Blech

Um.  Hi.  I'm back.

I didn't mean to be gone for a week but here we are and I've been gone for a week.  I was gone to the land of sick people.  In fact, lunch today was the first real meal I've had since last Saturday.  Oh yes people.  It was a stomach sickness which I have not had in years and years and years other than when I got food poisoning ON MY BIRTHDAY in 2011.  Happy birthday to me from some lasagna.  But this was a bug or virus or something.  Which means it wasn't gone in a short 24 hours. No.  That would have been heavenly to have only been sick for a short 24 hours.

But I was not sick last Saturday which is where I will start. 

A friend of mine contacted me a month or so ago and asked if I was still teaching painting classes at the studio I used to work at part-time.  When I told her I wasn't, she asked if I would consider teaching a class in my home studio to her and a friend for their birthdays which are a few weeks apart and I told her I would.  Then we discussed possibly going to lunch before painting and the last thing she sent to me via a Facebook message was that we would all go to lunch and she wondered if sometime between 1:30 and 2:00 sounded okay.  I told her that was great.  The last time she had come to my house she arrived almost an hour and a half late so I was planning on closer to 2:00.

I got up Saturday morning and did some laundry, cleaned and straightened up the house, and then went upstairs to rearrange stuff in the studio to fit three of us in there, etc.  About 12:15 I headed back downstairs and happened to pick up my phone to see what time it was and thought I was doing great because everything was ready and I still had over an hour to shower and get dressed.

Then I saw she had sent me a Facebook message 10 minutes earlier saying, "Hey!  We're on our way and we'll pick you up at your house for lunch!"  She lives quite a long way from my house so I didn't really panic.  But I immediately wrote a message back and said, "What time will you be here?  I'm jumping in the shower now" because for whatever reason, I didn't have her phone number to call her.  I waited a few minutes and she didn't respond. 

I had to take a couple of bags of trash out.  As I was walking back up onto my front porch they pulled in the driveway.  OMG.  Y'all.  I had not showered.  I had not even brushed my teeth.  I had no bra on.  I had on capri yoga pants, a t-shirt, my hair up in a scrunchie on top of my head, no make-up, and I was sweaty from cleaning house and moving stuff around in my studio.

I screamed at her when she got out of the car:  "WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?  IT'S ONLY 12:30!!!!  YOU TOLD ME 1:30 OR 2:00!!"

"Well, I meant to paint at that time.  But we're going to lunch first, right?"

Oh, I could have killed her. 

The friend that came with her grew up in our old neighborhood when we were all wee kids but I didn't remember her and she didn't remember me.  I told her to wait until I was showered to pass judgment on what I normally look like because what I looked like right then was not good.  She said our mutual friend had no concept of time and she is always late or early showing up for everything they ever do together and that I should not feel bad.

So they sat in my living room while I stampeded up the stairs (no seriously, there was actual stampeding) and took a shower, put on make-up, brushed my teeth and got dressed in 18 minutes which I should win some sort of award for if you know me.

We then went to The Vortex in L5P to eat hamburgers the size of our heads.  This is the entrance of The Vortex for those of you not in Atlanta.  It's a cool place with great burgers and incredible people watching.

After we stuffed ourselves, we went back to my house and then they each decided they wanted to paint different things. So I taught two different classes within one.  I'm so talented, y'all.  It's really not that big of a deal.  You just have to be able to paint two paintings in the time it takes other people to paint one.

They left my house around 8:30 or 9:00, I ate half a bowl of cereal and went to bed a little later feeling totally fine and planning to be very productive around my house the next day.  I was going to do more laundry, blow the gazillion leaves in my yard and driveway, cut back dead plants in my yard, etc.

At 3:00 a.m. I awoke and felt like I was about to die.  I had the worst nausea I have ever had in my life.  TWELVE HOURS LATER it had not let up for even a second and yet I had not actually gotten sick.  At 3:30 p.m. I finally threw up but guess what?  It didn't phase the nausea even a little bit.  I was still doubled over in pain.  Little did I know that was only the very beginning because I went on to feel the most extreme nausea of my entire life for FORTY-ONE STRAIGHT HOURS.  It never eased up for one second.  I stayed out of work on Monday.  The nausea finally went away after 11:00 p.m.  That's when something else started and I can't even explain it exactly because it was a weird feeling I've never felt before.  It wasn't quite cramping.  It wasn't quite like sore stomach muscles.  It wasn't nausea, but it was very unpleasant.  When I breathed in even a little deeply it sent horrible pain all through my stomach and around through my back.  And that all went on non-stop for three and a half days until it finally went away in the night last night.  I could not keep anything down other than broth, hot peppermint tea, ginger ale, Sprite and I ate about 10 crackers over the course of 5 days.  I finally ate a sandwich at lunch today and things seem to be mostly okay now.  But that's why I haven't written here.  I've been moving rather slowly as it is and we've been swamped at work and when I got home at 7:00 or 7:30 I honestly would eat a little broth and I've been in bed by 8:00 every single night.

One good thing to come from it all?  I think it broke me of my caffeine addiction so I am going to try to stay off of coffee, Diet Cokes, regular iced tea, etc.

Anyway, that catches you up on my really boring week of sickness.  How are all of you?

Tomorrow afternoon I have something fun planned so hopefully I will have something better to talk about next week instead of throwing up and nausea.  And I'll tell y'all how my cat is about to be eating more expensive food than me.....