Things I learned last night

• If your daughter says she isn't feeling well, and you cuddle up with her on the couch, make sure that she isn't totally pinning your legs so that you can move quickly to get her to the bathroom if she starts to throw up.

• If you are half pinned under your daughter and she starts to throw up, instinct will make you cup your hands under her mouth to catch the throw up so it doesn't splatter on you, her, and the couch.

• Cupped hands can only hold the output of about 3 heaves.

• Children rarely stop puking after only 3 heaves, so vomit containment quickly becomes an issue.

• If you yell to your other, younger, daughter to run to the kitchen and get Mommy a bowl so that you can unload your cupped hands of the vomit, it's a good idea to specify that you want a big bowl, otherwise your helpful child might return with a small glass bowl -- the kind you'd see on a cooking show holding the quarter cup of corn starch.

• When the total insane absurdity of the situation hits you, don't laugh, or the puking child will think you're laughing at her, and not at the absurdity of the situation, and she will start crying as well as puking.

• Once you have cleaned up the sick daughter, yourself, and the couch, and convinced the other daughter to put her clothes back on (for she has taken advantage of you being, ummm, distracted to strip to her underwear and get into the Halloween candy while watching TV) and got everyone into the car and have driven halfway to the after-hours clinic, your sick child will perk up and say her head and her stomach don't hurt anymore and that she just wants to go home and can she have some pizza please.

• You will take her to the clinic anyway, even though you know they will tell you it's just a virus, because if you don't, it will turn out to have been a brain tumour or something.