Vomit Day - A New National Holiday (originally posted 02-03-11)

You know, I'm a good sport, generally, but man...

My life is not normal anymore, I get that. Off and on, I get pains that run up and down my spine like I'm being shocked with electricity (or maybe that's from being forced to listen to Justin Bieber's latest single over and over. Yeah, okay, so I'm not going to make the mistake of picking up my 10-year-old's iPod again). And because of my many, many medicines, pizza now tastes like wet paper towels and the Kmart women's bathroom floor (which, considering what some of the casinos' pizza places offer up, it could actually be wet paper towels). No, no, it couldn't end there. No, I got a cherry on the cake of my day when for seemingly no reason I started villainously spewing sickness everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.

Here's the kicker, it had absolutely nothing to do with my illness, my many medicines, or anything related to it.

No, no... the reprobate in this case? A smug vending machine at my office.

I've never been a big fan of vending machines, mind you, but dude, when I'm working late, I'm not bundling myself up in scarves, coats, gloves, and a jaunty little hat just to go grab some heat-'em-up burrito from the nearest AM/PM - which "nearest" in my case is still an unpleasant hike - and especially not in this uncharacteristic Las Vegas weather. (We get all the bad indicators of impending snow, but none of the delightful actual product. I get to spend 15 minutes in the morning shaving ice off my car windows with an over-the-limit credit card [do you think they'll give me a percentage off my monthly bill because their flaky card wouldn't hold up?] only to get a fever from exposure and a clear blue sky.)

Back to the vending machine.

I'm no fan of this particular vending machine because the dudes filling it are trying to get it taken away - I really believe this. Not only do they stock it with crap food, but it's crap food that's near its expiration date. Proof in point, I go down one morning to buy milk for my coffee, which I shouldn't be doing anyway because with all these new meds, I've gone from simply getting "the vapors" from drinking a glass of milk to being able to rehearse full orchestral pieces from my arse just from a nip of a Cheez-it. Be that as it may, I went down to grab me a carton and I find all but one container of the white stuff marked with expiration dates that are just two days down the road - both days of which are on the weekend.

Now let's all do that math in our heads quickly, shall we?

Two days....carry the one...take an undisturbed Friday... that's right, every single carton was due to expire while we were away for the weekend.

Nice...

Anyway, the whole office has been getting emails recently, telling us of the great demise of this vending machine. The chick sending the emails is channelling Sally Struthers with a small African boy on her lap staring greedily at the mayonnaise left over on her upper lip.

Well, today, I come in and realize my hoarded stock that I keep in my overhead cabinet is sorely depleted, so, what little is in my empty tummy starts scratching messages on my stomach lining for me to send down neighbors. Hungry and with guilt ringing in my ears (I'm nothing if not a properly raised Southern girl with a dash of Southern Baptist), I be-bop it down to said vending machine.

Okay, so this is the part in the movie where the girl talking on the telephone starts saying, "What do you mean 'the call is coming from inside the house'?' as she starts walking up the stairs, into the killer's lair, and the entire audience starts screaming for her to turn back.

Yep....

I didn't turn back.

Instead, I heated then ingested some depressing Dale Earnhardt, Jr. chicken sandwich which was like a sad little backwoods knockoff of a Chick-fil-a sandwich, complete with equally sad little pickle.

(Just repeating this description makes me want to repeat what occurred just an hour later)

That's right, before an hour had even passed, I was trotting back to the women's bathroom because "I wasn't feeling right". And while I was trying to release some chocolate hostages, as my ever-eloquent husband is wont to say, I inexplicably began projectile vomiting.

Seriously.

In the middle of everything and with no warning. It was like they had put up a bull's eye on the back of my stall door and I was practicing for our new Olympic team.

So, of course, after the activities finally came to a halt, I packed everything up and started for home. This was due less to the fact of the vomiting than it was to the fact that my pants' legs were now delicately decorated in the loveliness that was now a wafting, yet haunting smell of my later afternoon activities.

Yeah, I reeked.

So, I left to come home and change and try to finish some work here.

Driving home, though, I got more and more pissed the more I careened down the streets. Why, pray tell? Why? Why get mad?

Because, as aforementioned...ain't I got enough? This disease... these medicines... these side effects.. what, that's not enough?

....apparently not.


But that's the way it is with us normal people, right? Every time you think this is all you can handle, another truck pulls up and dumps cement on your brand new car.

Not that I'm signing up for that....



So, for tonight, maybe I am just a little normal. A little. Or at least I get to pretend.

So, see, there is an upside. At least, that's my story... for now.

Twilight did what...? (originally posted 02-01-11)

(This was supposed to be posted 2 days ago... yeah, this blogging this is already a flaming success...grr...)

For the last few days, Olivia (my ten-year-old daughter) and I have been sick with the latest round of the loveliness that is The Flu. I stayed home originally to take care of her and then to take her to the doctor, but by the time we made it in, she and I were vomiting in complete synchronization. There was such clarity to it, I thought we might suggest an event to the Olympic committee, however that would have meant tearing myself out of bed, which by 4pm was impossible.

Instead, we laid in bed, sleeping while the tv played random HBO and Showtime movies throughout the day. I woke up around 4 am on one of these mornings to New Moon from the Twilight - The Emo Years series.

For those who haven't seen it, it's this very moody misty gray to-doing about very moody misty gray teenagers and a few people posing as teenagers. I watched with my eyes half-caked with sick crust and a haziness to the world around me. Funnily enough, between where my little sicky head was and what was being projected, everything felt like it melded together in this druggy melted collage. In this dreamy state, I let myself listen and experience all things that are Twilight without pooh-poohing it, as I might have done if fully awake. And as much I want to hang myself for now being forced to say so, I found the answer to one of my problems in my novel.

I have had difficulty getting the actual story line of my book written out. Partly, I've had this problem because I've forgotten what it's like to be 17. So much happened in my life since then - not to mention there's a lot that I don't want to actually remember - that I haven't been able to grasp what it was like not to have to work, to wake up and only worry about how I was going to wear my hair (and making sure I wasn't repeating myself over the last 2 weeks), to be excited about seeing that guy near my lockers, that guy that laughed the way that made me want to dance and vomit all at the same time. I just forgot the simplicity and the complexity of it all.

One of the things I also started with was an old trick of mine - writing backwards. This isn't where you go all Beautiful Mind on the world and start writing gibberish that only makes sense to farm animals and Hawking's nurse.

Basically, I start with the event where I wanted to end up, then I go backwards to the chapter before it and write that. Then the one before that and on and on. It's a trick my uncle taught me about mazes. He said, "Start at the Finish Line. Know where you want to go and then figure out how to get there by going backwards." It works every time - in mazes and in writing. I'm not kidding. Seriously, never challenge me to a maze race on a restaurant placemap - I'm that good.


Anyway, so it's a start. A good starts...