At almost exactly 9:30 PM on Sunday night, the stomach bug hit. Like an angelic choir in reverse, where instead of the clouds parting and a sweet, white shaft of light stabbing down to find you, an ominous kettledrum rolled and all the lights dimmed to half their brightness. The worst part of a stomach bug, as far as I’m concerned, is the waiting. I mean, we’ve all done enough puking in our adult lives to know that once you’re done puking, you’ll feel much better, right? But it’s not like that translates into happy expectation of the event to come. Okay, that’s enough on that subject, I’ll just point out that for 24 hours, I did not have enough energy to remove my SOCKS, even though I kind of wanted to. Man, I hate the stomach bug.

I was the last to get sick, but I went down only twelve hours after Kate. Since I was sick, Kate did not get her full recuperation, and was pressed back into parent service as soon as she was ambulatory. By this time, however, Lydia was just fine. Can’t we get an inflatable emergency autoparent? You know, they don’t have to do the FULL job, just queue up new episodes of “The Berenstain Bears” on the Tivo, keep Lydia from using the glue stick to lather the upholstery, and feed her some lunch? Just so mommy isn’t forced into the same work ethic as a Civil War doctor. I mean, Kate, you did a wonderful job, and I thank you, but it woulda been nice if we could have just lolled around and recuperated together, listening to the occasional businesslike monotone coming from downstairs: “no… request for second lollypop… denied.”

Everyone is present and accounted for now, though, though my usually cast-iron stomach still has odd likes and dislikes that I’m not expecting (Vegetarian Indian buffet yesterday? Great, yummy, no problem. Glass of milk? Forty-five minute stomachache. Cup of coffee? Can’t even think about that right now.)