Friday. At last.

There are few things more jolting than being woken up in the night with a sick child. Equally disturbing are middle of the night phone calls.

Yesterday our phone rang just shy of 5 a.m. Gary answered (it's on his side of the bed), and I could hear the voice - our daughter. It took me about half a second to figure out that she was sick. And she was calling to alert us.

To be fair, she was in a lot of distress with a very painful upset stomach. But this a new one for me - and one my parents never had to deal with. 21st-century parenting, indeed.

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One month, I actually posted a blog entry every day. Looking back, I have no idea how. Some days, I have just way too much going on to sit at the computer and ruminate on the ups and downs of life. Other days, I have the time, but there's no way I am sharing thoughts either that mundane or that harrowing. It's best to keep some things to myself.

This week has been a combination of the two. But it's Friday, so I am welcoming a respite, however brief, from some of life's stresses.

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We watched American Idol last night, pausing the program half-way through so I could read to Sylvia, then skip the commercials. So we were down to the final two men when the show switched off - I had set the DVR to record "Lost," also in HD, and the machine can only handle one HD input. All I could do was laugh, but the girls were not quite as amused. Not a big deal - eventually you'll find out who got booted off.

(I looked and found out right away - it was Robbie. But I would have booted Luke - just my opinion.)

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We have come up with nicknames for our favorite - or not - AI contestants. There's Dreads (Jason Castro), Kid (David Archuleta), Cheater Girl (Kristy Lee Cook). Makes it fun. And boy did Kid earn his name - he cried like a baby when they got rid of Alexandrea. Grow up folks - you know this was part of the gig when you signed on! It made us laugh ... is it really so bad to watch AI with a bit of schadenfreude?

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So we're chatting last night after dinner when Gary announces, enthusiastically, Great news! We all turn and listen and he stuns us with this announcement: He got an e-mail from his airline, and he's been upgraded to First Class for his business trip this week.

This was his great news? Hmmm. My expectations for this sort of bulletin have been drastically lowered, that's all I know.

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It is a lovely last day of February/first day of March here in the Lone Star State. I am celebrating by wearing sandals. Which meant I had to paint my toenails - have not been for a pedicure yet. So I chose a color that won't show how dreadfully uncoordinated I am at toenail-painting. I know, how hard can it be? Terribly, once you're relied on the manicurist to do it for so long.

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Let the weekend begin.