No, I haven't up and died. Hard to believe it's been three weeks since I blogged.

First my parents were here and Greg was gone, which meant I spent almost no time on the computer. Then, if you read Greg's blog, you know about my illness.

What it was, we'll never know. It felt like strep throat, but wasn't. It could have been mono, but thank god, it wasn't. All the health care professionals I saw kept saying what a large collection of pus I had in my throat, so I guess we'll just leave it at that and be grateful that I'm back to normal.

And I'm going to be very grateful that no one else in the family got it. I hibernated in our room for most of Friday, all of Saturday and Sunday, and most of Monday while Greg held down the family fort and I guess I kept my germs to myself.

Things were fairly insane at work when I got back--I'm still doing two jobs, but I've hired a clerk now and she starts this coming Thursday, so that should get better.

Otherwise in the world, congratulations to Raquel and Dwayne on little Lourdes. I'm having kind of a hard time imagining Dwayne with a baby. I'm sure he'll be a great father and he's very good with kids, but an infant is a whole different matter.

He sounded completely in love with her on the phone, so I think the Springman family is off to a good start.

In our family, Allie looks like she's gone ten rounds with an unfriendly and lost. She has a black eye. Last night, I took the girls to a McDonald's with an indoor playland and Allie disappeared for a hour inside the tunnels. She loved it. However, when we got home, she was crawling across from the back seat to come out of the car by my door and she fell somehow.

She got a lovely bruise on her cheek and it's spread up to her eye. Greg took the girls out today while I did our taxes and he said people would always smile at the three of them, until they saw Allie's face, when thoughts of abuse and authorities would cross their minds. Poor little girl, she'll probably look bad all week. We need to take pictures!

I'm not really gleeful or anything, of course, but I had two black eyes when I was about two from climbing on the kitchen cupboards and bonking myself with a door, so she comes by the look honestly. Here's hoping you and your family are healthier than ours!