I'm sick. Whether it's a virus or a touch of food poisoning or simply having overeaten, I'm not sure, but I've never been this close to throwing up before without actually doing it.
Around 3 in the morning, I turned over in my sleep - and came completely awake in about half a second as my stomach rebelled rather violently. I sat on the side of the bed, taking deep, slow breaths and trying not to think. For the next half or so, the gorge in my throat rose and fell as if it was on a ship. I managed not to throw up, but I was positive it would happen any time - I even took the precaution of putting my hair in a ponytail, and at one point went on into the bathroom and sat on the floor.
But I didn't lose it, and eventually I felt stable enough to go downstairs to the kitchen and take a couple of Tums. I went back to bed and laid very flat and fell asleep trying not to move. When the cat woke me up this morning, I'd managed to roll over without upsetting my stomach again, but I still feel pretty queasy. If I had any leave time to spend, I'd be taking the day off and spending it in bed, eating Tums and soda crackers to try to settle my stomach. (It occurs to me just now that I could have brought some crackers to work with me, but at 7:15 this morning the thought of food still made my stomach roil in protest, so I'm not surprised I didn't think of it earlier.)
Now, I'm still sortof queasy - but in between lurches, my stomach is starting to demand food. (I skipped breakfast, of course.) I'm not sure what I'll do; maybe go see if the vending machine has been re-stocked with crackers.
One package of peanut butter Ritz Bits sandwiches later, and I'm feeling much better. Not quite top notch, but not on the edge of tossing my cookies, either. What a relief. Now I can have a cup of coffee and contemplate the rest of the day with something other than dread.
In the effort of not thinking about the state of my stomach, I got caught up in working - I set myself an exersize to do, and it didn't work the way it was supposed to, and when I looked up from wrestling with the problem, it was almost 12:20. So I went and reheated the leftovers I had for lunch, and continued glaring at my computer screen while I ate.
By the time I figured out what I'd forgotten, it was 2:00. Not bad for a Monday. Especially a Monday that, at the beginning, promised to be awfully long, subjectively. And since I worked through lunch, I can go home a little early. (Not a whole hour early, since I have to save up a little time for my doctor's appointment on Wednesday, but half an hour, I think I can swing.)
We had a really nice weekend. Friday Matt got an e-mail from Carrie, an old friend of ours from William and Mary, saying she was going to be in town over the weekend and did we have time to meet her? I got his message while I was in the middle of writing him to tell him that my mom wanted us to come over for dinner on Saturday. So we conferred briefly and he wrote Carrie back to tell her that we'd love to meet her for lunch. While Matt was doing that, I was chatting with K.T. about the MissMas party, and she asked if I'd pick up some bread ends and house dressing from the Cheese Shop. (The Cheese Shop, for those of you unfamiliar with Williamsburg, is a local sandwich and gourmet foods market. Their "house dressing" for sandwiches is nearly universally adored by college students, and makes a great dip for the thick ends of bread generated by the sandwich shop. The dressing is moderately expensive, but the bread is very cheap, so almost every William and Mary student I know has made more than one meal on the combination, and so now it's sortof a nostalgia thing for us.) Boy, did I get sidetracked there, or what? Anyway, at the same time I was telling K.T. I'd try to get by the Cheese Shop for the bread ends and house, Matt was - entirely independently - suggesting to Carrie that we have lunch at the Cheese Shop.
So Saturday afternoon, Carrie and Kathy came over to marvel at our house-ness (the last time we saw Carrie was before we got married) and then we trooped over to the Colonial district for lunch. When we returned, our tummies were full of roast beef and cheese, and our arms with a bag of goodies.
Not long after they left, we drove down to my parents' house. Dad showed off this FaceMaker program on his new computer, and he and Matt and I built a head-and-shoulders portrait of my brother, a little at a time - it was really spooky how much it looked like him, too! Mom served us corned beef brisket and boiled potatoes, carrots, and cabbage for dinner. I'm not usually the world's biggest fan of corned beef, but once in a while, I really like a slab of it with some cabbage on the side. Yum! There wasn't very much left over, so Mom put all the leftovers in one dish and gave it to me to take home. After dinner, Matt and Mom went upstairs to play with the computer a bit, and Dad and I sat and talked, which was nice and relaxing.
Sunday, we slept in very late and then scrambled to get to the MissMas party on time. We wound up being about fifteen minutes late, but it didn't matter too much, since we were still the first to arrive. (K.T. and Kevin were starting to get a bit nervous when the appointed time rolled around and no one was there...) K.T. had a lovely spread out - strawberry punch and cheese and meat and burgundy weenies (which Matt didn't care for but I thought were great) and smoked oysters. She put out the bread ends and house dressing, and it was mostly gone by the time we left! (The bread was all eaten, and I wound up taking home about half a pint of the dressing which we'll have with pretzels.)
But everyone else came in a fairly steady stream after us - Becky, Matt O., and Jeremy and Elizabeth. K.T. called Greg, only to discover that he was working and would be too late to participate in the gift exchange, so we went ahead and started without him. With only eight of us, it went pretty fast, but we had a lot of fun, and we could only have fit about two more people in the circle comfortably anyway! The variant I invented with the 20-sided die worked pretty well, at least after we figured out we needed to pass around a flat rolling surface with the dice. Once, I almost got caught up in the struggle for one of the presents Matt and I brought and demanded it myself!
All the presents were opened to appropriate moans of horror, and then we decided to watch Star Wars, since Becky has never seen the full trilogy. Greg arrived in the middle of the showing, and afterwards we sat around talking. Around 7:30, Jeremy and Elizabeth went home, and the rest of us decided we should attempt some food that was at least sortof good for us, and all drove over to the local Denny's. However, the temperature in the Denny's was up in the 80's, and the hostess warned us that the cook in the back was new and slow (slow! For Denny's!) and we couldn't all sit together... We decided to leave.
When the cool air hit my face after standing in the overwarm Denny's, I suddenly felt slightly queasy, and since Matt hadn't been hungry anyway, I suggested that he and I head on home. I'm guessing it's the same queasy that woke me up this morning, but I'm not sure - but at any rate, it's probably a good thing that we left while we were still having fun.
This coming weekend promises to be fun, too - MarsCon is a nice, relaxed sci-fi convention, and the hotel is less than a mile from our house! Braz and Kris will be coming to town for it and staying with us, which we're looking forward to, too! (Well, Braz is coming for MarsCon; Kris isn't much into sci-fi, but she likes to come to Williamsburg and shop, so I'm sure she'll be able to keep occupied.)
Matt and I look forward to MarsCon every year. Most conventions use the majority of their budgets to attract guests and activities. For years, MarsCon never even had any discussion panels - the big event was the sauna party at 10 on Saturday night. They billed it not as a sci-fi convention, but as a "Relax-a-Con" and spent the lion's share of the budget on food for the Con Suite. At most conventions, you feel lucky if the con suite sports a vegetable platter and the fixings for peanut butter sandwiches - I've been to big-name cons that can barely manage to provide soda and chips. Not MarsCon. MarsCon provides hot meals and elaborate snacks. Swedish meatballs, a taco bar, salafor the li, pizza, ice-cream sundae fixings, homemade cookies, at least a dozen varieties of soda... The food alone is worth the price of admission.
Even if we accidently registered twice.
Add to that seeing friends we hardly ever get to see, the occasional LARP or table-top game, a show by the Women of Whimsey, and an invariably-fun auction for charity causes, and it's a great weekend.
Top that off with getting Monday off from work and a birthday party somewhere in there for my Dad, and I'm really looking forward to this weekend.
One day down, four to go...
No comments:
Post a Comment