Growing up, my mother had a black and white cartoon taped to the fridge. The cartoon shows a woman answering her door talking to a man. It appears he’s a census taker or something along those lines. There is one balloon of speech in the cartoon. It says: “Work? I just wake up in the morning and there it is.”

If I get nothing else when my mother passes on (and I hope that will be a long time coming), I want that cartoon. The past three years of my life have more than proven that statement to me and the past few days have been particularly difficult.

One of our dogs is ill. We’re not sure what is wrong with him – we thought it was a 24 hour stomach bug but he’s still not able to control himself and it’s quite disgusting, especially now that good old Ms. Morning Sickness is getting bolder. (I think I need to find my Louisville slugger) So my husband has had the lovely chore of cleaning up after the dog. On Monday I put the dog in his crate for the bulk of the day once it became clear he wasn’t going to be able to control himself – there was no way I was going to be able to continue cleaning up after him. He was fine yesterday for the most part but today he’s off again and we’re contemplating calling the vet.

Speaking of work – be right back. Charlotte is crying. (8:09 p.m.)  

Ok, so right after Charlotte got settled, the computer crashed and I have NO idea when I started this post! It took me almost 10 minutes to get her resettled by the way.