Vomit Free Since 12/16/13

I am feeling very blargh right now.

Two Tuesdays ago, a cold caught me. That Wednesday, I stayed away from work because along with blowing snot out my nose, the membrane back there kept puncturing and my nose would bleed. I hate doing the bloody nose thing at work.

I'm fortunate that the cold never turned into a bad cough, but the thing is still with me, sapping what little energy my rotundness produces.

On Sunday night, sometime after midnight, I woke up to a bellyache. I told myself over and over that I would not throw up. My body said that if I wasn't going to head to the bathroom it would make me thin that the other side needed some relieving, too. I sat down and farted then got sick. I was holding the garbage can on my lap.

There wasn't much in me because I only at breakfast that morning and some cheese (harvarti) and crackers for dinner. Of course that didn't stop my body from waking me up twice more to heave up bile and water. Monday I didn't go to work or see my brain doctor or do much of anything.

This morning, I woke up, still with a bellyache, and went to work because I hadn't been sick for 18 hours and I felt well enough.

Which is kind of funny because that's one of my answers when people ask me how much I like my new job. "Well enough," I say.

One of the best things about this job is that I don't loathe going there. It's just work. The people are decent. I have a great boss and she has a nice number two. The work I do can be challenging, but is never so hard that I want to scream. This job, though, isn't something I care about.

I will never be passionate about posting jobs vacancies online, or collecting and reviewing applications, or logging the movement of hiring paperwork into an overstuffed binder. Never. I wish I were so that I would wake up excited to go to work. I wish I were driven to push myself up through the ranks. I wish I had a goal.

Once, I think, I mentioned that when I was in high school some of my friends had an assignment to show off/explain their bliss. I thought about the assignment for a long time, even though it wasn't my assignment, and came up blank. I still think about that assignment. I still come up blank.

Suffering Stupidity and Pain

I go shopping kind of early so I don't have to deal with crowds, about 8:30AM on Saturdays. So, I don't expect there to be many check lines open, but like I wrote before, there aren't crowds that early on a Saturday, but there's at least one for people like me who are lazy and like to think that if we go to a check line run by a person we can discourage those shitty self-check lanes.

Well, I went shopping at a local story, Lucky, this Saturday. They had some good sales and I wandered up and down the aisles picking up extra stuff that I wanted but didn't necessarily need, like molasses. When I arrived at the front of the store, finished with my shopping, I was surprised to find that none of the check stands had a person there to check me out. I was forced to use the self-check lanes.

Now I've used the self-check before, but it's always been for a few things, never more than four, during crowded evening. It's easy when you have so few things, you scan, listen to the damned voice, put your stuff into a bag, and repeat until your out of stuff.

It's not quite as easy when you have a cart with many things. First, the computer lady doesn't like you skipping putting stuff in a bag. (But why would I want a bag for a five-pound bag of potatoes?) The computer doesn't like it any more when you just fill the first, of three, bag and immediately pull it and put it in your cart without filling the other two. Oh, and trying to find the right veggies in their list by picture, a real pain in the ass. Paying is easy though.

I decided that the next time I stop at that store I'll scout out for a checker and if there isn't one I'll ask the self-check guard and if I'm told there isn't going to be one during my trip, I'm leaving.

In other news, I finally know what it's like to have food poisoning. It's why I wasn't at work yesterday. Mostly, I worked the sickness out during the night, but I didn't sleep much and thought staying on the floor in my apartment watching TV and napping would be best.

When I worked in a sandwich shop, when ever my boss had a stomach ache, he'd call it food poisoning. For years I figured that if food poisoning was just a stomach ache then it's no big deal. I know better now.

Wednesdays

My grandpa was sent to the hospital last Wednesday. He couldn't move and there were other things that were wrong with him.

There was talk about his kidneys and liver.

He was getting better, though. When my parents visited him he was awake and alert and wanting to get home.

Today I read an e-mail from my mom that said he has sepsis, which is infection in the blood stream.

Most old folks don't recover from that unless it's caught early.

Apparently, he still feels okay.

I've taken the day off tomorrow to take the four hour drive down to his hospital and visit for a bit. After, I'm going to visit my grandma to visit with her, too.

My brother was invited to ride with me, but I haven't heard from him, yet. I hope he comes. I don't think he's visited with them for a couple of years.

It's not that I'm worried about him dying. Yeah, I'll miss him and so will my grandma and the rest of my family, but that's our problem. I'm more worried about him being in pain before he dies. I don't want him to hang on by his fingernails when it's okay for him to go.

I'd rather he gets better, though.

On Wednesday this week, I have an interview in Cowtown. It's the first one I've done in nine months. I'm nervous about it.

My Brain Is Scattered

I feel awful. When I first got the sore throat, I was hoping it was allergies. When I woke up this morning, I knew it wasn't. If, this morning, I felt like I feel right now (and I'm not talking about feeling like we feel with our fingers) I wouldn't have come to work today. If I felt this awful at lunch, I would have left then. Right now, though, there's only an hour left and no matter what I have the walk back, so I may as well wait it out and not use any of my sick time.

Now there's 45 minutes left. It's going to be forever isn't it.

TMVS just told a story about a guy she knew who flirted with his roommates and the roommates would insult him so one day he made cookies. His roommates started in on the cookies and thought the cookies tasted funny. TMVS said she took a little bite and put the cookie down. She said they tasted like jism. The roommates kept on eating them, though.

On that note, I'm going to sit around and look busy, but try not to move much so I don't feel any worse than I do now.

Yesterday

I developed a sore throat and a stuffy nose and I got a letter telling me I didn't get hired by the people who interviewed me.

When it rains, right?

Yuch-a

I think I'm getting sick. My stomach is still achy, my head is a bit spinney, and my skin is a bit prickly. I don't really want to be sick, since being sick is never any fun, but better now when I don't have any interviews than during a week that I do. Hope the rest of you are feelin' better than I am.

Mish and Mash, Both General

I'm sitting here, sucking of a fakegrape Life Saver trying hard not to concentrate on my queasy stomach. Have you ever dreamed about having an upset stomach an then had a queasy one when you woke up in the morning? I have. Just this morning, in fact. I think that it was the salad dressing I had last night. Does Zesty Italian dressing go bad? I don't think it's been open that long.

---

Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr Day, so I had the day off. Holidays like this leave me with mixed emotions. Yes, having a day off from work is nice, but is it the sort of think that Martin Luther King, Jr would have wanted? Would he have wanted us to celebrate his date of birth, after he died, of course, by sitting in our home listening to speeches he gave forty years ago or, even worse, going out just to buy things? It seems to me that the best way to celebrate him would be to actually do something about the rights of humans. Something that promotes an equality among people. Something more than what we normally do.

I don't know, though. I just sit around and thing about these things, I don't actually get up and do anything about it, but what are the chances that the minorities would accept a WASPy guy like me to try and lead the way to something, hopefully, better? Pretty slim, I'd say.

Did anyone else see that episode of Boondocks with Martin Luther King, Jr? In it, he wasn't killed he was just put into a coma for thirty years. He experienced September 11, 2001 and after that day he appeared on a show, much like Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect, and said that he didn't support the US invading Afghanistan or anywhere else. The audience turned on him because he continued to hold on to his pacifist beliefs. It was an unfortunate, but very true moment.

---

My parents came to visit over the weekend. It was nice. They brought me a car so I can get rid of my car and we had yummy French toast made by yours truly and we went to a movie and I showed them where I was hit by the cop car and took them by the parking garage where a guy was killed a few months ago (but I found that out just before Christmas, I thought he had just be seriously beaten) and other things.

We went to the Charles Schulz Museum. It's really close to where I live, but in the past year I hadn't visited before Sunday. I kept hoping that my brother would come and visit so I could go with him because, even though I know my parents appreciated and enjoyed the museum, my brother would have really been able to grok it.

Still, it was a good visit, with them and to the museum.

Walk Sleeping

I only wrote about 800 words last night. I wasn't feeling well, though. I shut the computer off and climbed into bed around eight and pretty much fell asleep right away. (Well, after I read the latest issue of 52. I don't want to be confused when Newsarama posts their weekly interview with the editor of the comic.)

I woke up this morning just as tired as I was when I went to bed, but I climbed out of bed and shuffled to the kitchenette and made a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich for breakfast. (I wanted strawberry jam, but it's gotten a bit old and sort of crystallized to the jar.) The food didn't wake me up, neither did the shower, nor the walk to work. (No rain today, just clouds that I'm hoping will open up and dump down on us.)

I'm afraid this means I'm approaching the ill event horizon. I'd like to pull away before I get caught in it, but if it's unavoidable, I'm ready for the ride. The main thing I wonder, though, is why, if I'm going in, it had to happen on the weekend? Couldn't it have held off until Sunday night so I could ditch work on Monday?

If I'm out on Monday, which I doubt I will be I'll probably be just fine then, I'll spend the time that would have been spent at work watching Wonderfalls, which I had returned to me last weekend. It's a good way to spend a sick day.

"Asprin Commercials Give Me Headaches."

Yesterday, I woke up with a headache.

One of those headaches that wakes you up before 6AM on a Sunday and won't let you go back to sleep.

One of those headaches that throbs and with each throb you get more and more nauseous.

One of those headaches that hurt so much that you lay in bed and seriously consider peeing there rather than walking to the bathroom because any moving will only make your head hurt worse.

Eventually, I got up and out because I'd rather be in pain than wallowing in my own waste.

After the bathroom, I dragged my feet to the room with the TV, settled down on some pillows and watched the CBS Sunday Morning show. (The only morning show that I can stand watching even when my head is fine. P.S. The website sucks. I was hoping that it would have a simple elegance to it, like the show does. Instead, it just looks like every other CBS News site.) I watched it from start to finish without recording it first. I don't think I've ever done that before.

I don't remember much. Stuff sold at Target. Some weird boxy houses. A toilet. Cute puppies.

The website says the show was about design. I don't understand how the puppies fit into design, but the other stuff makes sense.

I don't remember moving for the entire hour and a half of the show. I probably shifted my body from time to time, but I didn't get up. I tried to not move my head.

After the show ended, I remember that my mom gave me some super pills just in case I got a headache of horrendous caliber.

I pulled myself up and staggered around my apartment looking for the bag I brought with me the last time I visited Cowtown. I knew that that was where the pills were.

I searched for what seemed like an hour, but was really about ten minutes before I, literally, stumbled over the bag. In the little pocket without a hole, I found the handful of pills my mom gave me, wrapped carefully in pairs by the company. I grabbed one serving of the pills and lurched toward the kitchen for water so I could swallow my little chemical saviors.

I gulped down water and pills and once again settled myself in front of the TV. This time, I watched my bootleg Daria.

By the end of the third episode, I was feeling better. My head still hurt, but very lightly. I no longer felt nauseous. I could function.

I just thought you all might like to know all that.

"Oy, me estomago! No me gusta Captain Crunch con Spamberries."

I don't feel so well.

I felt, more or less, fine walking to work this morning. Just tired. Very, very tired. But not sick. Now I feel sick. I've felt this way since about 8:30 this morning.

I keep hoping it's gas. Maybe I'll let out a series of little burps or farts or the ever popular combination and the ache will go away. Alas, the few little burps I've release have done nothing for my tummy and if I've farted since I got to work I can't remember doing it.

Here's to funky stomachs, everyone. Just another thing to remind us that we’re not the superhumans we pretend to be.

You Ask One Question...

...and only get one answer.

On another note, I didn’t go to work yesterday. I woke up, slid out of bed and onto the floor. I sat there for a while, shivering. I pulled myself up and wobbled around the room and into the bathroom. My face was whiter than usual and drawn. I decided to take my temperature. I grabbed my thermometer, wobbled my way back to my bed, lay down, and popped the thermometer under my tongue. A few minutes later, I pulled it out and looked. 100.2. I knew then that I wasn’t going to work. I put the thermometer near my alarm which I reset and promptly fell asleep.

An hour later, I slid out of bed and wobbled my way to the phone. I called work and said I wouldn’t be coming in. My boss asked my why and I said because my temperature was over a hundred. She said okay.

I wobbled back to bed and didn’t sleep. My whole body ached. My skin was in that horrible hyper sensitive state.

Eventually, I stumbled out to the living room coated myself in all my blankets and turned on the TV. I don’t remember what was on, though.

After noon, I decided to take my temperature again. This time it was 102.3. Not good. I started to get scared. If I kept getting worse, how could I get to the hospital? This is the first time I’ve ever lived on my own. At any other point in my life if I got really sick I had a parent or a roommate who would have driven me, but not now. Now I’d either have to risk driving myself, which I knew was stupid, or call a taxi.

I was just panicking, of course. By seven o’clock, my temperature was down to 99.8 and I knew I’d be going to work the next day, which I did with my body still aching and my skin still being sensitive and a normal temperature.

One good thing came from all of this, though: I didn’t toss my cookies.