oh, what a day...

Highlights from the last 24 hours:

As David's car begins slowly shutting down, one electrical system at a time, somewhere on Washington Boulevard, Lucy begins screaming for "a Popsicle from the market, Mommy!"

We get home -- Margaret throws up on me. Twice. Oh dear. She's feverish and sad.
All night long, she tells us -- over and again -- I'm feverish and sad! I'm feverish and sad!
Then Lucy falls out of the bed.

Our pediatrician guesses Margaret has an ear infection. We start antibiotics, but her fever still won't go down. All day long, it hovers around 101. She remains feverish and sad.

Sometime after lunch, David comes home so that I can go into work for a few hours. Since his car is crapped out, I must take the minivan into my insanely crowded parking garage and, as I descend into the fourth ring of Hell, I totally scrape the shit out of it. (My less-than-a-year-old minivan!!) And it gets stuck! So I get out, leave the keys in the ignition, walk up the ramp, and tell the parking attendant, "I have a problem with my van. Down there." I give him $10 and I pat his arm. I do not know why.
And then I have to go to work.
Where, goddamnit, somebody ate my lemon tart!!

What else?
Oh, yeah, Josephine threw up on me too. (She's fine.) The Opie says she needs a new bed -- and to be paid early because her sister in El Salvador is sick and her mother is crying. The house is a disaster, and my parents are coming tomorrow. And I don't have any food in the fridge.

But, on the bright side: I just realized that my favorite cartoon couple, Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper, have different last names! How nice! And I suspect their daughter, Paprika, probably has her mother's last name -- because Paprika Salt doesn't make any sense.