Awkwardly Social

When my sister and I were kids and we’d get the stomach flu, my mom would pull out the spaghetti pot, the biggest pot in her culinary repertoire, for us to barf in.  We would get better and the pot would get washed out and eventually put back on the stove filled with water for spaghetti nights and we’d all collectively forget that one of us had been using it as a bile bucket.

I made a big mistake the other night, only partly my own fault.  As you’ve probably read I’ve been having some issues with my pee hole.  I’ve peed in lots of cups.  I’ve been declared bacteria and STD free and yet, still the horrible sensation of having a UTI.  It comes and goes, and this is what puzzles the doctors.  Yet, they still give me antibiotics just in case.  My gyno, who I love, gave me a single does of Flagyl to take to try to knock it out once and for all.  I didn’t take it that night because you’re supposed to take it with food, and I stumbled through the weekend waiting for my test results to come back.  They came back on Wednesday but one of the tests she said she would do hadn’t been done, so I thought, fuck it I’ll just take the damned antibiotic.  This was after a meal and two glasses of wine.

Cut to 4 hours later when the vomiting started.  And kept going for 6 hours.  With 15 minute rest breaks in between violent upheaval of broccolini and chicken breast and an Eggo waffle.  And two glasses of my favorite rose.  Seth got so worried that he called my doctor’s office, got the on call doctor to call in a prescription at 4:30am for an anti-nausea drug.  If you’ve never taken one you won’t know that, um, you don’t swallow it.  At least not with your mouth…  Yeah!  Fun for the whole family!  I took it (mmhmm… up the butt) and it had no effect.

By this point I had given up on yakking into the toilet.  My bathroom is always freezing and I was going into flop sweats after every heave, so I moved to the guest room with Seth on the couch near-by to listen to my incredibly loud wretching.  Lula laid next to me, worried.  I hugged a spaghetti pot.  At one point Seth took the pot to empty and wash it out, and returned it smelling of Palmolive.  I handed the pot back to him after a vomit spell and asked him if he minded rinsing out the soap smell, it was making me nauseous.  Which, funny, right?

I finally fell asleep at about 8:30am, woke up and heaved the last tiny bit of bile left in my stomach and fell asleep.

So… apparently what no one told me other than in passing was, if you take Flagyl with any alcohol, you’re going to get violently ill.  It’s um…  stupid to take antibiotics with alcohol anyway, but I didn’t really think about it because I’ve been on antibiotics before without any trouble.  Granted, I usually waited until the course was almost done, and I read somewhere that alcohol really has no effect on their ability to kill bacteria.  Which, might have been written somewhere like the New York Times, or, it might have been written on some non-doctor’s blog.  I don’t know.  Don’t judge me, I’ve got mental problems.  Also, I am retarded.  Yes, I am a total fucking moron, but come on, shouldn’t someone say when they’re giving you this drug, DUDE, YOU WILL WISH YOU WERE DEAD if you take this pill with alcohol.   It mimics the affects of the drug they give to alcoholics to keep them from drinking.  Guess who’s glad she’s not an alcoholic!  Also, guess who hasn’t been drinking!  Yeah, haven’t had a drop since that night.  Not planning on having any drops until this whole thing is resolved.  One thing though, there’s nothing like pain to make a girl want to drink.  Mental or otherwise.

So, short story long, I have an appointment with a urologist.  I’m reasonably sure this is only something old men do, have urology appointments. But whatever, man, I need my sex life back.

Also, I feel no shame about washing out my bile bucket/spaghetti pot, putting it back in the cupboard and serving chicken and dumplings out of it when my boyfriend’s kids come to town.  Because that’s what family is all about, the collective mis-remembering of the alternate uses for a spaghetti pot.

(How awesome would it be to actually have a picture of me being bathed in a spaghetti pot, goddamn my parents for not doing that. So irritating.)

Last week, for the first time in a long time, I had the overwhelming urge to pick up a pack of cigarettes.  Maybe it was that familiar feeling of driving home with the sun not quite down, the air was warm and it felt like summer could start at any moment.  Or maybe it was just that I wanted to smoke.  And how.  I didn’t stop for a pack, but all weekend I kind of drank my cigarette sorrows away which culminated in my Sunday afternoon panic attack and a noticeable shift in my waistline.

Seth and I run well together, so over the past couple of weeks we’ve been cramming in a run at around 8:30 or 9:00 at night.  It’s not ideal, but the smell of jasmine is heavy in the air and the crisp spring nights are making for excellent heart pounding, wind sucking, gravel crunching jaunts around the reservoir.

And now that my smoking cravings have really manifested themselves in ways that need to be quashed with something other than fistfuls of pretzels followed by gigantic glasses of wine, I’ve started bringing my lunch to work, eating dinner before I leave the office (to avoid eating at 10:30PM) and exercising at least 4 times a week.  Which leaves absolutely zero time for smoking.  See also no time for television (if only I didn’t work in television, then I wouldn’t see any of it ever!  As it is, I watch a fair amount just by watching our shows), which is good, but also has kind of turned me into that dieting, running, holier-than-thou girl who has absolutely no idea what you’re talking about when you put the words American Idol Star Dancing 24 Bus of Rock Loving Bachelors together.  Except I do.  And I try not to sound too insane when I say, “I didn’t see it, but I heard about it on Ryan Seacrest this morning.”  Because, even if you don’t watch it, if you’ve heard about it on Ryan frigging Seacrest you’re still kind of a pop-culture vulture.

Mostly, I’d rather sit on our Adirondacks with my feet in Seth’s lap, a glass of white wine in one hand and a perpetually lit cigarette in the other, but I guess that just isn’t happening.  It’s all running and salads and no booze for me until I can crush those sweet cigarette feelings.  Or at least fit back into my swim suit.

Wow, black really is slimming! And boob minimizing! Also, who is that lady? She kind of looks like an east-sider. All she needs is an exciting arm tattoo and some kind of alternative form of transportation and she’s set! Bonus points if she makes her own clothing. Hipster ahoy!

Over the summer I went through a bit of a phase. There was a lot of drinking and a lot of smoking, a lot of exercise and not a lot of eating. I lost about 5 pounds on top of the 7 or so I had already lost from the break-up. One day I went to Catherine’s house for our walk and she told me I was looking awful and sunken and that I needed to eat. I took that as a compliment. Los Angeles can do that to a person.

Then Mr. F came home and we would go out to dinner. I would order a glass of wine or a martini and he would order a Scotch, his meal and an appetizer. Every night he would ask me if I was eating that night and every night I would say I was drinking my dinner. He quickly figured out (smart!) that if he ordered certain things I wouldn’t be able to control myself and I’d have a bite. Or seven. Hello, asparagus drenched in butter! Come to mama, mashed potatoes! So, the 5 pounds I lost from not eating turned into 0. And I was back to only 7 pounds lost.

Then I quit smoking. And kept drinking. And started eating again. Smokers lose their taste buds, but once smokers stop smoking things start smelling and tasting delicious. So, the 7 pounds I lost from the break-up were almost back, and that would have bothered me if I wasn’t getting laid so often. Yay, sex endorphins!

But a couple of weeks ago, I started getting a little sad around the edges. The one tried and true method I have of getting rid of the ’sad around the edges’ feeling is exercise and whole grains and veggies. So now, as a non-smoker, non-drinker, every night exerciser, whole grain and veggie eater, I’m back down 6 pounds.

Lesson? Never quit smoking.

Ha! Just kidding. The lesson is, wear black until it makes you sad enough to get your ass in gear. Bonus, it’s slimming!

OK, fine. The real lesson is (After School Special Alert!) - Not eating is only a temporary fix, it only works while you’re not eating. Also, it makes you dizzy and kind of grumpy and people say you look sallow and bad. The best way to lose weight and keep it off sensibly avoid most meat and dairy (but not to the detriment of getting enough protein, hello, Wild Boar Bacon!), eat whole grains and colorful veggies, and most of all have lots and lots of sex, er… exercise every night.

You should see my drafts list.  In the past week, I’ve tried to write about a lot of things.

I’ve tried to write about Mercury being in retrograde and how living in Southern California makes it possible to use that as a valid excuse for things getting fucked up at your job.  All that topic deserves is the sentence I just wrote.  Instead I rambled on and on and tried to be funny.  Turns out, I’m not all that funny when it comes to hippy-dippy lifestyle in California.

I’ve tried to write about the ghost that turned up in Mr. F’s apartment and started cooking some ghost mac and cheese, and then some ghost Hamburger Helper.  He was a big silhouette-y ghost.  It barely deserved a twitter.

I’ve tried to write about my trip to a new doctor and how he kind of called me a woman of loose morals, but in a nice way.  Also, he called me a classy dame.  I think he’s a doctor from the past.  He’s Mr. F’s doctor so that would make sense.

I’ve tried to write about returning to exercise.  I did.  A fat teenaged girl on my street mocked me for running with my dog.  If it hadn’t been so weirdly out of the blue, I probably would have gotten pissed.  Instead I get a chuckle thinking about her toad like body running in place sounding off about me running.  It was really quite a picture.  The whole run I thought about ways I could have wounded her with words, instead of just laughing and running away. I think I chose the right path.

I’ve tried to write about how Mr. F’s health report… I still don’t have the words.  I told my mom about his diagnosis, expecting her to be less than happy about the probable outcome.  Instead she told me, “It’s not that bad, you and he should be worried about the economy instead.”  My mom, ever the R.N.  If she was here, she’d probably tell him to take a nap and hand him a spaghetti pot to barf in.  Even if he wasn’t tired, or experiencing flu-like symptoms.

I’ve tried to write about house hunting.  It’s been frustrating.  But now we have a kick ass realtor.  We have six places to look at tomorrow, two of which we’re really excited about.

I’ve even considered writing about seeing a reader of mine, a girl whose blog I read, popping up on Louie’s flickr page.  And how that was weird.  But that’s about all I can say, it was weird.  But I guess given the small town nature of blogging, totally expected.

And that’s about the sum of my drafts folder.  Phew!  Now I can delete those pigs and move on with my life.