Life would be a lot easier during the winter if Her Cuteness could 1) tell me when her stomach is upset, and 2) know to run for the porcelain throne when it becomes unbearable.  That way, I wouldn't spend Sunday mornings cleaning a disgustingly stinky mess out of the carpet and the couch.

To be fair, at least this time it didn't happen in the middle of the night.  And, really, I should have been expecting it.  She'd been under the weather all week long with a "noticeable stomach issue" — I'll spare you the details, but I hope you can glean from that description at least a sense of what I'm driving for — and she had been holding her belly a little that morning.  That should have been my second clue.  The first should have been that she woke up at 6:30, a full hour earlier than normal.  But it was 6:30 in the morning, after all.  How coherent do you think I am at that time of the day?  On top of that, I'd been up late the night before enjoying a movie with someone.  It really added up to be a pretty good storm of events that just made the morning that much less entertaining that I had hoped it would be when I went to bed Saturday night.

It happened a total of three times.  By the third time, I had caught on to the fact that, like her father (umm…me…), her episodes are almost exactly one hour apart.  It was the same way back in November when this all happened the first time.  It's a weird clockwork thing that really comes in handy when you know you're going to get sick again, but you have things you need to get done.  As long as you plan your day in chunks no longer than 45 minutes, you're fine.  Okay, I admit, maybe "chunks" wasn't the best choice of words.  But the point is that I was able to wait for it and be ready and waiting with the bucket when the time came.  Woo-friggin'-hoo.

We wound up falling asleep on the couch after that episode, partly because we were both exhausted and also because she wouldn't let me get more than four feet from her that morning.  That's understandable — after all, it's pretty traumatic when you don't realize it's just part of having a stomach bug.  And, even at 27 years old, barfing still has not become one of my favorite pastimes.

The same "someone" I enjoyed the movie with — who Her Cuteness absolutely adores, by the way — brought over some Pedialyte that afternoon to help speed the recovery process, and stuck around with me until the youngster was about ready to wake from her afternoon nap.  I'm really hoping I get to write more about her here in the future, but that's a different story altogether.  By Sunday evening, we had shared some chicken soup and were both none the worse for wear.  But it's a day I'd just as soon erase from memory if I could.  All the same, it was just another day in my little slice of paradise (and there's no sarcasm attached to that, either)!