Tossing Cookies

*warning– this post requires a strong stomach.  I’m not even kidding.  It’s gross.  Remember you were warned.

Okay– remember Cory and Deacon?

My two characters with the hair-trigger stomachs?

See, the thing is, I usually don’t have a hair trigger stomach.  In fact, usually if it involves any sort of involuntary weight loss, mother nature has clocked me right out.  Carbs comfort me, I can look at most gross things on television without ticking an eyelid, and while I used to be a technicolor vomit comet on a windy road, once I learned the trick to basic knitting, that seemed to settle my stomach just fine.

I threw up exactly once with each pregnancy–and the first time it was on purpose as my bulimia gave one last twitch before dying a guilt ridden death after the pregnancy test turned blue.

So when I gave Cory this problem that I most definitely do not have and Deacon this problem that I’m sort of envious of, I thought, “Hey!  It’s balance in the universe.  I personally hang on to every calorie I’ve ever met with gnarled fingers of intestinal villi, but my people can toss their cookies at will.  It’s almost a blessing.”

Uhm…

Sorry guys.  I take it all back.

Once, long ago, on mine and Mate’s honeymoon, I managed to get food poisoning twice, within days of each incident.  Granted, I gave myself the first bout by attempting to cook (I’ve been telling you for years it’s a bad idea!) but the second bout was firmly on the head a local pizza place in Crescent City that I shall not mention.  We were camping, which meant my biggest blessing was that nobody saw my complete intestinal meltdown as I was hauling ass for the big bathroom, but the humiliation– oi!  If Mate and I hadn’t been cohabitating for a year prior, I might have just ditched out on him completely so he never had to see me in that sorry of a state.  As it was, as I was hiding behind a ginormous fucking tree in complete mortification, he said, “Is there anything I can get for you?”

“A change of clothes and a washcloth and a bucket of water and don’t look at me while I use these things!“

“I’m soooooo sorry.”

But, well, he did all that, and bless him anyway.  He is a good and just Mate, and I love him.

Especially because vomit is one of the things Mate does not do.  Mate’s aversion to vomit has gotten me out of cleaning the cat box for 20 years.  He’s made one exception, when I was in labor with Zoomboy, and that alone proved to me his undying love.

Which is a good thing he loves me, because what happened to my digestive track last night puts that whole week of our honeymoon to shame.

The Mantis Shrimp Can see in Ultraviolet and Infrared

Two exits, no waiting. For hours.  I threw up colors that the human eye can’t even see.  I threw up colors that even mantis shrimp can’t see.  My body gave me just enough of a break to clean up and go back to sleep so I would have the strength to do it all over again.  After two trips to the garbage can in the middle of the night with trash bags, Mate brought me a bucket.  A cat litter bucket.  He begged me not to tell him how full it got and I obliged.

But finally, after two showers and a whole basket of laundry, it was over.  I could literally feel it in my bowels.  Nothing left.  All done.  The purge was over.

I crawled back into bed and delivered the final insult to Mate’s injury of having to actually listen to that for three hours.

“Mate?”

“Nungh?”

“When you drop the kids off tomorrow– and you will take the kids to school tomorrow–I need a favor.”

“Anything.”

“Could you buy me maxi-pads before you go to work?”

“I am sooooooooo sorry.”

“I know you are.  Night.”

“Night.”

And thus, nearly twenty-five years after my honeymoon, I know that the magic is still there.

And so, thank Goddess, is Sprite and Top Ramen, otherwise I may not have survived my day.