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.)

So, after my barfing Monday morning, there was some groaning and leaving work early and lying about, all accompanied by what I assumed was a raging UTI.  After some calls to various doctors, an antibiotic was prescribed and I took to my bed.  With your niggling thoughts of pregnancy dancing in my head.

I remembered that my sister once had a UTI whilst* pregnant, and that of course, made me think that, oh-ho, I MUST be pregnant.  Because UTI’s are a symptom of pregnancy.  Because my sister once had one concurrently.  This is how retarded I am.

Two days later I was still in agony, so much so I wasn’t able to go running for two days straight.  Some might think that was a convenient way for me to puss out of running, but those people are only partly right.  See, if I don’t run, I don’t sleep.  And guess who gets crazy if she doesn’t sleep!  Ding, ding, ding.  That’s right, this girl.  So after some haranguing by Seth, I called Callie (at her new office, which, I assumed would be a logistical nightmare which is why I didn’t want to call her, which is because I’m extra phone averse when I’ve got a double dose of the no-sleep-crazies) and she fit me in today.

First of all, this is a woman I’ve only seen twice now.  But she’s so extremely huggable-looking, I wanted to cuddle up with her and take a little nap in her lap.  Don’t mind me that’s just the crazy talking.  Sort of.  But I resisted and just undressed below the waist for her.  (She asked me to!  And I left my socks on.)   They tested my urine, and it was totally clear, Also, I’m a clean catch champion.  The nurse started to explain what clean catch was and I was all, stop right there, sister, save your breath, I know how to clean catch!  She smiled.  Weakly.  So, Callie rooted around in there and see if there was something else going on, like, I don’t know A BABY and took a slide from the baby making region and it too, was totally clear.  There was nary a baby or bacteria to be found.

Basically, I have nothing.  Except phantom pain that keeps me from running which keeps me from sleeping which keeps me from being a normal human being.

I have a shrink appointment on Saturday.

*Who was it that hates it when people use whilst, was it you Schmutzie?  If it was you, I’m kind of sorry, but I have an excuse!  I’m tired!  And while seems so boring when one is tired.

“When do you do this recording stuff?”

“Sometimes when you’re in the other room, I quickly set the Tivo and change it back to CNN before you come back.”

“What is this show?”

“Grey’s Anatomy.”

“This is the one with the dude who got in a fight with Patrick Shitfuck.”

“Yeah.  We don’t have to watch it.  I can watch CNN.”

“No, it’s cool.  It’s like watching a music video.”

Three episodes later, I’m sobbing and he’s petting my hair.

“Is that the last one?  There aren’t anymore recorded?”

“There’s one more.  But we don’t have to watch it, I know it’s terrible.”

“NO!  I want to see what happens with this whole Denny the ghost thing.  I’m intrigued.  And I like that short, black doctor.  Also the other lady.  They seem interesting.”

“Are you serious?  You’re telling me you like Grey’s Anatomy?”

“I think it might be the best thing we’ve watched.”

Where did I find this man?  This man with the hatred of almost all things mainstream?  Where did he come from, and why does he like Grey’s Anatomy?  And why is Callie a lesbian now?  I’m so confused.

Here’s what I want:

I need $350,000.  Or, whatever, like 20% of that.  I don’t really know how real estate works.

Make it happen, Universe.

(That’s how it works, right?)

Vagina gore, causing an emergency meeting with a speculum, and a rubber gloved lady.  I peed on my hand getting a urine specimen and no one could agree on the panties on/panties off situation.  Verdict: Panties off, I’m not pregnant, and it wasn’t my ovary or a dead baby that was oozing down my leg.

Giant rat vs. smallish dog battle continues apace in my kitchen.  Dog seems to be of the opinion that the rat is no longer in the house.  My heeb-jeeb o’meter disagrees.

I have had it up to here with the jokey misrepresentation of how television gets made by people who have no idea how television gets made.  I would like to tell people who think it’s funny to yuck it up about the crap we put on the networks to shove it up their self-righteous asses.  And also, remind them that they are lazy fuckers who’ve never tried to make anything in their lives except an easier path for the food to get to their stupid mouths.

Apparently, I’ve gotten a little bitter about middle America.  This is what happens when you work in television.  This is also a sure sign that one should probably stop working in television.

I’m going to be working in television for the foreseeable future.

• The raccoons are back.
• The skunks have babies.  (They are so fucking adorable, that I can’t stand it.)
• There is something living under our house.
• Lula has three nightly wake-ups dealing with all of the above.
• I will be performing some janky construction project this weekend involving lattice, chicken wire, electric fence, dart guns, and a guillotine.
• Lula is being fitted for a ball and chain.

I took one bite of my spicy tuna salad yesterday and knew immediately that the fish was bad.  One bite!  And now, I’m currently in the throes of some kind of bad sushi intestinal nightmare.  I would like to just leave it at that, but I can’t.  And for that I’m sorry.

Which brings me to communal restrooms and the women going through bad sushi intestinal nightmares who are forced to use them.  Hi, ass trumpet, I’ll see you at your desk later and pretend to not know that you just blew your guts out with the force of a hurricane while I sat quietly beside you separated from your absurd noises by only a tiny piece of tin and this little thing I like to call dignity that I use as a shield while tinkling daintily.

I mean, come on! I’d like to put in a formal request for bathrooms with privacy to be used for shit emergencies.  Those bathrooms would be reserved for people who are shitting.  And they would be sound proofed.  And well ventilated.  People would see you come out of them and know you were just in there crapping your guts out, but will just move on with their lives and not have the aural memory of your ass trumpetry.

I’m never eating ‘cheap sushi’ again.

*From The Devil Wears Prada.

Last night after a kick ass run, that both of us admitted was probably our fastest, and hence, our hardest run to date, we showered and snuggled and I was feeling quite smug.  This whole exercise, diet, keep not smoking thing was working.  I am feeling better.  My life is awesome.  I love these last days of being child free having not a care in the world.  And to top it off, Lula has been a much better dog, sleeping through the night, now that she’s been running three times a week with us.

Can you tell where this is going?  Not yet?  Let me continue.

I went to sleep with Seth saying his stomach was still feeling kind of queasy, and I teased him about eating a pound and a half of pasta.

Cut to 1:30AM.  I hear Seth bolt out of bed and then I fall back to sleep.  Moments later, violent puking.  He pukes the way I puke.  Loudly.  And at length.

He finally comes back to bed and tells me he feels better now that everything is purged.  I fall asleep feeling slightly queasy myself, most likely because I just heard someone puke up a pound and a half of egg noodles.

And I fall asleep.

Then the barking begins.  Oh, woe is Lula.  There is an animal on the back porch.  And she is furious.  And I’m hoping it’s not the skunk I smelled earlier that night, so I grab Lula and try to get her to shut up and go back to bed but she’s not having it.  Finally, after peering out into the black night, seeing and smelling no signs of skunk, I go back to sleep.  Moments later she’s out in the back yard, snuffling around.  No skunk, no raccoon, only an irritating dog.

The alarm seemed to come early this morning, but that would just be my future sneaking up on me.

UPDATE:  I just got an e-mail with a lot of exclamation points from my sister.  And yeah, re-reading this, I’m kind of stupid. And so totally NOT PREGNANT.  It might read that way, but yeah, no.  Good lord, I’m such a tease!