"I wanna stay home today...

...don't wanna go out." Stay Home by Self.

Can I tell you a somewhat personal and disgusting story?

I mean, it's not about me, obviously. It's about another pregnant friend and her husband and their two pet cats. And stuff. And her name is, um, Emmaline and his name is, uh, Brian, and their cats are named, shall we say, Flabby and Tabby.

So the "ick" in "morning sick" had been hitting Emmaline pretty hard for a few weeks, during which everyone rallied sweetly and helped with housework and cooking and such, Brian was doing an awesome job taking care of everything, and Flabby and Tabby were very considerate, for cats.

But Brian worked crazy hours with his job, and of course that meant he couldn't keep on top of everything, so some stuff got a little behind, like the regular cleaning of the bathrooms and cleaning out of the fridge and so on. And Tabby was a fairly new addition to the family, and he and Flabby weren't exactly friends yet, fighting with very little provocation.

One particular night, Brian got home at midnight from work, after having worked more than 12 hours that day, and he had to get up and work again at 7:30 the next morning. He crawled into bed and Emmaline and Brian and Flabby and Tabby all quickly fell asleep.

Now, Brian had a new phone with a new ringtone. It sounded like a bunch of gorillas fighting monster frogs in the Amazon while tribal natives played background drums and some lost tourist joined in with a saxophone. I tell you this only so you understand how unpleasant it was to hear this ringtone when one was sleeping. At 1:30 in the morning.

At the sound of the feuding primates and amphibians, Flabby and Tabby were thrown into a tizzy and started brawling, Emmaline nearly had a heart attack, and it turned out to be work calling, so Brian had to get up, get dressed, and go out and look for a guy whose wife claimed he was missing. An hour or so later Brian came home again, informed his sleepy (but curious) wife that the husband was intentionally missing, with another woman, and they promptly fell asleep again. Flabby and Tabby were locked downstairs to aid in the (hopeful) peace of the rest of the night.

Approximately thirty minutes after they fell asleep this time, the natives struck up their tune again, the frogs and gorillas went at it, and the lost tourist played his sax. From the stairs Emmaline could hear "Thump-thump-howl-hiss-growl-thump-thump," and Brian accidentally knocked the phone off his bedside table in his sleepy attempt to grab it, so the sound went on and on as he stumbled out of bed and sought the device blindly on hands and knees. He finally found it, said some unkind words, answered, and was told that he had another call, this time from the husband.

Brian went downstairs ("Thump-howl-growl-thump") and dealt with this situation. Emmaline fell asleep, briefly, then woke up as Brian returned.

"The guy found his truck had all the windows broken out of it. I told him his wife owned half the truck and unfortunately could do what she wanted with it and he can't do anything about it. I told him not to call again unless it's an emergency until tomorrow during the daytime."

Before he'd finished the last sentence, Brian was asleep, Emmaline was falling asleep, and the lack of thumps and growls seemed to indicate that Flabby and Tabby were also asleep.

At 6:30am Brian's alarm went off, and after several successive snoozes and grumblings, he stumbled out of bed to get ready for work again. Emmaline kissed him goodbye, and went back to sleep. Flabby and Tabby were allowed back upstairs, where they promptly fell to fighting and messing around in the blinds making noise. Emmaline got up, opened the curtains for the cats, and fell asleep as they lay peacefully in their separate sunbeams.

Emmaline's tummy started complaining. She took her nausea pill, made a piece of toast, drank a little juice, and immediately knew that breakfast was, alas, not going to stay down today.

She ran to the bathroom.

The bathroom that was past due the normal cleaning.

The bathroom that wouldn't have been so bad if she wasn't already about to toss her cookies.

The bathroom where Brian, so sleep deprived and exhausted, had used the toilet and forgotten to flush.

About five minutes later, after several flushings and throwing up intermittently in the toilet and nearby trash can, depending on which one made her less sick in the moment, and once there was not a drop of liquid or a crumb of food left in her body, Emmaline looked up from her collapsed position on the rug.

Flabby was sitting on the sink above her, looking down, very concerned.

Tabby was on the rug next to her, looking up, very unconcerned.

After seeing that Emmaline appeared to survive her trauma, Flabby jumped down, to be attacked by Tabby, and they happily tussled their way out of the bathroom to another part of the house.

There apparently was a little something left in Emmaline's stomach to toss, which she promptly did, and then she crawled back to bed.

From which position she texted her sweet husband Brian and asked him to please clean the bathroom as soon as he could after work.

Poor Brian.

Poor Emmaline.

Bad kitties.

Love!