Foibles of Life

Originally Posted Monday, May 27, 2013

Some dreadful, darkly evil thing grasped hold of me in the night.  I won't give you the gruesome details, but I woke as I was trying so forcefully to keep from puking in my bed that the liquid was forced deep into my sinus cavities.  Never in life have I had such an experience.  The next hour was spent in acidic misery as I coughed and gagged and blew my nose and gargled and blew my nose and gargled at the same time trying to dislodge all the burning chunks of ruination from my head. 

Yesterday morning broke slowly and quietly as I began my road to recovery from the debaucheries of the weekend.  I walked four miles and spent half an hour doing stadium steps with my shirt off in the sun after which I drank glass after glass of Gatorade.  Yes, yes. . . on the right path now.  On the road to wellness. 

And then it was time to go marketing.  My mother, who has not been well, wanted chicken instead of steak, so I bought what I needed and put the chicken in the pressure cooker with salt and black and red pepper, white and small yellow onions, and a bit of white wine.  Jasmine rice.  Asparagus.  Tomato and avocado salad.  And a bottle of Sav Blanc. 

The evening was more than nice, and once again we were able to eat on the deck now overlooking the thick carpet of new lawn and freshly mulched beds.  It was a quiet afternoon.  There was a pleasant breeze.  And as we ate, the sky turned that particular flamingo pink and robin's egg blue that you only see in this part of the country.  We ate and drank until the darkness came.  My mother did not leave 'till nine. 

At one I was puking.  By two I had thrown half the pillows off the bed and was trying to sleep on the side of the bed away from the sour spew. 

And now groggy and hoarse, my stomach a big, bloated knot, I wonder what happened.  It is punishment, of course, I tell myself.  Girls.  It is what you get.  Or what I got.  Surely this is something transmitted to me in a single, hasty moment, god's wrath for having sinned, the penalty of living in this shit hole of a putrid world, for having abandoned, even ever so briefly, my monkish and solitary ways. 

I am woe.  I had planned to go early to the beach today.  It is Memorial Day, so of course there is a surfing competition.  What better way to celebrate those who have served and lost than surfing? 

But I'll not be participating in any of that wildness.  No sand and salt and sun for me.  No colorful sugary drinks or bikini contests.  Uh-uh.  I'm just going to sit right here and ponder the follies and foibles of my so called life. 

I will call my mother, of course, to make sure it wasn't the food.