An invitation which should not be ignored...

Rebecca turned eleven this weekend.

I think that eleven might be when the crazy starts, where one minute the world is light and joy, and by the next moment the world has become simply intolerable. There is weeping, there is laughing, there is glowering.

We try to keep up with the current mood. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes we succeed.

Saturday was magical.  I took Rebecca and her best friend Ava to the American Girl store where they spent the money which they had been carefully saving for months. They hemmed and hawed and considered and reconsidered and finally made their selections.

At home there was cake and pink lemonade and s'mores.

My folks arrived on Sunday for Rebecca's birthday dinner with several cases of bottled water and three gallons of hand sanitizer. Thankfully, steaks do not require water and so no special preparations had to be made in order to dine well.

Lily seemed a bit off during the day and complained of a headache. I thought that she was tired and hungry and that feeding her dinner would solve her misery.

When she refused birthday cake I should have been concerned.

When she said that she had a headache behind her eye and wanted motrin I was concerned.

I put a cool washcloth on her head and that seemed to help. She wanted to read in my room until bedtime which seemed sensible.

We were all in the bedroom, enjoying the air conditioning when Lily asked in a small voice, "What does it feel like when you are going to throw up?"

Reader, if your child asks you this question, it is an invitation, a sweet little suggestion that you need to act fast.

"Do you think you are going to throw up?" David asked as I reached to scoop her out of bed.

She was nodding as I pulled her off the bed and onto the floor where she proceeded to empty the contents of her stomach onto the wood floor.

It'd been seven years since her last encounter with vomit and the entire experience both bewildered and fascinated her.

"So that's what throwing up feels like!" she exclaimed.

Then she looked at me and gravely added, "I'm really glad that I didn't have any birthday cake tonight."

Once Lily was resting and feeling much better, David and I got to start wondering if she had gotten sick from drinking contaminated water, had a virus or just had a headache go bad.

This morning she felt much better though she had a low grade fever.

Between the birthday excitement, the water crisis, Lily's barf and fever, and Rebecca's lunacy, I am all tapped out.

I need me some junking and god help anyone who stands in my way tomorrow.

PS. Something smells very dead in the downstairs bathroom exhaust vent. I am ignoring it. Just thought you should know.