wedding. Miracle received.

Note: There was no secret hatch. I checked. And I did have to sit between two larger men. But they weren’t even smelly. They helped me with my suitcase, and they didn't ask me if I was pregnant. But they did ask me if my husband was going to be okay with the kids and what I thought about the price of gasoline, so it's not like we didn't have anything to talk about.