Keep your son upright for the next hour. You don't want him choking on his vomit and dying.

There are some bad days that just get worse.

Prior to last night's excitement of Googling "23-month-old drinks soap, poisoned?" I was already struggling to find three things to list in Facebook's ever-growing trend of encouraging its users to write three new things for which they feel grateful for seven straight days. Feeding the constant emotional manipulation of social media, at the end of your grateful week, you must nominate a friend to engage in his own week. And so on.

I hate social gushing. If I want to scream from the city's rooftops that I'm in love and life is beautiful, I'll ask my beloved to join me for a midnight stroll. And to bring some climbing rope. And then hope we don't get arrested for trespassing. If I want to cry foul, I'll confront the thing upsetting me or, more likely, put on a tearjerker flick and bawl into a bowl of popcorn like the emotionally adjusted person that I am. Social media are not the platform I choose to expose myself on. That's what my newspaper column is for.

A few days ago, my friend selected me for the one week of being grateful. Enduring a particularly stressful time at work, I thought it might be good for my psyche to force myself to think about all the blessings in my life. But yesterday, amid a never-ending workload and chore list, the only thing I could think of writing was that I was grateful the week would end and I no longer had to find things to be grateful for.

The day turned to night, and I steered clear from Facebook, knowing that if I logged on, Mark Zuckerberg would karmically smite me for ignoring my social promise of grateful gushing.

Instead, I preoccupied my son with clam chowder and busied myself with housework. Just when I thought the living room was cleaned, I saw that my son had tracked in mud and dirtied the carpet. Out of cleaning solutions, I grabbed a bottle of Dial soap, wet a towel and got down on my knees scrubbing. The next thing I knew, my son tapped me on the shoulder, mouth open wide, brimming with bubbles.

I looked over at the bottle of liquid soap. I looked to my son, foaming at the mouth.

"Spit it out! Spit it out!" I shrieked.

My son has always been a good listener. He spit it out — and for good measure puked up additional soap and soup all over the floor.

While my husband tended to our sudsy son, I Googled signs of poisoning and dialed up Poison Control.

The operator was calm and friendly as he told me to keep my son upright and watch for signs.

"Where did your son get the soap from?" he asked.

"It was on the floor because I was using it to clean the carpet."

"You mean the carpet your son just puked on?" he asked, and then he burst out laughing. "Monitor your son for the next hour. He will be fine."

There are some bad days that could be much worse.

I read my boy a bedtime story. My husband tucked him in while I finished scrubbing the carpet, showered and finally ventured onto Facebook.

I had been reminded what I am grateful for, what I am always grateful for: the loves in my life and the good health of those I love. But I am not one to gush socially. Instead, I wrote:

I am grateful that I was already in the process of cleaning the carpet when my son drank soap and puked on the floor. Convenient timing.

A friend of mine with a very dry sense of humor responded, "You're grateful that your negligence poisoned your child?"

"You don't know the half of it," I responded, playing into his jab with my self-deprecation. "I'm also grateful dreamy firemen came to rescue him when I accidentally locked him in my car last month."

He thought I was joking about physically locking my son in the car. I wasn't.

I really should spend more time listing the things I am truly grateful for, starting with the fact that my son is young enough that he will never remember my early parenting gaffes. If you tell him, I'll deny it.

Like Katiedid Langrock on Facebook, at http://www.facebook.com/katiedidhumor. Check out her column at http://didionsbible.com. To find out more about Katiedid Langrock and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.