I woke up with a headache today because I drank too much wine and not enough water.  I was awoken around 5 a.m. to the sound of one of my cats projectile vomiting on the bedroom floor.  How do I know it was projectile?  Because I heard “Retch, retch, retch (pause) splat.”  I then heard her go into the hallway, do it again, and finally go into the living room and do it again.  I later found out that her final splat took place on “Colin the Crocodile,” one of Baby V’s bath books.  Bitch, what did Colin ever do to you?

Since I had a teething baby suction cupped to my boob, Odie got up to clean the puke.  Cleaning up animal puke is a common activity in this house.  I hate Heather Armstrong of www.dooce.com less than I hate Kelle Hampton of http://enjoyingthesmallthings.blogspot.com because the former confides stories of cleaning up pet messes and doesn’t pretend that mothering two children is at all times full of MAGIC.  I guess those Photoshopped pics of cat puke and doggy diarrhea wouldn’t get as many glowing comments.  Oh, whom am I kidding?  She’d get 353 comments saying, “Kelle, you are such an AMAZING cat mama.  You are the Jesus Christ of puking cats!”

I found myself silently loving Odie so much for getting out of bed in the dark to track down and clean up cat vomit.  Even more when he came back to bed and I could tell from touching him that he had a fever and chills.  He ended up spending the whole day nauseated and achy, having acquired some sort of virus.  We both secretly worried he’d been poisoned by the Dominoes Pizza employee he bitched out on the phone from the party, but how would this employee be able to target just him with the poison in the pizza?  As far as we know, only Odie is sick.  Another possibility was the former student at the McDonald’s drive-thru who recognized Odie’s voice from his order of a large Dr. Pepper.  Did the student dose him?  Nah, he actually seemed genuinely happy to see his former math teacher.

The plan was to take Baby V to day care today, but at her first diaper change, I found out she had a temp of 101.1.  It’s probably a side effect of her varicella vaccine from 2 weeks ago, but I felt secretly thrilled to keep her home.  I hate taking her to day care.  She cries the whole time she’s there.  When I arrive to get her, she clings to me like a koala, turns to the day care workers and says, hoarsely through tears, “BYE BYE,” as in “GET THE HELL OUT OF MY LIFE!”  I have 13 days left of vacation, and every moment I can spend with my baby, the better.  Especially since Odie was too sick to make alone time much fun for us.

I was on solo parenting duty today.  Luckily for me that included a 3 hour nap that I took holding V in my arms and sleeping in The Nummy Chair.  I cheated on the nap.  I’ve been trying to make her nap in her bed, but I only get about 40 minutes out of her that way.  In my arms? One and a half hours minimum.  The whole family got some much-needed rest.  Even that damn puking cat seems refreshed.  It was The Orange One, of course.  My nemesis.  Not that The Gray One hasn’t woken us up with her share of intestinal distress over the years, but The Orange One is so much more likely to make our lives hell on a day-to-day basis.  I keep suggesting to Odie we give her to my mother-in-law, but he won’t bite.

So, Happy Friday the 13th, dear devoted readers.  After this infernal episode of “Yo Gabba Gabba!” is over, I’m going to give Baby V a bath and try to get her to sleep.  Because mama needs some Beaujolais.