I am the perfect amount of sick right now. Sick enough to feel too yucky to be at work - I'm running a low-grade fever, so anyone who touches my skin or gets within a foot of me runs the risk of defensive flaying from me - and my throat hurts which messes up my voice and makes on-call work not a great idea... but not so sick that all I can do is lie on the couch and moan.

So I took a sick day. I can't remember the last time I had a job that allowed me paid sick time - this is pretty cool! I can sit on the couch, do low-impact stuff like print out photos for my kids to take to school with them and write some emails, watch horrible television (I had no idea how many court shows were out there! My goodness!), and eat chocolate. It has been fantastic. And it works out perfectly, today happens to be an early-release day for Emily, so rather than worrying about taking a late lunch and hoping I don't get a hospital call, I can just get her off the bus and come back home again.

Want to know how I spent an hour this morning? And HOUR, I say. I surfed ice.com and picked out a handful of rings that I like. Not to buy or even to ask for... just to email to my husband, all casuallike, so that if he ever happens to be in the market for a new ring for his wife's poor naked right hand, or a ten-year anniversary gift of a new engagement/wedding set (he's got four more years to plan!), he has some ideas of where to start... [innocent eye fluttering]

It was actually a very strange email to write, because I don't make wish lists or ask for specific things as gifts - but he had said he would like some pointers, and boy oh boy did my estrogen get revved up once I started a-clickin'.

Lovely. Just lovely. I can handle this.

The only storm cloud on my horizon is the knowledge that my father has a date tonight. My father. A date. [shudder, quake] He and my mom have been separated for something like four years, and divorced for about nine months, so it's okay, it's legal, it's aboveboard... and I'm sure it's not his first date since, but it's the first one since he's lived here, that I know about. So it's still weird. Weird. Weird.

But I wish him well. And I wish him not to share details.