sick

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.

Remember a couple days ago when I was bitching about not feeling well and cranking about my cold sores and then sounded particularly whiny because I thought maybe I was getting an ear infection but probably not and it sounded like maybe I was being over-dramatic and me me me?

My ear hurt most of that day, but sort of simmered down towards the end of it. When I woke up yesterday morning, it didn't hurt any more and I thought, "See, buck up. You're fine."

At 9 am, I noticed that the top of my head felt bruised. At 10 am I thought, hey my ear hurts again. At 10.30 am, I could feel the pain literally radiating out from my eardrum. It felt like squiggly waves casting out over my head in a net.

I went to the clinic.

The doctor, who is much nicer than my doctor, looked in my left ear and said, "Yes, that's infected."

Looked in my right ear and said "This one's not hurting you too?"

It started hurting too.

Off I went to get my antibiotics and finish up a few things at work. Then home and to bed for a couple of hours. Woke up to the left side of my head feeling numb. Stars of pain here and there, but really, it didn't hurt too badly. Took some miraculous advil and felt much better very soon.

And then I tried to make dinner.

I get migraines every once in a while and they're weird. They don't really hurt. I can't really feel them. But they break my brain. The story I tell most often to illustrate this is the time at Venus Envy Halifax, after I'd been working there for 5 months, when Shelley asked why the back lights weren't on. I said, "Oh, I tried a bunch of different things, but they're broken." She went over and turned the switch on.

Last night I really really wanted garlicky chick pea soup and kale for dinner. So I poured some oil in a pot, and turned the burner on and chopped the garlic while I waited for the oil to heat. When I was done with the garlic, I looked over and the oil was smoking. Checked the setting and it was on high.

So instead of say, par example, taking the pot off the stove and letting the oil cool down, I thought, "Huh, HI. Whaddaya know." and dumped the garlic in. Where it promptly burned and smoked up my kitchen more.

"Huh," I thought "I should do something with that oil and garlic. It's ruined. Huh. I should dump it down the sink. Wait a minute. Maybe it's bad to pour oil down the sink? I don't know. What do you do with hot fat? Right, you put it in a container. Huh. Oh good, there's a plastic tub in the sink. Wait. This oil is boiling. That tub is plastic. Is there something wrong here? I think there might be something wrong here. [tick tick tick] No, no, it should be fine. Sheesh, Butcher, stop overthinking this. Just pour the oil...

Oh. Melting. Right."

The oil went down the sink.

Current regimen:

Morning pills
2 x lysine ; 1 x zinc ; 1 x vitamin c ; 1 x acidophilus

Noon pills
1 x iron ; 2 x lysine ; 1 x zinc ; 1 x acidophilus

Night pills
1 x iron ; 2 x lysine ; 1 x zinc ; 1 x acidophilus

I hate taking pills. Especially those lysine. They're kind of big and emphatically not coated. They often get stuck in my throat. Kak kak.

Don't eat: Nuts. Sugar. Alcohol. Chocolate. (Let it be noted that caffiene should also be on this list, but if I'm giving up sugar, there is no fucking way I'm giving up caffiene. I'd get fired.)

Do eat: Lots of vegetables. Beans. Meat. Eggs. Cheese. More water.

And more sleep. I need to start getting more sleep.

I still haven't settled the the oral Zovirax question for myself. A friend has some I could take, but I've read contradictory stuff about the pills being useful for HSV1. Especially now that the sores are in full swing. It was good to hear from anonymous that they'd worked.

At this point, I think I might be ready to give up on all the natural stuff (though really, I'm not entirely sure how natural it is to be taking 6 lysine pills per day) and blast away at this damned virus with some high-grade pharmaceuticals.

This is my seventh or eighth outbreak since last spring. I don't think a month has gone by without me getting one.

Enough is enough.

PS Did I mention I think I'm also getting an ear infection? There is certainly something rotten in the state of denmark.

I really did expect to be over my goddamn cold by now. Thing is, everyone, fucking everyone, that I know has a slightly different version of the same cold. So if I didn't get it from the bad air circulation at work, I got it from making out, and if I didn't get it from making out, I probably got it from sharing a cup or dishes with someone at some point. Or touching a grocery cart and then touching my face. According to my mother, grocery carts are dirtier than pay phones.

At any rate, my nose is raw, and if I lie down for more than a half hour, I can't breathe through my nose. My left sinus is so plugged, I can't even tell if it's dripping or not. You know where that puts me? In dangerous proximity to the Things That Cause Coldsores: mouth breathing, depressed immune system, bad sleeps. I feel disgusting.

The big upside of starting to date someone in February is that come summertime, my paramour isn't going to know what the fuck hit him. Because I will not be snuffly and sniffly, I won't be dripping snot, my skin won't be scaly, and my lips won't be constantly covered in blisters and/or scabs. It's a miracle he's still dating me, quite frankly.

Speaking of my paramour, I have made a blogging decision. I've never been particularly fond of the term "my paramour" as a code word for him. It's fine as a descriptor, and paramour is a great word, but really he's not actually my possession. The consistent use of a possessive pronoun attached to a word meant to represent him was making me a little uneasy.

I did think of "the paramour." But even though I'm in that stage of dating where I sometimes find it hard to believe that other people exist, I do recognize that the world contains other paramours. Nickname nixed due to a definite article.

But I haven't been able to come up with a good acronym either. I briefly thought of a whole bunch of different acronyms. But none of them fit.

What's left, you ask? In a radical move, I shall start referring to him by his real name.

Eric.

I figure that his friends who read this and my friends who read this already knew that "my paramour"="eric." And the rest of you, well, there are any number of Erics in Ottawa. He could be any one of them.

But lucky for me he's not. He is the Eric who participated in a day that ended up being radically different than planned.

Shelley, Steve, Mitch and I were supposed to meet our friends Jacquie and Chris at a cottage somewhere today. Shelley is an excellent planner, so I was just sort of going along for the ride and for the first while the trip was planned, I'd no idea where it really was, and only a vague idea of what it was going to be like once we got there. Thing is, with Shelley planning, you know you're going to get somewhere good. So I didn't worry. I just decided I would get in the car when it showed up and have fun. And it was supposed to show up at 2:15.

But the weather here was a little nutty, so no showing today.

Instead, the 2 hour date I had planned with Eric turned into a 9 hour date. It started with [fun] and ended with [fun] and we managed to fit some other [fun] in too. We ate lunch at 6 pm.

Tomorrow, the car is definitely showing up at 8:30 in the am and we're headed off to the cottage, which I now know is somewhere near Picton. I expect there will be good food eating, nice wine drinking, a good deal of laughter and maybe some snowshoeing.

Though I suppose that could turn out different than expected too. There just might be Guinness instead of wine.

It was bound to happen. Between 90% of my coworkers having been sick last week or this week, and making out with a cute boy with a cold, it seemed unlikely that I was going to escape being sick. So here I am at home, with a sore throat and a head full of stuffing.

The brilliant thing about being sick today is that my page-a-day grammar calendar came yesterday, and I have about a month and a half of Common Errors in English to go through. Highly entertaining and something I can do cozied up in my bed. I might also have a bath and will most likely sleep some more.

And then I'm going to drag my ass to get tattooed, because I figure that my head doesn't have to be clear to have needles jabbed into my tender flesh. For those of you who have been following along, tonight is the last appointment. The whale has been finished for a while, but I wanted to wait for the finishing touches and post photos of the whole thing. By the end of the weekend, I hope.

*

I am finding it much harder than I thought to not write about dating. So here's a mini-date update.

The Saturday night date was not a hot date. As I wrote to him on Monday, he's a handsome dude and very nice. But if there's no chemistry, there's no chemistry. He agreed.

My Friday night date, though, we need a laboratory and safety goggles.

Of course, this has me thinking a lot about dating in general, and getting to know someone new, and what I've done wrong in the past, and how fucked up relationships can get, and how scary it is to actually like someone and feel that back from them, but what a high it is too. And how to enjoy the high without losing your head so that in four years you're not picking shards of your heart out of the carpet.