Let’s call this a “trying” moment

…because I am “trying” to keep a glass of water and a couple tiny tummy-calming pills where I put them.

I had a trying night, too – the kind where you try to stay asleep and can’t, because your body is trying to reject all food eaten in the last, oh, four years.

It finally got to the point where I was doing that thing where you’re in the bathroom cussing at yourself, saying, “Look! Just either do something and have this thing over, or shut the @(*^@ up and let me go back to bed!!”

Good times, goooooood times…

The worst thing about these episodes, for me anyway, is that they are totally like having a morning after without any night before to balance it out. I mean, if I felt this hung-over and wretched because I’d had onehelluva time the night before, well, you know…I’d always remember Paris, right?

But no. The whole day before, I felt a little seasick. I wasn’t sure why, exactly. There were all kinds of factors that might have been at work, from actual sickness (seems like everybody I come in contact with lately has some variety of plague) to a little too much acetaminophen, to way too little sleep.

Last night, I woke up at 11:00 thinking uh oh… and then spent the rest of the night enjoying the view of my bathroom from the floor. Mmm, nice tile work! Could use a good washing, though…

But at least I had a slightly damp towel to sleep on, so hey – lap of luxury and all that.

What’s got me irritated is that, other than, you know, that…I feel fine. I don’t feel “sick,” I just feel “ill.”

And my entire digestive tract is apparently on a mission to purge my body of impurities. Including chunks of my internal organs, I suspect.

So, I’m sipping extra-hot herbal tea and dealing with my back and hip without any meds (which after a night on a cold tile floor is not fun) and feeling extremely sorry for myself today.

The worst part, IMHO? I don’t feel well enough to play the Wii. Even Animal Crossing, which is about as couch potato a game as the Wii has…and I owe that usurious little raccoon an awful lot of Bells, and this would be an awesome time to go gather them because the Den is empty except for my groaning self, but you know what?

Vertical is not going to be my position du jour.

I’ll try for a book. A nice book, which I can read from a variety of positions, including the one where I’m curled up in a ball with my feet halfway up the wall six feet from la toilette.

On the bright side, I have a toilette to curl up beside. And books to read. (Although some new ones wouldn’t be a bad idea…something that isn’t just knitting patterns, which while extremely enjoyable tend to get repetitive when it comes to plot… “cast of all stitches loosely in pattern…” I KNEW IT!)

What a week, eh? Oh well. You know, really…it’s OK. I think things are slowing down, and I’ll be feeling a lot better soon, and then you know what? I will get onto the couch and play some Animal Crossing. I have a wonderful butternut-carrot soup in the freezer, with a tiny touch of cayenne and curry in it – not enough to upset a delicate stomach, but plenty to please a recovering palate. (Actually…that already sounds good! That Imodium+ stuff has got to be one of the greatest inventions mankind has dreamed up!)

Even when I have it bad, I have it pretty good. How many of my brothers and sisters out there in the world would just have to suffer for however many days it took for whatever this is to pass? Shoot, dysentery (which would be what this would become, if it didn’t, you know, stop) still kills thousands of people a year.

They don’t get to crawl to a fully-stocked medicine closet, pull out two tiny pills that stop all the action in a flash.

They don’t get to listen to calming music on their iPod while they lie on the floor groaning all night; they don’t get to cheer themselves with the thought of which meal they’ll pull out of the freezer to tempt themselves with later, when this thing has passed.

I live in a place where it isn’t hard to lead a charmed life, really.

For which I’m grateful.

And will be even more so when sitting upright doesn’t make me nauseous. Bleh. Talk to y’all later, I’m heading back to my couch now…