Well, here it is, folks—Mr. Murphy has been on the rampage again. It started about a month and a half ago—I took a tiny little spill on the ice and did something nasty to my hip (or something somewhere in that general vicinity), causing me extreme discomfort, and, more importantly, causing me to look like a dweeb as I limped around trying to get stuff done.

Just as I was getting over that, I fell victim to winter’s greatest ally—the common cold. I slept in a chair for two nights so that my sinuses wouldn’t drain into my mouth and suffocate me, since I couldn’t breathe through my stuffed-up nose (doesn’t that make a lovely thought—hope you’re not eating as you read this); the previous night I had awakened about forty-seven times in a panic because I couldn’t breathe, so I figured a kink in my back from a few nights of sleeping in an upright position would be better than death by asphyxiation.

So I was just getting out of that (my nose still leaks like a sieve, but it’s manageable enough now that I can sleep in the reclined position that God intended humans to sleep in), when, last night, I sneezed. Thank you, Mr. Murphy!

I know what you’re thinking: “So what? a little sneeze isn’t the end of the world." Well, you’re right. Except that it wasn’t the sneeze that got me. No, it was the popping sound somewhere in my rib cage followed by a nasty little pain that occurred any time I did anything drastic like breathe or move. That’s what got me. So now, here I am 37 weeks pregnant, praying that baby doesn’t send me into the throes of labor while I try to quell the pain in my ribs by sucking on Tylenol and some dangerous narcotic that my doctor prescribed that I’m afraid to take because the label says it may create temporary dependency in newborns if taken regularly in the weeks leading up to delivery.

My advice to all of you out there, then, is this: watch out for Mr. Murphy—he’s on the warpath again. The next person he gets just may be YOU. And remember, more Americans get their news from doodlegeek.com than from any other source.

Okay, not really. But you did read it here first.