The Plague

It starts with a sore throat, and then becomes the sorest throat you’ve ever had.  Your ears hurt, your head is pounding.  You are running a fever.  It knocks you off your feet.  This is the sickest you’ve felt in years.  You know you need to hydrate, but you can’t drink anything because you cannot swallow.  The sinus pressure builds until you reach a point where you consider looking for a sharp object to stab your face with, because you will do anything for relief.  Thankfully for your face, the fever still has you supine and motionless, and you cannot summon the wherewithal to get up and find a suitable object.  Then, the drainage begins.  You cough with every jagged breath for days on end, gagging on phlegm and wondering if the pain in your chest could possibly be due to a broken rib.

I don’t know what this sickness is, but it’s everywhere.  All of my students have had it, and so have the kids at Will’s school.  Always with the exact same trajectory of symptoms.  In our household, Rob was the one to get stricken first.   A week passed and I remained symptom free, then just when I started to smugly gloat about my superior immune system, *bam*.  It got me.  For the first time in at least 5 years, I was sick.

It’s been two weeks now, and I still have the cough (and phlegm), but it is finally starting to subside.  I was really only acutely ill for about 2 days; Rob was in misery for at least a week, I think.  I credit my more rapid improvement to drinking massive quantities of vitamin fortified Nuun hydration (the extra fluids probably helping more than the vitamins per se), and consuming an entire head of raw garlic (on toast, with avocado. Quite good, if you can survive the burning sensation).

Then on Thursday morning when Will woke up, he looked sad and scared, and managed to whisper, “My throat hurts."

Ohhh no.

He didn’t seem feverish, and he wanted to eat.  After he’d eaten and drank, he said he felt fine, and he was zipping around the house as per usual.  So I sent him off to school, wondering if the sore throat was just a passing thing, or it would turn into The Plague and I would soon get the call to come and collect him.

Everything was fine until about 2:20 in the afternoon.  I was scheduled to volunteer in Will’s classroom, and as I checked in at the main office, I saw Will following the school nurse into the health center.  He had that same sad, scared look on his face as he had in the morning.  He hadn’t seen me standing there.

I asked the secretary if I could go into the health center and see what was wrong, and she said of course and led me in.  The scene that met my eyes was like some kind of wartime infirmary.  Children were sprawled on cots, some motionless, some writhing.  Every bed was taken.  Those that didn’t have their own cot (Will included) were seated in chairs.  Will’s friend S saw me first as I entered the room.  He was curled into a fetal position on a cot, and he reached his hand out to me.  I told him I was sure his mommy would be there soon.

Will’s face was grim and set in stone, and he still didn’t see me until I knelt beside him and said, “Hey, buddy, mama’s here.”  His lower lip quaked and his red-rimmed eyes filled with tears, but he held the floodgates in check and uttered, with an air of uncharacteristic stoicism, “Mama, I’m sick."

I held his hot little hand as the nurse took his temperature with this kind of stick-like thing she traced along his forehead and then showed me the reading.  101 point something.  I don’t remember what.  Will has never run a fever that high.  Ever.  He has only been sick 2 or 3 times in his life, seriously, and neither time was it anything more severe than a cold.  We don’t even own a thermometer anymore.  He used to run a little fever sometimes when he was teething, but the last time I actually took his temperature was probably 3 or 4 years ago.  I’ve always felt incredibly thankful for his robust immune system.  Back when he was in daycare in St. Louis, he was the only person (adult or child) in the entire building to survive the norovirus epidemic completely unscathed.  Maybe it really does help that he eats an (organic) apple and raw broccoli almost every day.

The school nurse was very nice, and William stayed in the make-shift infirmary while I went to gather his things and tell his teacher I wouldn’t be able to volunteer.  She had already surmised as much.  She sent him down the nurse’s office because when it was time to go music class and all the other children lined up at the doorway, William got up from his table, shuffled to the carpet where they typically read stories, and lay down.

I brought him home (it was 12 degrees and there’s almost a foot of snow on the ground) and decided to give him some Tylenol—I’d tried to let the fever run its course when I had The Plague, and that had not worked well.  Tylenol was definitely preferable.  As soon as he got some of the Tylenol in his mouth he promptly threw up.  Twice.  Then he drank a whole bunch of water, lay down in his bed, and slept for two hours.

After a good, long nap and a fresh dose of Tylenol, his fever was gone, and he perked up.  He even had a vigorous appetite for dinner.  No more throwing up.  

He couldn’t go back to school today, though, because of the 24-hour fever-free rule, but I wouldn’t have sent him anyway.  He needed to take it easy and rest.  This was a bit of a challenge because I was teaching on campus today, and I couldn’t really cancel class.  Rob took care of him while I was away, and I guess he was pretty good.  He was sleeping when I got home.

As of now, he’s much more subdued than normal, but he’s eating and drinking and resting well.  I am so thankful that the worst of it seems to be over and that he improved so fast.  I know we have been very fortunate that Will is typically so healthy.  Whenever anything small like this happens, I think about parents who have really sick children, and my heart goes out to them.  I don’t know how they do it.  It is terrifying when someone who is so little and you love so much is suffering and there really isn’t much you can do to help them.  

Hoping that healthier days are ahead for everyone.  Thanks for reading.

Home Improvements

This summer I have been militant about reducing clutter in this house (the guy at the Goodwill drop off station recognizes me because I bring in donations so frequently), fixing things that are broken, and trying to make myself actually feel at home here.  I don't feel that I have made nearly enough progress on any of these fronts, and that is distressing.  I really don't know why I cannot feel at home in this house, or in St. Louis in general, but here is a look at the changes I have made so far:

When we moved in, the dining room was red, which I think was a very popular decorating scheme in the early 2000's.  I actually really like the color red, but it seemed a bit dramatic to me, and when combined with the green of the adjacent kitchen, it made me feel like this house was in perpetual winter.

 

I took it upon myself to get rid of the blood-red shade of the dining room, and I can honestly say that painting over red is something I hope I never again have to do in my lifetime.

It started when I dropped Will off at daycare and then went to Home Depot, where I had them mix up another 2 gallons of "Sandstone"-- the color of the living room and the hallway up the stairs.  (The previous owners were nice enough to leave behind some 27 used buckets of paint, which actually isn't such a nice thing after all, since we are the ones who now have to deal with them).

With my newly purchased paint supplies in hand, I went home to begin the epic task of painting the living room.

First, I put on a coat of primer.  The red looked absolutely no different.  So I put on a second coat of primer (easing the ladder around the room in what seemed like a monumentally slow process).

At last, there was some progress:

** Yes, I left some stuff on the wall.  I tried to unscrew them, but the screws wouldn't budge.  I think they super-glued these things on.

 

By this time, it was 5pm and time to go pick up Will from daycare, and I had not even started on the real, actual color.

Rob went to pick Will up while I kept painting.  Luckily the color went on very smoothly, much easier than the primer.

I had hoped that one coat of Sandstone would be enough, but it was not even close.  At 8pm, I started the next coat, and it was after midnight before I finally got it finished and everything cleaned up.

I don't have the best picture of the finished product, but I like the Sandstone color much better than the red.  It makes the room seem bigger, for one.  And it gives it a more comfortable, less garish feel.  

The next thing I started on was Will's room.  When we moved in, it was pink and green.  It was a long time before I finally had a chance to deal with it.  One weekend day I painted over the pink part with white, thinking that would match the baseboards and doorways.  Not so, because even though these things looked white, they were not actually white!  The baseboards, chair rails, doors, and a few random walls in this house are painted with an "off white" that does not match any of the 27 gallons of paint that the previous owners left behind.  Not "Country Dairy," not "English Countryside,"  I tried them both.  This was hugely frustrating, and for two years, Will's room looked mismatched and kind of like an orphanage.

This summer, I decided to paint his room dark brown below the chair rail, and tan (actually, the same Sandstone as downstairs) above it.

 

Part of the way through: brown below the chair rail, still white above

 

 

This photo doesn't show the tan very well, but here is the finished product:

I also moved out his changing table and we did some furniture rearrangement to come up with a dresser for him:

I don't really like this cube storage thing, but Will can easily reach and open/close the fabric doors, so he can pick out his own clothes (which is very important to him right now).

Then I moved on to our room.

I started by deciding to paint our dressers white.  We got these at Lowe's in Urbana over 12 years ago, and had left them as is (unpainted pine, I think) ever since.  Not so much because we loved the unpainted pine.  But because no one disliked it enough to take the initiative to skip a weekend long run for this and do something about it.

This was the summer I finally could not stand the dressers anymore, and all I can say is that my grandmother would be proud.  Painting furniture white was kind of her thing.

Here are some photos of the process:

Before:

 

During:

 

William helped, shirtless:

 

After:

I had every intention of painting our room as well this summer, but I have kind of lost steam.  It was really hard for me to paint the rooms I've already done, not like Oh this is annoying, but I think I actually have arthritis in my right hand and I was in a lot of pain for several days after each of these painting episodes.  A friend pointed out that it would be much easier if I got a longer handled roller, so at least then I wouldn't have to drag the ladder around the room for multiple coats of paint.  This is probably true.  Never having painted a room before, I did not realize that there were things that could make this easier for me-- I didn't even look at other types of rollers because I knew we had one at home and figured I would just use that.

If I were to paint our bedroom it would be either "Lagoon" or "Tropical Tide":

*Note: this is Will's hand, not mine.

Unfortunately, these shades really clash with the only artwork I have in the room (see the above photo that includes paintings from Ometepe).  So at the moment, I am just continuing to live with the gray, sad looking room.  It's a little better with the white furniture and white bedspread, but still seems kind of industrial.  

There are a lot of other home improvements I have on my list, but it feels really good to have these done.  And mainly, it feels really, really good to have less clutter.  Keeping my fingers crossed that the house can stay nice and neat after I go back to work full time in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading.

The sweetest thing

Will likes to look at his baby pictures.  At first I think he didn't realize that he was the baby in those pictures, but now he definitely knows.  He'll get a grin on his face and say, "That me!  That baby Will!"

The other night we were looking through a book Rob made of William photos from the first two months of his life.  We paused at this photo for a while:

 

It was William's very first ever smile.  It came after a long and very difficult 6 weeks during which Will cried all the time.

Will pointed to the picture.  "Baby Will smiling," he said.

"Yes," I agreed.  Then I asked him, "Why is baby Will smiling in that picture?"

Very seriously, he replied, "He smiling because he love her."

New glasses

I got a new pair of glasses last week.  What do you think?

"I'd rather be writing a novel."

I went for my first eye exam in 3.5 years and found that my eyes had actually improved since the last time.  Either that or the idiot doctor I saw back then got my prescription wrong, which I think is the more likely scenario.  Seriously, the guy was a jerk. He yelled at me for filling out the insurance form wrong, and then he went out of the exam room and yelled at the staff for not having properly explained to me how to fill out the form.  I had no problems with the contacts he prescribed, but when my new glasses were finally ready and I went in to pick them up, I could hardly bear to look through them.  I insisted that there must have been a mistake, this prescription was far too strong.  He counter-insisted that prescription was correct, and I needed to get out of his way.  I waited a week and went back again, ever more sure that the prescription was too strong.  They told me to "tough it out" and "my eyes would get used to it."

Well, they did.  And it's hard to say, really.  At the time, I was 8 months pregnant and hyperemetic.  Merely looking at a dish that had once contained  a food I'd eaten and later thrown up would make me feel dizzy and/or puke.  It wasn't inconceivable that my difficulty with the glasses was somehow related to my general, all-encompassing, nausea.  Within a couple of weeks, my eyes did in fact adjust, and I could wear the glasses while feeling nothing more than baseline, hyperemetic malaise.

So this time I was at first surprised, then vindicated, when the (I might add, very nice and conscientious) optometrist told me, "It looks like your prescription has changed.  You're wearing lenses that are 3 steps too strong for you."  He repeated parts of the eye exam just to make sure, and came up with the same result.  Moreover, he did not yell at me for anything.  Not for waiting so long to see an eye doctor, not for wearing contact lenses that had been expired for more than a year.

I was so giddy at the thought that my eyes might actually be getting better (or at least not getting worse), that I decided to spend something like a week's salary on new contact lenses and glasses.  I went for the most dramatic frames they had.  It seems like everybody is wearing glasses these days.  They're in.  I can't help but think how differently my life might have turned out if glasses had been so popular when I was in junior high.

Afterwards, I did have a bit of buyer's remorse.  Gigantic black frames too large for my face--what was I thinking?  They looked good at the store (were my eyes slightly dilated then?), but not so much when I got home.

On the bright side, however, now that I've got the right prescription, I can see better than I've been able to see in, well… more than 3.5 years.

All week, I wore the glasses.  I haven't gone that long in glasses probably since the age of 12 or 13, when I first got contacts.  Glasses were always my back up--what I'd wear after I'd taken my contacts out in the evening and nobody was going to see me again.

I've got to say, these new glasses are finally starting to grow on me.  I think they give me a sort of stern, professorial look, which definitely helped me set the tone at the beginning of the new semester.  With these glasses, everything I say suddenly becomes brilliant.  The only thing that could make me seem any smarter would be if I also had a British accent.

Maybe I will write a publishable novel after all. With a genre and everything.

Thanks for reading.

I am awesome at meeting famous people.

I may have mentioned Amy Ray on this blog before.

As in, I gave birth listening to Amy Ray.*

Or, Last weekend I ran anothermarathon listening to Amy Ray.

I always considered myself an Indigo Girls fan, at least from the moment when my freshman year roommate put in Rites of Passage and said "Hey, Mel, listen to this" (it was their cover of "Romeo and Juliet").  But when Amy Ray came out with her first solo album in 2001, that was life changing.  I don't know.  I just really, really, really liked it.

The culmination of many years of being a fan reached its peak last month, when Amy Ray came to St. Louis and did a show at the Old Rock House.

It was amazing.  Oh dear god, it was amazing.

 

I love how happy she looks in this picture

 

The Old Rock House is a pretty small venue (not that I actually know that much about venues), and after the show, Rob and me and my friend who had come with us were hanging around for a while.  Then all of a sudden, Amy Ray walked back into the room.  She just started hanging out too-- talking to fans, signing autographs, etc.  The thing is, nobody seemed particularly concerned or excited.  It was all really laid back.  Except for me--  I reacted like one of those girls from the 1960's who was seeing the Beatles for the first time.

Image from http://oysters4breakfast.blogspot.com/2010/12/birds-of-day-girls-of-beatlemania.html

In the midst of all the hyperventilating and fainting I was doing, Rob was all, "You should go up to her and talk to her."

And I was like, Talk?!  How can I just go up and talk to Amy Ray?

One thing about Rob is that even though he is often quiet in most other life situations, he is really, really good at talking to rock stars.

So Rob and my friend each took one of my arms and marched me over to Amy Ray.

She smiled at us and said, "Hey, I'm Amy."

Rob turned on his rock star super speaking ability and said something to the effect of, "Hi, this is Melissa and she's a really big fan.  Your music has gotten her through a lot.  She gave birth and runs marathons listening to your music."

And then Amy Ray shook my hand.  She was like, "Whoa.  You run marathons?  That's cool."

And I was all Oh my god, you're Amy Ray.  My teeth were chattering and I had no control over the limbs of my body.

Also, I think she may have been weirded out by the giving birth statement.

(I don't blame her, that is actually kind of weird).

Even so, she put her arm around me, and Rob took a picture.

 

It has been almost a whole month, and I am *still* recovering from this moment.

How do you even recover from meeting Amy Ray??

Well, you don't I guess.

But one way you can try is to go out and meet Gloria Steinem in the same week.

It was graduation on campus, and Gloria Steinem was set to receive an honorary degree.  She was giving a commencement address, and also, the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department was hosting a special, invitation only, meet and greet with her the day before graduation.

I was in the office on the morning of Gloria Steinem's arrival on campus, talking with some coworkers about how I really admired her and how I thought it would be really cool to hear her speak.  One of the faculty members, who happens to have a joint appointment in the WGS department was also talking to us, and she was like, "We'll see what I can do."

Well, she came down to my office later in the day and asked me if I would be interested in going to the Gloria Steinem Meet and Greet that afternoon as her +1.

I was in!!!!!

The only problem was, I didn't think I was dressed for the occasion.

I was wearing a teal sleeveless shirt that my mom gave me for my 26th birthday (in 2005) and a pair of black pants that I have had since before graduating college.  This just didn't seem fancy enough.  The invitation to the event was very fancy.  Wine and cheese was to be served.  I thought everyone would be dressed in formal wear.

I almost called Rob and asked him to bring me my new black dress (that I got at the Scholar Shop for $12), but then I was like, wait, Gloria Steinem is a feminist.  I shouldn't wear a dress.  I should ask him to bring me my black blazer.

I didn't end up asking him to bring any of these things, because my date told me that she thought I was dressed appropriately, and besides that, Gloria Steinem wouldn't care what I was wearing.

She was right.  My outfit was actually perfect for the occasion, and Gloria Steinem's talk was fantastic!

She is so inspirational!  And brilliant.  Everything she said was just about the smartest thing I've ever heard.

The talk was unstructured; it was mainly an opportunity for students to ask her questions.  Many of them asked her questions relating to "What would you advise us to do after graduation?"  Her response was something to the effect of, "You know what I think you should do?  I think you should find that one thing that you are so passionate about, that you love so deeply, that you'll do it and forget to eat and sleep because you love it so much.  I think you should do that, and do it well."

There's my problem in life.

I either haven't found the thing I am that passionate about, or, I don't do it well enough that I could live off of it.  (Writing).

Me with my pal, Gloria Steinem.  My date to the event was sitting on my other side and is not pictured.

 

I think what I'd like to do is get a book deal.  Writing Amy Ray's biography.  I bet I would be good at that.  But I'll have to get better at talking rock stars, otherwise, Rob will have to ask all the questions.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

*N.B.: Will arrived early to this world and I was unprepared to give birth (I did not have an iPod handy for some reason), so what I actually listened to was Rob singing "Dairy Queen" and "Driver Education" (which I guess are both technically Indigo Girls songs, but were written by Amy Ray).  While this didn't make it into my "official" birth story, I am pretty sure that it did happen.

 

There is a fine line between "hip and edgy" and "Lucille Bluth"

Something about this haircut has just been rubbing me the wrong way.  I couldn't quite put my finger on it until finally I realized: I am walking a very fine line between "hip and edgy" and "Lucille Bluth."

This isn't all bad. Lucille Bluth is my all-time favorite fictional character. If only I could be as bad ass as this: 

 

 

And now for the evidence:

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Wow, it is really hard to make this face and while taking your own picture with your iPhone).

 

 

 

(Also, making this face is a lot harder than it looks).

 

Thank you, Lucille Bluth, for being my inspiration.

I did it

Before:

 

 

 

 

 

 

After:

Hair today, gone tomorrow

My mother has been my hairdresser for my entire life.  Seriously.  I have never had anyone else cut my hair, ever.  I have never even set foot in a "salon."  Wait, I take that back.  When my best friend got married, I was in the wedding, and all of the bridesmaids met at a salon and we got "up-do's" (that was in 2004, and I really was scrawny back then).  But aside from that, I have never been in a salon. The whole idea of a beauty salon freaks the hell out of me.  I am pretty low maintenance when it comes to my appearance.  I feel like it is better not to make an effort rather than attempt to make an effort and fail.  I am probably the only 32-year old woman in the developed world who had never been in a beauty salon (okay, aside from that once).  I don't understand how it works.  I don't understand the tipping process.  How much do you tip? Do you hand it to the hairdresser or do you add it to your credit card bill (like when you're paying at a restaurant)?  The whole idea of going to a salon is terrifying and overwhelming.

But now my mother and I live in separate states. True, we have lived in separate countries on more than one occasion but each of those experiences was only one year in length.  During these occasions, I cut my own hair when necessary.  This St. Louis thing seems more permanent though (for better or for worse).  I feel like it might be time to explore the option of having someone other than my mother or myself cut my hair.

I've extensively consulted my coworkers and the graduate students, and I've discovered that there is this hairdresser up on The Loop that about half of the department goes to.  Apparently, he is some kind of hair genius.   He can make straight hair curly, curly hair straight, etc.  One of his customers even referred to him as a "hair therapist."  I don't know exactly what that means, but it's a good thing, right?

I made an appointment with him, and I'm going tomorrow.  At this point, I have not had my hair cut (by my mother) in over 8 months and it is a total disaster of frizz and ringlets and split ends so sharp they hurt to touch.  In fact, my hair has become such an affliction that I feel like I might need a doctor instead of a hairdresser.  This guy on The Loop is going to have his work cut out for him, that's all I can say.

If the results are decent, I'll post pictures soon.

Thanks for reading.

When I was blonde and scrawny

My Grandma Florence always used to refer to this time in her life when she was "blonde and scrawny" (her words), but none of us could ever figure out when that time in her life could possibly have been because to the best of our knowledge she had never been either.  To her credit, she is quite trim in her wedding photo (she and Grandpa would have gotten married in 1932 or was it 1933?), but she maintained that the wedding photo was not taken until some time after the wedding because her own mother told her she was "too scrawny" to have her picture taken on the actual wedding date.  But her hair is clearly dark in the wedding photo, as it is in every other picture I have ever seen of her.  I think, possibly, she may have been embellishing a bit on the issue of being blonde and scrawny.

As for myself, I suppose there are some (my mother probably) who would consider me scrawny.  I'm not sure if that is true though.  Generally speaking, a size 2 is gigantic on me, but I still look like an over-fed walrus compared to most women around me.  Particularly college girls, who I am surrounded by most of the time (since I work on a college campus).  I weigh the same or less than before I had Will, but nothing is in the same place, and it is kind of depressing.

No one would consider me blonde, at least I didn't think so.  I've always had dark hair.  My sister was the blonde one.  I never wanted to be blonde, but when I was younger I dyed my hair red several times because I really liked Anne of Green Gables.

The other day I was walking across campus with a friend/coworker, and I was complaining about my hair, which at this moment in time is reminiscent of what Gilda Radner would have looked like if she'd ever stuck her finger in a light socket.

Anyway, I made some reference to my hair being brown, and my friend/coworker did a double take.  "I wouldn't say you have brown hair," she said.  "Maybe it's more of a dark blonde."

Me, blonde?

To be fair, the ends of my hair are a completely different color than the roots, and not because I've done anything to it.  They've just gotten bleached out over time and hundreds of miles running in the sun since my last haircut.

But still, it was quite unexpected that someone might ever think of me as blonde.  I can see myself, someday, elderly and perhaps sitting in a rocking chair, telling William of a time long ago when I was blonde and scrawny.  And I can see him reacting with the same kind of incredulity we always did when Grandma made those claims.

Love/Hate relationship with kale

*Warning, discussion of vomit is below.  Read at your own discretion*

 

I have this sort of love hate relationship with kale.  For a long time, I loved it, and my go-to meal was inspired by this recipe (basically kale sauteed with garlic and olive oil), except that I would add cumin and coriander to it.  Heaven.

Then I got pregnant.

Hyperemesis began on Christmas Eve of 2008 when I was chopping kale to make this very dish.  Remember that?  I thought I might die.  I threw up lots of things. I never threw up kale though, because the very thought of kale disgusted me so much that I couldn't even see it without running out of the room, curling into the fetal position, and rocking back and forth while chanting unintelligible things.

I haven't been able to eat kale since then.  That's almost 3 years of no kale.  I actually still have a hard time with a lot of green vegetables.  Things just don't taste the same to me anymore.  I thought it would go away after the baby was born, or after I stopped nursing him, but I am still kind of waiting on some of these things.  At any rate.  I've tried kale a few times since then, but I've never been able to eat it sauteed wtih garlic and cumin.  It wasn't just the taste of it, but the texture too.  The only way I could eat it was if I made it into kale chips.  Well, the strangest thing happened after my 18 mile training run this weekend-- I was craving sauteed kale.  (Who craves kale after an 18 mile training run? That's crazy).  So I bought some at the grocery store and last night I made it.  Delicious!  I ate a ton of it.  I was so happy!  I think kale is probably the healthiest food on the planet.  It makes me feel like I'm going to live forever when I eat it.

Well, unfortunately, I also ate some sauteed mushrooms with my kale dish last night.  I only ate a couple because they didn't taste quite right.  I'd just bought the mushrooms at the grocery store, they couldn't have gone bad already!  Could they?

They had.

Long about 10:30 last night, it hit me.  Oh god, those must have been some bad 'shrooms.

I felt awful.

I went and got my grandmother's emesis basin.  Yes, emesis basin.  For some reason, I inherited it after she died.  I guess it was among the items left in her room, and my mother thought maybe I could use it.  She was right.

 

About 11:30, I sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the emesis basin and gagging.  Thank god for the emesis basin.  I ran to the bathroom.

Let me just say, throwing up kale (sauteed with garlic, cumin and coriander) ranks right up there as one of the most unpleasant things I have ever done.  There is probably a reason why bulimics generally do not binge on sauteed kale: it does not come up easily.

(Beware, the description below is gross)

I was kneeling there at the toilet, gagging my heart out, but only a pathetically small amount of kale came up.  It was completely clogging my esophgaus; it was in my nose, it was filling up my entire head including my brain.  I thought I might choke to death.  When I breathed I tasted it.  When I swallowed, it felt like I was swallowing over a massive wad of kale (probably because I was).  It was disgusting.

I had to revert to an old hyperemesis trick that I used when things weren't coming up easily.  I drank an entire glass of water, quickly.  I sat there and waited.  I was exhausted, I felt terrible.  Finally (emesis bowl in hand), I went back to bed and curled up into a shivering ball.

A half an hour later, I sat bolt upright again, gagging into the emesis basin.  I ran into the bathroom (again) and barely made it to the porcelain goddess before the kale started coming up.  And up, and up.  Oh my god, and up.  I had eaten a lot of kale, and it all came up, every last bit of it.  I stayed in the bathroom for a while and puked 2 or 3 times and then finally felt like I was done.  I brushed my teeth and brushed and brushed, but I could not get rid of the awful burning of kale sauteed with garlic and cumin and coriander.

It was no cheese tortellini (throwing that up ought to be outlawed by the Geneva convention), but it is not an experience I would like to repeat.  And I probably won't repeat it, given that I doubt I will ever be able to eat kale again.  Which is really too bad, considering that I am pretty sure it confers immortality if eaten in appropriately massive quantities.  We'll see.

Sorry for being so gross.  Thanks for reading.

Happy

Will just looked at me, smiled, and said, "Happy."