IN A WORD, PATHETIC: For reasons known to God alone, I woke up this morning with a raging headache, a sour stomach, and a sense of impending doom.

Granted, the sky was oppressive with rain, the barometer seemed to be playing jumprope in my skull, and I did drink three beers before bed, albeit after plenty of pasta, bread, salad, and cookies.

But I slept like seven hours. Straight. I ain't sick. And I've felt as good as a forty-year-old parent of two younguns under five can feel of late. Still, morning came and bitchslapped me awake like I insulted her. Why?

Who cares why. I hurt. And then the kids intervened...

Licky grabbed up C.J.'s fake vomit thingamajig and brought it over to me.

"Salchicha!" he squeaked, using the Spanish word for his favorite food, sausage. He thrust it in my face and mangled it against my mouth. "Salchicha!"

I really felt sick. Sick sick sick. "No, Licky!"

"Salchicha," he cried out, and then scrunched up the fake spew and shoved it in his mouth.

I am going to frickin' boot. Oh, God...

He continued to gnaw on the rubber upchuck as I fled to the bathroom.

I managed to compose myself, gulping deep breaths of air. Eileen rustled the miscreants into the car and they left for a grocery store or an amusement park or something. Didn't quite catch it.

Not long after they left I ran back into the bathroom. Something was coming...

"Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! Hooooooooaaaaaaah! Hwup! Hwup! Hoaaaaaaaah!"

I dry-heaved like ten times, but nothing came up. I sweated. I was cold. And then it was over. No boot, so time to scoot. I stood up...

...and I crumpled. Holy crap. In all the dry heaving I had thrown my back out. I balanced the top half of my body back onto the bottom half, and stepped gingerly back to the bed. My back was in full spasms.

Lord have mercy. My wife drank the same three cans of Miller Lite I did. And here I was considering some kind of Kevorkanian intervention, while she was off with the little monsters. Was it the beer? I wasn't even buzzed. Some weird viral invader?

Again, who knows.

Now I'm propped up at my Starbucks, trying to gather my brain and my digestive track and my back back into some semblance of working order.

I did skip my coffee yesterday, which I almost never do. Maybe I should get down on my knees and say sorry to the God of Starbucks. Something. Caffeine rehab?

So the morning's off to a rough start.