I had never heard of the conjunctiva before, personally

An awesome weeklong vacation last week up at our family cabin in Maine went off spectacularly well, save for Piper’s catching conjunctivitis partway through. If you’re wondering, I believe the word is derived from the Latinate roots “conjunctiva” (which is the pink membrane underneath your lower eyelid) and “itis” (which is the state of being irritated and issuing entire poached-eggs’ worth of mucusy blobs).

(Does mentioning a substance that came out of my child officially make me a parent blogger, now?)

20100702-DSC_1596.jpg One of the more pleasant pictures of Piper while ill, immediately after an eye-scrubbing.

Anyhow, four days of rotten sleep left the entire Hirsch family clobbered and susceptible to a hacking summer cold, just in time to return to New York City and watch all the sidewalks melt down to slag as a giant heatwave rolls through town. It’s around 11 p.m.; I worked from home today to avoid coughing on anyone at WNYC, and I feel like a horse ran over me today. I’ve had no appetite at all, though I forced myself to have a bowl of cereal and a handful of trail mix this afternoon. I’m about to go to bed, and it’s still approximately two thousand Kelvin degrees outside. My environmentalist side has required me to put the window a/c units on “economy” mode, and the cats are still melted down to little furry piles of butter.

Piper’s coughing herself awake in her room, which portends another rotten night’s sleep for all of us: Kate’s working overnight while Piper and I keep the home fires extinguished.