sick

When I woke up at 4 this morning I was lying on my back in the exact center of the bed, my arms flung out straight to the sides, hands limp over the edges. My legs pointed straight down.

Everything was wet. The bed around me was soaked, the top sheet and duvet were on the other side of damp. From the inside, I could feel that my whole body was covered in sweat.

"Thank Christ," I thought. "That's it then. It's broken."

I promptly rolled over into a dry spot and the deepest sleep I've had in a couple weeks.

This flu kicked my ass. My nose is still stuffed up and it'll probably be quite a while before I'm able to clear all the gunk out of my lungs. Maybe a bit too, before I recover from the lack of solid sleep and appetite.

My fridge is a bit of an embarrassment. Not to me, when I'm on my own and not thinking about it. But when I look at other people's fridges, or at my own through someone else's eyes. There is often more compost in it than food.

I say embarrassing because visually, it's a little sad, this giant stainless steel behemoth often containing only a few slices of bread and a variety of alternative milks. But I also half-pride myself on it. Very little gets thrown out of that fridge.

Both my work and my house are close to grocery stores of all kinds. I'm passing them all the time. I don't really need to have an army's worth of food in my larder.

Until, of course, I don't have the energy to make it to the grocery store. At that point, my sketchy pantry becomes a liability.

Luckily, I know lovely people. Shelley's done bits of grocery shopping for me as she's gone to and from the back house, and dropped off quinoa salad and strawberries this morning. Just a couple hours before Mae emailed to ask did I want some of her leftover portabello mushroom soup. Umm, yes please. Steve, Jennifer and Greg have all offered to bring me anything I need.

For the most part, I've been wanting random things.

I mostly don't want to eat, and disturbingly seem to have lost my taste for coffee. When I do want to eat, it's kind of random stuff. A muffin. No, any kind is fine, just a muffin, thank you. Tortilla chips and salsa, procured finally from one of the two wacko convenience stores near my place.* Dinner last night was 1 red pepper, which sounds pathetic but was the only thing I could imagine eating. A lot of toast and peanut butter, until my bread ran out.

Shelley brought me a loaf today though, so now I'm all set.

*When I walked into the first place, I was shocked. There were about 20 bags of chips in there, a few random magazines, and the shelves were two-thirds bare. There were 4 small jars of salsa at nearly $5 a pop. The shelves behind them were completely bare.
"I'm looking for tortilla chips?"
The guy smiled a jolly smile at me.
"Oh, nope! They just came and took those away!"
Uhhhh, okay then. Off to Little India and the woman with the gross fingernails and rheumy eyes.

When I woke up at 5 this morning and my skin was cool, it felt brand new. Like putting your hand on the shady side of a sun-drenched marble column.

How it's gone the last three days: okay/fine in the morning, a little nauseous by noon, the fever settling around 2 or 3. You know how I can tell? By putting my arms akimbo, thumbs around the front, fingers spreading over my back. I don't know why there more than anywhere, but the heat and surface tenderness seem gathered in those spots.

When I turned off the light last night, I worried about falling asleep. I can't say that I fell asleep, but I drifted into and out of a colourful psychadelic dream consciousness for about 4 hours. Every once in a while I'd wake up enough to switch positions, relieve some pressure on whatever aching part of my anatomy was getting it, and sink back into the blossoms of colour pulsing out.

Who knew that fever was the only psychadelic that doesn't make me horribly ill?

Um. Oh. Nevermind.

Though really, it's the other way around in this case.

Today is better than yesterday. Yesterday I walked halfway to the Hartman's before realizing that there was no way I was going to make it there and back. Then I realized, thinking about the long hot shadeless blocks home, that I wasn't sure how I was going to make it back. I sat on the wall outside the beer store for a while, slumped over and looking exactly in place.

Oooh, poor me.

I had high hopes of being better by tonight, planned on being back at work tomorrow. I'm not sure that's going to happen. But I'm sick to death of lying down and sitting, though standing and walking have become their own troublesome burdens.

Excuse me, I have to go lie down again.

This morning I thought I was maybe being a baby for taking the day off. I felt much better than I had yesterday afternoon.

My bones and skin, for instance, had stopped feeling like someone had pumped them full of water and made them very taut and excruciatingly tender. My colour was its normal pink, not the deathly white it had been when Shelley blessedly came over to make me dinner.

At 2 pm, I lay down for a bit of a read and a nap. Lying down made me realize that I felt awful again, that tingle taut feeling was back on my skin, the top of my head was pulsing from my sinuses being so clogged.

Unfortunately, I've lost the knack of napping. Because when you feel shitty, but can't sleep, there's not a fuck of a lot to do.

I emailed a whole bunch of people.

I watched the wind suck and blow the curtains into and out of the window.

I read some interviews with Nairne Holtz online, in prep for my own interview with her tonight.

And my christ, did I wish I could get out of that. Not because I think it will be boring - I really enjoyed her new book, and I think her Canadian Lesbian Literature bibliography is wicked, and I would like to talk to her about both.

I'm feeling bad enough, though, that I've put the calls out to try and reschedule. The overachiever in my brain is saying, suck it up, butcher, just barrel through; the reasonable part of my brain is saying, the bathtub upstairs feels too far away to get into, you. are. sick.. My body is voting for being very very still.

We'll see who wins.

While I can't say that my performance went off without a hitch - I did indeed need to be reminded of the third sentence of the first bit - what I can say is that it was very, uh, warmly received.

The whole night was amazing. All the performances kicked ass (and you can see more by some of the performers on April 4), and the DJs spun amazing. There were pretty ladies dancing everywhere, on stage and off. The boys weren't half bad neither.

And also, we raised a good chunk of change for the Bursary Fund.

Strangely enough, as soon as I got off stage I felt flat. For no reason. People were nothing but effusive about what Shelley and I did, and I was genuinely pleased about that, but I felt like a pricked balloon.

So much tension and worry going into the night, I think. When that kind of tension eases off, it can leave in its wake one of two things - either you get a rush of euphoria and ride that for the rest of the night, or you feel emptied out and affectless. I think I put up a good front, but man, I was pulling it out of the reserves.

That's carried through to today, sadly, along with the dry, catchy throat that was exacerbated by shouting over music. I've felt low and lonely most of today. Not great, not fun, but okay.

And I can't get through 5 sentences without trailing off into a breathy cough that turns into a hack that makes it sound like my lungs are turning inside out inside my ribs. Luckily, my lungs feel much better than they sound.

Man, I feel like I'm going in about 10 different directions at once.

It's going to be warm in California. I won't have to wear a parka. Man, I hope we bought enough beer for tomorrow night. What if someone gets sick for the show? What if I fall down again? No, I won't be drinking. When I see CT, boy, am I going to [redacted] [redacted] him. What if I've fucked up and they pull our license? What if our houseguest thinks my house is dirty? Or ugly? And don't forget to take the address of where you're staying in San Fran. Those poor bartenders, Rice-a-roni Fuck Fest 2009. Oh, that Michael. Fucking hilarious.

Instead of being extra responsible and coming home early from work to clean and practice, I met Michael for a post-work drink. We sat at the bar in the Whalesbone and gossiped and laughed and said inappropriate things to the waitstaff.

I got back half-drunk and wound up, talking exactly one mile a minute.

When Shelley came over, I realized that half-drunk with only a couple of slices of bread and hummus to sop that up is a bad way to practice. I have those pieces memorized, and quite well by now, but when push comes to shove, the start of the next line sticks its head in the sand. Hopefully, when we're on stage, and push comes to shove comes back to push, I'll be able to yank 'em out.

At 4 am, I ceded victory to the cold.

At 7 am, I emailed in sick.

At 11 am, I got up.

Fortified, I fought back, moving my line forward with regiments of nose blowing and tea drinking and bath taking.

Now it's 4 pm, and I think the cold has perhaps gained the upper hand once more. I've moved from my usual computer spot at the kitchen table to the comfort of the Long Green Couch. There's a reasonably well-written but mostly trashy novel by my side, another cup of tea on the coffee table.

I think I may be prone in short order.

All day I have been trying to convince myself that I feel fine.

Now I am at home. I do not feel fine. I feel the eeg.

Maybe the several dry rye crackers I just chomped down will work their restorative magic and soak it up?

Maybe it is a passing eeg?

One can always hope for a successful bout of restorative magic and a case of the passing eeg.

I remember the exact moment I stopped wearing pajamas. Or rather, the exact moment that lead to me not wearing pajamas that night, and never putting them back on unless decorum decreed.

Pre-puberty, me and my BFF were gossiping. She had recently seen her older sister naked, and her older sister's body looked quite different from ours. How had she seen all this, I asked. Well, sister doesn't wear pajamas and she ran to the bathroom naked.

It hit me like a brick in the face. I don't know how this had never occurred to me before. Pajamas aren't a necessity for sleeping? You don't have to wear them? I didn't realize how much I hated them until I realized they weren't required. Done and done.

So if you were in my bedroom right now, you would know I was sick without even asking, without even noticing my glassy eyes and red-rimmed nose.

I am

1) in bed, alone, at 12:30 pm. I am never in bed at 12:30 pm unless someone luscious is in there with me. Rest assured, no one luscious would be in here with me and my

2) flannel nightgown. I have had this nightgown since I was probably 15. I wear it when I am sick. If I feel sick enough to wear not only pajamas, but pajamas made out of a material I generally find cloyingly comforting, you know indeed that there is one sick body wrapped up inside them.

Though really, today also feels like a bit of a luxury. I do feel entirely like crap: my head is cottony and my brain is foggy, my nose won't stop dripping, my muscles ache. I slept until nearly 11 am, and I never sleep that late.

But I'm not so sick that all I can do is lie still and moan, so I've actually got a great afternoon and evening lined up, though I did have to sadly cancel plans with both Eric and J.

Scattered over my bed and night table, I've got my computer, the newest issue of the Believer, the Nora Ephron book J. loaned me, notes to type up for the workshop on Sunday, the first season of Dexter, and my knitting. The wind is shaking all the leaves off the big tree outside, sending streaks of gold across the window. I've got ginger for tea and honey to put in it. I've got left over squash soup for lunch. Shelley's bringing me healthy food for dinner. I see a big long nap in my future.

It's almost worth the head full of stuffing.

For the first couple of days after Eric arrived in the 'fax, he and I had a running conversation about which one of us was on vacation and which one was on holiday. It went a little something like this:

"Nice to be on vacation, eh?"
"Or holiday."
"True." I paused to absorb the possible thesauratic implications of this. "Wait. Holiday?"
"Yeah. We're on different kinds of trips."
"Ah. Gotcha."

But you know, I didn't gotcha. I mulled it over. The next day:

"So okay. Which one of us is on holiday and which one of us is on vacation, then?"
"Well, you can't have a working holiday, but you can have a working vacation. You did the pride booth and you're doing a reading. So you're on vacation and I'm on holiday, because I'm not doing anything at all like work."

Right.

Conversations like that are one of the many reasons I feel unbelievably lucky to have found Eric.

Another couple days later, about 10 hours into our 36 Hours of Food Poisoning No Fun, I wandered into our bedroom from the living room, where I had been alternately reading the shittiest mystery ever, passing out, worrying that I might puke again, and feeling very very sorry for myself. Exhausted from the 15 foot trip, I sat heavily on the side of the bed. He woke up.

"Hi baby. How are you."
He blinked an owly gravol blink at me. It wasn't a real question anyway.
"So. Is this a holiday or a vacation?"
That got me a smile.
"This is a vacation from our holiday."

Neither of us had ever had food poisoning before. And even now, we're not sure. We spent a lot of time walking around out in the sun without hats and not drinking very much water. Because we're, you know, bright like that.

The trip actually ended up being quite a few firsts, the big ones being our first long trip together and the first sick together. Considering the fact that I miss him terribly after spending 6 nights and days with him in a fairly small room, I think we did alright.

The start of our Romantic Food Poisoning was Wednesday. Wednesday night was going to be a really fun night for Eric, Shelley, Steve, Aurèle and A's brother Phil. We were gonna see rock and roll on the high seas. Or, more precisely, the Maynards on the tall ship Silva.

Early in the evening, Shelley made us a delicious dinner of tofu and greens and rice, and then Eric and I wandered downtown for drinks with A. and P. We ended up at the Split Crow for power hour - a buck a beer from 9 to 10.

(This picture is the closest I will ever get to looking like a beer commercial girl. That is A. to my left, looking blurrily bemused.)

Ah! I can hear you saying, Megan! Sweetie! When you drink too much buck-a-beer beer, you don't get *food* poisoning.

But my response is ready: I was about to go on a boat and take gravol. So I drank only about a third of a glass to be polite, and then sat there, waiting to get anxious about being late for the ship.

We weren't late. In fact, we spent quite a bit of time waiting on the pier, where to pass the time I took a few picture of the stomach ache that was starting to get quite poky.

Apparently, the show was quite good. Nausea felled me early on and I missed it all. I did spend about 10 minutes of one band above deck, but I was shaking so badly that Steve lent me his hoodie to put on top of the sexy little t-shirt, 2 sweaters, jacket number I was already sporting, and A. gave me a fistful of ice. I stared stupidly at my fingers gripping it as my arm went numb. "It always makes me feel better," A. said, shrugging. The fact that it didn't totally give me the creeps meant that it felt pretty good.

Then I ran downstairs because I thought I was going to throw up. Eric came down not long after and stroked my hair and showed me the pictures he was taking of the actual party. I could hear the bands really well, so it was almost like being on deck. Shelley and Steve kept coming down for very nice visits too, taking care of me and keeping me company, even though the gravol had taken away most of my sentences. Though I do believe it is one of the few times in my life I have muttered "Yes, I would like to put my head in your lap," without the slightest whiff of salaciousness.

I worried for quite a while that I was wrecking people's fun, because E. and S. and S. kept having to come downstairs to visit me. But then, even in the haze, I realized that if I had said no I can't go, none of us likely would have been anywhere near the music. So this, really, was a happy medium.

That everyone was so nice to me is one of the many reasons I feel unbelievably lucky to have found my friends.

Okay, so a lot more went on in Halifax than sickness and sentiment. But it's late and I'm still a little dragged out from being sick. Tomorrow, more.

Shelley and I are at the cottage. At least, that's what it feels like. Truthfully, we're in an apartment in Montreal, but with the skylights and the no plans and the eating whenever we damn well please whenever we damn well please and the reading the paper and magazines and type type typing on my laptop, it feels more like we're on a relaxed cottage vacation than on the Plateau.

Just fine with me, since I have a migraine.

So I keep asking Shelley “What time are we picking Steve up?” and then saying “Oh right. 5:30.” And nothing I eat really tastes like anything. Except for the overwhelming raspberry of the new lip balm I had to buy because I forgot one of the 10 or so lip balms I have squirreled away around my apartment.

Come to think of it, I think maybe this migraine started yesterday. I got to Shelley and Steve's (now old) house and realized that I'd forgotten my water bottle, my reusable mug and lip balm. These are three things I rarely travel without. Me without lip balm is like. Well. I don't know. Something very anxious and prone to cold sores, at any rate.

We had a lovely slothful night last night. Shelley made a tasty stirfry, and I was very much in the mood for something noodley, so it hit the spot. Then we drank mint tea, ate chocolate and dried figs and Shelley read magazines, and I got decently into a book called “How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead.”

It contains some very good advice, but so far, what I've gotten out of it is that you should read a lot, you should write a lot and you should methodically send your stuff out and read it. It is ironic to be sitting reading a self-help book about how you should be reading fiction and writing.

Today has been nicely slothful too. Drinking coffee. Wandering down to look at a restaurant for our fancy dinner tonight. Brunoise is closed on Mondays, but I didn't find this out until I walked inside.

There was a man sitting at the counter with a white cup beside him, cappucino foam dried to the rim, and the paper spread out in front of him, almost finished. A woman had a laptop set up in the back corner table.

He noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye, turned to me. “Bonjour,” he said.

“Uh, hi.” I said back. Not confident enough to speak French – is reservation a real French word, or one of them there faux amis? - which makes me unsure of my English as well. “Should we make a reservation for dinner this evening?”

He smiled, a small laugh too. “We're closed today.” Waved his arm over the counter. “As you can see, I am just in to do some very difficult work on our day off.”

“Ah, I see. I do hope you get everything done you need to.” I laughed too, and left.

Shelley was very disappointed. In my laugh, I had forgotten that we were both very much looking forward to eating there.

It is hard to find a fancy place to eat on Monday in Montreal. Lots of stuff here is closed. By the time we had called the 4th restaurant on our list – Pinhxo – I made a reservation immediately because I think the answering machine said they were open, lundi a mecredi, from 18h. But they haven't called back, so who knows.

Since getting the food arrange, we've sat at the dining room table to read the paper. I tried to write my last NYC blog, but my brain is too misty to follow any kind of thread. I walked to St. Laurent to try to buy a new black cardigan, but the store I wanted to go to is closed. We've had lunch, a delicious risotto made by Shelley, that she said was very flavourful, but I thought tasted like fog.

The migraine seems to have broken my tastebuds. I had a Tim Horton's coffee on the way here, and it was fucking awful. I hate Tim Horton's coffee anyway, but it always tastes the same, and it always tastes like something. This coffee tasted like brown water. As did the coffee I had this morning. As did the coffee I had just after lunch.

Two things I do not like doing without are lip balm and the taste of delicious coffee. I think I'll avoid beer until my head gets better, because I would be very very sad if I had to add beer to the list of things that tasted like crap.

Shelley is sleeping now, and I'm about to stop tapping away to take an advil so that 1) when I drive to pick Steve up, I'm not trying to make sense of Montreal traffic in the fog, and 2) our fancy dinner will not taste like mist.