In the closet of her den, my grandmother had a game called something like The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back. Players took turns putting plastic rods on the camel until it reached its capacity and split in two, right along its hinged midsection. I think it even had wheeled feet to speed the pathetic collapse.

I have great sympathy for the camel and this weekend, I met that straw.

I was doing something out-of-the-ordinary for work—something that required me to look nice and speak in complete sentences. Don’t they know I can do one or the other, but not both? 

In the days leading up to my unhinging, it’s possible I was distracted.

Otherwise, I don’t see how I can explain how I burned my face and wrist with boiling water while making coffee. It hurt, of course, but mostly I was wondering how good I could look with second-degree burns on my chin and lip.

The next day, there was an incident with food coloring. Alice accidentally dropped a bottle on the floor, and while I was cleaning it up with the help of two friends, I noticed that my hands were turning blue. Really, really blue.

Ah, I thought. Maybe this means they won’t notice the burns on my face!

You know your life is pretty sad when blue hands are the bright side.

Anyway, I did manage to turn my hands back to their normal color and hide my burns with assorted cosmetics. And my special work project went well—even the part where I had to talk to a pineapple.

But by the time I got home on Sunday evening, I’d come unhinged. I put myself to bed and let Lucy take care of me. She brought me a tray that contained a bag of crushed ice, 27 sugar cubes, an ace bandage and 11 Saltines. She’d covered the bases, clearly.

I still felt horrible when I woke up Monday morning, and Adam had to leave town for a business trip.

Lucy, taking pity on me, asked if she could walk Alice to school all by herself. The school has a policy that requires kids to be in fourth grade to do this, and Lucy is only in third. But I felt bad enough to shake my fist of civil disobedience in the general direction of the parent manual.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s two blocks. What could go wrong?”

Before they left, Lucy and Alice moved their toy stove next to my bed so that it might function as the bedside table (Adam and I still don’t have one).

Alice slipped my glasses off my face and put them on a burner. Lucy arranged and rearranged four chocolate truffles next to my glasses. Would they look better in a line? In a square? She would not be satisfied until the truffles started to get squashed and fuzzy looking. I planned to eat them anyway.

The girls tromped downstairs and I heard the thump and rustle of shoes and jackets being put on. They called out their sweet goodbyes and slammed the door shut behind them loud enough to rattle the windows.

The house was quiet. For five whole minutes. I ate the truffles and started to drift off into a chocolate coma. Then the phone rang.

“Mommy?” a small voice said. It was Lucy. “We forgot our backpacks. And our lunches. Will you please bring them?”

“Of course,” I said. And I hauled myself out of bed and down the street with all their school gear in my hands. It’s possible the truffles had given me the shakes, but I did make it there and back without collapsing.

When you’re a mom, it’s hard to take a sick day, even if everyone’s trying to help you take one. Still, four truffles and five extra minutes in bed meant I was ready, once again, to be there for my two kids when they needed me.

Next time, though, I think I’ll take the cure before the last straw is put on my back. Who’s with me?