If you didn’t know any better, you might think that some sort of natural disaster hit the top floor of casa de Martell this week. Tornado, most likely. There are three hampers and 17 piles of laundry scattered across three bedrooms and a hallway. They are all clean, mind you, but they haven’t been folded and put away. There are no less than 43 towels hanging from bed posts and doors and strewn across couches and chairs. Each has been used once; I refuse to wash a towel that has been used only once. But my children and husband seem to refuse to reuse towels. There are six mugs of coffee, in need of being taken downstairs to the dishwasher.

(NO, I clearly haven’t learned anything from the Emily-spills-coffee-on-my-new-laptop incident.)

(PS. giving your new laptop a bath in white rice will save it from coffee spills. Little known tricks, FTW!)

There are Mouse Trap pieces all over the floor in Josh’s room, plus the remnants of a magic show he put on this weekend. Blankets that should be on bed are on the floor. Crayons and markers and pens and pencils (oh my) that should be put away are on the floor. Shoes that should be in the closet are on the floor.

Except, sadly, there hasn’t been a natural disaster. Unless you want to call it Hurricane AliIsSick.  Oh yes, THE PLAGUE. It arrived on Sunday carrying non-specific symptoms that I thought would end in one of two ways – 1. my first migraine or 2. my head was actually going to break into 119 pieces. At first I blamed the Grammys. I thought maybe it was the back-to-back Pink + Fergie and then there was the horrific Taylor Swift performance. Oh, Taylor Swift…I think you are insanely talented, but, honey, you should NEVER perform live again in your life, I’m just saying. And then I blamed the fact that I was missing my child do this:

And then I blamed it on Isabella driving me BATTY with wanting to change her name to ELLA…because it’s “much more PRINCESSIER.”

and then I assumed it was the busy, busy weekend with her and her which included hanging out with some wonderful people and included trying to figure out how to write a theme song for the AMAZINGLY AMAZING Miss Anissa and we would call it “Anissa’s song” and everyone everywhere would listen to it while sporting toques and hoodies and Rocky accents. But, you know, I was up past my bedtime (the horror!) doing things like taking pictures of them trying to take pictures of their boobs. You know, that old chestnut.

but, really, I KNOW.

It’s just sickness. It’s sickness that requires a good two sick days. But stay-at-home-moms who don’t have nannies anymore? We don’t get sick days. Because there’s laundry and clogged toilets and shoddy internets to fix and packing for my daughter’s trip to Israel to do (GAH! without me. for 16 days!) and work and more work and even more work and games to clean up and towels to force my family to reuse while I dream up the best birthday present ever – A SICK DAY (now, I wouldn’t say no to a week on an island somewhere where cute men without shirts were serving me cerveza while I did nothing but work on my book and my tan)…but yes, a sick day. JUST ONE.

For now, if you’ll excuse me…my sick and I have a tea party to attend**

(**and if you actually want something good to read, you can read this.)