Sick

Whew! I'm back! Please pardon my extended absence... I've been laid out sick all week, which one would think would be just perfect for dreaming up all kinds of new and fantastic blog entries to type up and send into the blogosphere, but really has only been good for creating new and disgusting materials for adding to our world's landfills. Awesome.



Last Saturday morning (early afternoon if I'm being honest) I awoke with a wee scratchy in my throat, and a teensy bubble in my sinuses, and I knew something was a'brewin'. As I went through my day, I noticed watery eyes and lots of sinus pressure start clouding up my head, and I knew something nasty was on the horizon. But how and when did I get sick? I mean, it had struck so suddenly! Friday night I was out on the town, taking a fabulous cooking class feeling healthy as a newborn pup (those are healthy, right?), and then less than 12 hours later I was besieged with sickness! What on earth could have transpired? And then I remembered...

A week before I had been out to lunch with some friends after church, and this lovely man I'm just getting to know was sitting across from me. He's been recovering from the plague that's been sweeping the nation for the past, like, month, and we were all talking and laughing and eating and having a wonderful time when suddenly it happens...

My new friend is telling a story, and right in the middle of it, right as he's expounding on some important point and we're all listening attentively, everything slows and time seems to almost stand still. Suddenly the world dims and I see this teensy, infinitesimal little orb of spit leave his mouth. It's perfectly formed, tiny as a fleck of dust, but sure as the seitan tacos on my plate, it's there. As it leaves his lip, this droplet of disease begins to make its way toward me, its path making a perfect, golden arc, illuminated by the sunshine, straight for my face. I can't look away, I can't stop it, I can't catch it mid-air, all I can do is sit transfixed as it flies toward me through the air, a whirling comet of disease hurling toward me in slow motion. I watch it the whole time, frozen, but then I blink and it's out of my sight. And I know that I know that I KNOW it has landed on my bottom lip.

Time has now resumed just as suddenly as it slowed, and I am now back and sitting with my friends at lunch with a tiny droplet of my new, very sick friend's spit now sitting on my bottom lip. What is the PROTOCOL for such a situation?! Should I have daintily wiped it away? It was so small I could hardly feel where it landed! How does one account for screaming and crying for a disinfecting swab while furiously wiping one's lower lip for no apparent reason in the middle of a new friend's story? And even if I had, would wiping the microscopic, germy dot have done any good after it had landed and already started to seep its disease into my pores? I may never know.

Fast forward to a week later when I'm laid out on the sofa watching Throwdown reruns on the Food Network for the third night in a row, wondering if I've been this sick since I had pneumonia in seventh grade and trying not to think about how much effort it's going to take to blow dry my hair after I actually muster the strength to shower... Oh well.

I knew I was feeling better when I made myself some (freaking amazing, if I do say so myself) pancakes Saturday morning. Pancakes make it all better. Really.



Even being outrageously sick because someone else accidentally spit on you? Yes, even that.