In need of a sick day.

Possibly you've noticed how well I followed through on the idea of posting every day in November.

This isn't really a writing time, I guess. A is in Ethiopia for a week. My mom has just left after a three-day visit, and, while she's really not a high maintenance guest and is even marginally helpful, it was still tiring to Have Someone Here. Meaning, to prepare adult meals other than cheese sandwiches and frozen potstickers, and to keep up some semblance of household order. Plus, I had this awful cold where for two days I was hot and shivery and full of stunning amounts of snot and leashed to the neti pot. I used one and a half boxes of Kleenex in two days. I took a Sudafed that somehow kept me from sleeping for a four-hour chunk in the middle of Saturday night, and am still trying to catch up from that.

So yuck, and yuck. The girls have been spared the completely miserable symptoms so far. They've been kind of sniffly but in good spirits.

My mom brought them each a "pretty dress" and they are both totally, hilariously into wearing them around the living room, which is fine because the number of fancy dress-up occasions this family is likely to attend before the dresses are outgrown = zero.

This morning we went to the zoo. Do most children like zoos? Ingrid doesn't. She was into looking at a couple of the animals (Japanese snow monkeys, tropical fish) but spent much of the visit politely asking when we could go home. Iris, on the other hand, was beside herself with excitement about all the weird creatures and was an ace at spotting small or motionless animals. (Then she would shake her pointer finger in the air like she was making a little proclamation about what she was seeing.) They did both get a lot of running-around time in, which made for a good nap and a calm afternoon.

Anyway. Sickness + Absent Husband + Present Mother + It Fucking Gets Dark at 4:30 p.m. = (Haven't Been Writing Much + I Drool When I Drive By Motels, Thinking Of All Those Quiet Empty Clean Rooms) / Daughters Are Adorable and Clever. That's all I've got.