We have been back from our trip for a few days now, and I am as sick as a dog who ate grass covered in fire ants. Fuzzy hates that we are home, because my sister-in-law Krissie (name changed to protect the innocent) actually paid attention to him and allowed him full run of their house, with no immediately apparent bodily fluid accidents. Within six hours of being back at our house, Fuzzy shit and peed on the carpet, then later shit again in his playyard, then just as I was drifting off six inches from his playyard, spewed noxious liquids out his mouth and nose in my direction. I think it's safe to say Fuzzy wsn't giving us those gifts out of love.

The trip was great, aside from the kids having colds, which I finally came down with right before we went home. I have been a veritable walking snotball with a raspy cough my smoker brother would be proud of me for. To add even more fun, the Leaky Lava Flow started, so every time I cough a hairball out, I have a gush and have to run hunched over to the restroom, not sure how to take care of Nature's cruel joke on females and the urge to throw up from coughing so much at the same time. I sometimes wish I was still single, so that I could take everything off, sit in the shower, and take care of both at the same time. But alas, I have a son who is entirely too interested in Mommy's clothing as I sit on the pot and will attempt to remove my pants and a daughter who wonders what kind of boo-boo Mommy's privates have, and it would be entirely too easy for Mower to give me privacy from these inquizative little creatures. So I fight them, my maxi pad, my dignity and my revolting lungs at the same time, in order to have some semblence of quiet, since refusing everyone the restroom at the same time I am in it is like pressing a button to send the bomb. "Mommy is in the bathroom? Handsome, you start opening every drawer and throwing out the carefully folded clothes while banging on the door and wailing every twenty seconds! Bubba, you yell at Mommy to come here, and when she says she can't, scream 'What?' until she has completely gone grey and hoarse! I, Daddy, will now go take a dump in private in the other bathroom, since you have all this under control!"

One of the best parts of the trip was playing with my new camera, the Nikon D50. The counterbalance to my delight in the ease of use in this heaven-sent camera is that uploading the pictures even in the smallest possible size is still too large for this site to upload. I have to find a site I can upload and then copy from, without losing my rights as the owner of the pictures, in order to share some pictures from now on. I still have my Olympus, which is the equivalent of a rotary telephone, but we did have fun taking pictures of my niece's blanket everywhere we went in Chicago with it. The thirty-second delay it gives us is less annoying when it's trained on an inanimate object versus what used to be the smiling face of one of my children, which turned into a close-up of the stains in the carpet while the subject moved away into his first apartment in the time it takes for the camera to operate.

It is good to be back, despite being sick, although I really adored seeing Chicago and the amazing people there. One more year, hopefully, and we will be moving from this tropical cesspool to the congested but more reasonably temperatured Windy City. God help my friends who live there. One of them was ready to shove me into a box with packing peanuts when I leaned over and let her know that after mowing her lawn, I left my undies under her pillow for her for later. But she makes the bad into good, and I am sure she had enough fabric for new curtains and a pillow sham, maybe some fringe too, from my enormous asscovers. Which did shrink 0.96899%, even while on vacation. Thank God for good old Chicago crack cocaine!