I’m embarrassed to tell you that the past 48 hours have been kind of a blur. No, I’m not embarrassed to tell you this for justifiable reasons such as I’ve been overcome by alcohol. No, the reason my life has been blurry is that two of my grandkids had a sleepover night before last and it took me 24 hours to recover.

For reasons I can’t exactly understand, Kaiya and Mylee love to sleep at our house. I don’t really get it. We do nothing exciting. But the doorbell rings and there are those two girls pulling their little Hello Kitty suitcases full of pajamas, stuffed animals, hair paraphernalia, and the like, with the happiest smiles on their faces. They run up to check out “their rooms” and make sure everything is the way it should be, and before I can say bibbity bobbity boo, one is busily preparing Play Doh food and the other is elbow deep in the Legos container. Life is good.

The biggest reason my life is a blur is that I am unable to sleep when they are guests in my house. I try, but one ear is always listening for a sound from one of the bedrooms. It rarely happens, but I’m ready if it does!

Yesterday morning at 4:45 a.m., heavy breathing awakened me from the sleep that has finally come. I open my eyes, and Mylee’s face is about six inches from mine.

“Nana, my tummy hurts and if I don’t drink some ginger ale right away, I will throw up,” she solemnly greets me.

Here’s the thing. I have emetophobia. It’s a thing, I promise. A phobia of vomiting, and I have it. I always have. God blessed me because my son Court only rarely threw up when he was growing up, and then he ALWAYS made it to the bathroom in time. I feel compelled to say that I have heard his stepmother talk about Court throwing up all the time, so I think it was simply a case of good luck and good planning. It’s okay though, because she doesn’t have emetophobia.

So I shot up like a rocket and headed her towards the bathroom.

“No Nana,” she said. “I just need some ginger ale.”

It’s 4:50 a.m., and there isn’t a ginger ale within a five mile radius. But by this time I had figured out that she wasn’t actually going to throw up (Court had warned me she had thrown up the night before), but that she had simply awakened early and wanted some ginger ale. And some company. She got company and a Coke Zero.

It is the girls’ Fall Break, so I took them to the Children’s Museum as a treat yesterday morning. Kaiya had a grand time. Mylee began pooping out about 11:30, because see above. A 4:50 a.m. rising time isn’t conducive to Children’s Museum fun-and-games. After lunching at Panda Express, I took chipper Kaiya and increasingly cranky Mylee home. A tired-looking mommy answered the door.

“Shhhh,” she said, holding her fingers to her lips. “Your baby brother just went down for his nap. He threw up all over me.”

Did I mention I have emetophobia? And now I know that Mylee throwing up the other night wasn’t just a random thing, but the beginning of an EPIDEMIC.

I have only gone through two cans of Lysol spray thus far. My house smells like a hospital ward.