YAK: My last post was lots funnier

[shalanna]

(Agents and editors out there who are Googling my journal, go to the previous entry. This one isn't as funny. Also, has factual errors. Do not read!)

I woke up at 3 AM nauseated. Very unhappy camper digestive tract until reverse peristalsis took place around 5 AM. Yuck! Apparently something I ate late last night was the Last Straw for the cranky digestive tract. It was just a Medifast chocolate meal bar that I ate when I took my pills (diabetes meds, blood pressure pill, COQ10 as directed by physician) last night. They are REALLY gross coming back up, BTW.

Then I got to experience a whole-body digestive system cramp that lasted until twelve noon. I had to lie* on the heating pad and keep repositioning it front to back to end the cramping. Really gross. I think it was partly just that I was already sick with a minor virus yesterday, and then I got so overheated yesterday in the Wal-Mart parking lot (car thermo said 106 when I got in, and went down to 100 and stayed there for a while even with the A/C on!) and bringing in the groceries. Yuck. Have done nothing useful today except curse the darkness.

Oh, and this morning around eight, when Hubby crawled out of bed and found me on the sofa (post-barf-party and probably not looking quite as hideous as I felt), he said, "Where's my iPod shuffle and earbuds?"

For some reason, illness brought out the confession. "Well, I got your exercise pants out on Friday and washed them, and the iPod was in them, and it got washed. . . ." He just stood there with a deadpan expression while I blathered through it all. Then he said, "Where are the earbuds?"

"In the car. It's all on the dashboard, drying out."

He toddled out to get it and plugged it into his computer. It says it's charging and claims to be operable. We'll see. *whew*

But I had a backup plan. While I have still not unearthed all the tote bags (one of which surely contains my old iPod shuffle), I have A Plan in case it doesn't turn up and the washed one is a washout.

A kind reader (thank you, Kindly Reader) sent me a link on Friday to a Circuit City sale of refurbished stick-of-gum iPod shuffles with 1GB of memory. I picked one of those up for around $40, and it has already shipped. So if this doesn't work, the new one will work for him. I thought that was a pretty good price. Also never hurts to have a backup for all those Grateful Dead bootleg MP3 tracks I got off of my cousin's cassette tapes.

*And* I feel a little better now (as evidenced by my sitting up at the computer rather than being curled up on the sofa covered with fuzzy throws and fuzzy dog.) So I'm going to watch all these episodes of "Cash Cab" that I have saved on the TiVo and drink some more diet 7UP. Make 7UP Yours!!

**watching Cash Cab live**

Ben (host): "What was the nickname of the Allied general Rommel in WWII who served under Patton?"

[EDIT: Yes! Iz rong!! I telld y'all, we had da stoopid. Brain insane! Both of us thought that was what we heeered him say! And neither one said, "Wait . . . Rommel was German?"]

Mama, hovering in doorway with heating pad: "Oh! I know this! Oh . . . you know, the Desert something! The desert what?" *suffering because she LIVED through that one*

Me: "Camel?"

Mama: "NO! The desert . . . RAT! No, that's wrong!"

Me: "But wouldn't a camel be good in a desert?"

Ben, the host: "The Desert FOX!"

Mama: "Of course!! Of course!" *slapping head with hands* "How could I not know that? How could I say RAT?" (probably because of those baby mice who keep climbing up to the kitchen-sink window and peeking in at us whenever the bird feeder gets empty) "How could you say CAMEL?"

Me: "You've got to give me partial credit for a camel! What would you rather ride in a desert, a fox or a camel?!"

Mama (who has a mild case of this same stomach stuff and has had it for a week now, if our guess is correct): "I hope this is only a symptom of the disease making us dumb and not a sign of permanent stupidity."

* "I always tell the truth on this heating pad."

Comments

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

Ben (host): "What was the nickname of the Allied general Rommel in WWII who served under Patton?"

Shalanna, you are going to giggle when you recover enough to read this over again. Promise.

I hope the stomach issues go away soon. It's such a lousy way to be sick.

Also, your Mama is a hoot.

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

*facepalm* I told y'all I was a mess.

Stomach is happier today. I shall eat nothing but potato chips and baked potatoes. I did have a bite of a carrot, but my system turned on a warning light, so that was it for the orange vegetables. And absolutely NO protein powder, meat, eggs, or other vile abominations . . . until at least next week.

Sigh! But at least it only lasted the one day.

I am not going to tell my mother that we got THAT mixed up about WWII. She would check herself in for a complete brain transplant. She was born in 1930, so the WWII years are her growing-up years, and she remembers them perfectly . . . except when our blood sugar is who-knows-what from The Sicky. So this will be our little secret . . . ours, and the Internet at large. *headdesk* Hey, that feels good. *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

[dennismhavens.livejournal.com]

Sorry for your night of nausea and all that. Hope you're continuing to improve.

I don't know anything about this "Cash Cab" show you mentioned, but some things struck me as . . . well, "wrong" might not be too strong a world. I'm hoping Coneycat was putting it right, blaming your description on the aftereffects of your illness. As a World War II aficionado, however, I'd like to present the facts. You never know when you might run into a WW2 veteran who would expire on the spot of apoplexy after hearing several parts of your discussion.

One, Rommel and Patton were enemies, not allies. General Erwin Rommel fought for the Germans, in both World War I and its much-more-fun sequel, World War II.

Far from "serving under Patton," Rommel actually ended up with a higher rank, Field Marshall, and was a big favorite of his boss, that Hitler guy, until Rommel got peripherally involved in a plot to assassinate the Führer. Never one to appreciate that sort of thing, Hitler gave Rommel a choice, swallow a cyanide pill and his family would be spared and he'd receive a war hero's funeral, or don't take the pill and die a horrible, painful death along with wife and son. The funeral, let it be mentioned, was very impressive.

Yo' Mama was more right than you think on this one. Rommel was indeed known as "The Desert Fox" for his cunning ways, fighting his way across North Africa. Not too many years after the war, Hollywood made a very good film based on Rommel's exploits. It starred James Mason and was, appropriately, called "The Desert Fox."

BUT . . . a few years later the same studio did a film about the epic battle between Rommel's German tank troops and England's General Bernard Law Montgomery, whose task it was to break through Rommel's grip on the area and rescue the British troops imprisoned under unspeakable conditions at Tobruk. Montgomery's army was affectionatley known as "The Desert Rats," which ended up being the title of that second movie. So your Mom was right, in a sense. The Desert RATS were actually the British troops, out to defeat the arrogant Nazi forces holding Tobruk.

Arrogant Nazis? Is it still politically correct to say that?

[dennismhavens.livejournal.com]

You of course know I meant "word," not "world" in that second paragraph. Sheesh!

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

NO ONE is immune to Da Stoopid!

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

I feel better about Mama's mind now that you say there WERE "desert rats," as she just knew there were. See answer to Coney above as to why our brains were scrambled. It seemed good at the time . . . because my blood sugar was either 62 or 248. From eating all those potato chips.

I couldn't risk eating anything that might make the Ouch come back, so I ate potato chips. Pringles are good. Lay's are better, but the salt starts getting really bitter. (Bitter idn't better.) Think of the calories! Think of the carbs! But we didn't barf! Mama has been living on potato chips for three days. I thought it was just another eccentricity. Nope--she has had a milder version of this. I caught it from eating the pea salad (after she ate directly out of the serving bowl at midnight during a secret fridge raid), I think.

Gotta get well. Piano party on Saturday at Plano Steinway Hall! Might play Schubert's Moment Musical #3. Wouldn't want to play anything longer, such as the Debussy (Reverie), because they'll all be staring. But there will be ten or eleven people present whom I've met but haven't seen for a year (my email changed and the piano party email invites went awry!), so it'll be fun listening to them. We're all amateurs. The ophthalmologist is really terrible. I hate to say it, but he is. At the last party, he played the 1st mvt. of the "Moonlight" sonata in C#min and *OMG* it was like a halting first sight-read with plenty of clinkers, but he was SO PROUD that we all applauded, even the snotty preteens who went up next to play the Minute Waltz (fast) and an arrangement of the William Tell Overture (bang, bang, POW. Poor Steinway!)

Oh, wait. You know the piece that EVERYONE LOVES . . . yep, "Linus and Lucy" from "A Charlie Brown Christmas." If you want to be an instant hit, play that one. Maybe I'll cheat and play that one again.

[mela-lyn.livejournal.com]

I Hope you feel better soon! Mom too. ;P Dont' let her stay sick too long... she could get seriously dehydrated!! Be careful!

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

I'm better today. She's even BETTER, as I just caught her making a ham sandwich out of the cold cuts that we got for my husband to make himself snacks with. If she gets away with that mayonnaise, I'll declare her cured. But now that I know she wasn't just imagining all that stomachache stuff and not just goofing off (which we all did as kids--admit it), I'm making her drink more water and 7UP. We need to build up our immune systems. You know what would do that . . . A VACATION!!! YAY!!

*I need a vacation!* Need swimming pool! Need ocean! Need carnival rides! Need silver dollars!

I really DO need a vacation.

Thanks for writing!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Hope you're fully recovered by now.

But as dennismhavens says, you weren't hallucinating the Desert Rats, but that was us Brits under the intrepid Monty. :)