After spending two days on my soapbox rallying against the Evil Machine, the universe stepped in today to remind me, in not-so-subtle terms, what my primary role is these days — Mommy.

For the past two nights, E. has been coughing during the night. On Tuesday night, I ended up in bed with her all night after she started crying for me around 1:30. Last night, she came into our bed around midnight. Needless to say, I got little sleep either night.

Remember in college, when you used to get ripshit drunk and you’d have those weird sleeps where you sort of half-sleep all night long, in between tossing and turning and trying to get someone out of your personal space? Oh, wait, that was just me? What can I say? College was fun.

Well it was a lot like that. Without the awesome time that led to that shitty sleep.

All night long, E. tried to burrow as close to me as possible. And when she wasn’t burrowing, she was laying across my chest, throwing elbows to my head or clinging to my body like a spider monkey. And every time I’d wrest myself away and try to turn away for 15 blissful minutes of sleep, she’d yank on my shoulder until I turned back toward her. Man, I miss the nights when I could just put a boob in her mouth and she’d fall back to sleep, no matter how sick she was.

Needless to say, I slept through my alarm for my runs both mornings.

This morning, she woke up around 7:30 saying her belly hurt. I figured it was from coughing all night. DadJovi and I started having that painful conversation that plagues working parents everywhere — school or no school. On one hand, she had no fever. My theory is that it’s her allergies that are making her cough. There’s no green snot, which is usually the standard for the school-or-no-school decision.

I was starting to lean toward keeping her home just because she looked pretty banged up. All of the sudden, she yells, “Mommy!” … and starts puking everywhere. Thank God it was on the hardwood floors. Last time it was on her comforter.

Well, at least that made the decision for me. And since DadJovi had a project due today and my work could all be done from home (in between Dora episodes and “Dumbo” screenings), I stayed home.

All day, she’s been very clingy and feels a little warm. Nothing serious though … I hope. The one thing that’s unusual is she’s been refusing all my efforts to get her to eat or drink anything. The closest we came was the kick-ass smoothie we concocted. She assumed the position — in her highchair watching some old-school Disney cartoons:

Considering her feet almost hit the ground, I think it’s about time to retire the highchair, huh? She loves it though and would sit there for hours if I left her (which, most days, I don’t).

But despite this sweet set-up, she still only drank about 1/4 of her smoothie. And that’s the last thing she ate today. I even tried bribing her with cinnamon-sugar toast, pancakes and cereal — her usual favorites — but she wasn’t biting. She didn’t even want her coveted juiceboxes, which she rarely gets. Finally, at about 6:30 p.m., I got some applesauce into her.

And then she told me that the applesauce was making her throw up go away. OK, so clearly she might not be a doctor someday.

Me thinks it’s going to be another long night. And I think this is going to put a damper on some of our weekend plans, which included going to see my father-in-law at the beach and hitting the Disney parks.

But considering that she was asking to go somewhere by 11 this morning (she’s definitely her father’s daughter), I think keeping her in the house all day again tomorrow is going to be tough. People of the world, brace yourselves for germs!

For me, there was one nice side effect of her illness — cuddling. I can’t remember the last time I held her so much in one day. It was pretty great, actually. I just wish the impetus wasn’t the fact that she’s feeling so bad.

Please send booze!

Who usually pulls nurse duty in your house? And when you were a kid, what was your favorite part of sick days? E. was pretty psyched to watch so much TV.